Is your school ready for the future? Part 3/12

Building Condition Assessment

Education Readiness Review

 A readiness assessment is required to determine what is needed to create facilities that meet the perceived needs of future educational challenges.  Dr. Darren Cannell will be providing twelve review criteria that can and should be used to reviewing your facilities.  This exercise will  make sure your facilities will be ready for the future educational challenges as predicted by the latest educational research and teaching.

The concern of such an educational review is that it will support future challenges but will not dictate the direction of the educational changes.  The design and approach need to be such that it supports current practices but is versatile enough to accommodate the possible future changes and trends.  To effectively assess the readiness it becomes necessary to review the perceived future trends in educational technology and educational pedagogy and theory.   This review of the trends will have direct ramifications on the facilities and will require certain designs to accommodate these trends.

Dr. Darren Cannell is a consultant who does building assessments and staff training.  He can be contacted at 

dcannell5@gmail.com

The third of the 12 trends is as follows:

Wireless

The complete educational areas within a facility need coverage with wireless accessibility.    Faculty and students should be able to roam freely in all areas of the school and be connected.  Wireless technology has improved so that it is now possible to provide this coverage effectively and is not cost prohibitive.  The access to a wireless network needs to be secure but also painless for students to use a variety of school-owned equipment as well as a student’s own devices.