Is your school ready for the future? Part 5/12

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 fifth of the 12 trends is as follows:

Removing the walls

Collaborative work with other schools, community members, and countries will help bring the world into the modern classroom.  The technology effectively removes the barrier of distance.  Pain free connection with other educational sources can greatly enhance motivation in the modern classroom.  Communication technology can remove some of the limitation created when a school is a silo protected from the outside world.  This connection with others will require the tools, and spaces which easily and effectively allow for the necessary communication to occur.