Gymnasiums as “Learning Theaters”?

Posted on by Brian Hughes

If you had a high school gymnasium, how would you turn it into a technology-friendly space for teaching, learning, and research?

As part of the Gottesman Libraries team, I’m currently involved in developing the concept of a “learning theater” — both programmatically and architecturally. Pulling this concept out of primordial soup of imagination (if such a space already exists as we imagine it, we do not know of it), our team embarked on a very broad inquiry:

  • What could a learning theater be?
  • What could it be within a library (in our case, it is)?
  • What is it within the context of Teachers College (with its legacy of innovation)?

We’ve already come a long way. Last winter, library staff hosted a series of design events with the TC community (summary videos can be viewed on Vialogues). This fall we’ve been working with a design team from Shepley Bulfinch to develop the concept and arrive at a schematic design. Our goal:

Renovate the 10,000 sq. ft. fourth floor of Russell Hall as a space for ambitious learning and research activities.

One aspect of our design progress that I’m very excited about is the ability for other educational institutions to use what we’re learning (and inevitably going to learn later on, after we move into our facility).

Don’t all schools need innovative teaching and learning spaces? These will be spaces that must accommodate richer and richer densities of learning tools – physical, digital, and any/every combination thereof. Being able to conduct research about teaching and learning in these spaces, therefore, seems to be increasingly important as well.

Retrofitting libraries and high school gymnasiums as new learning spaces could be only the beginning…

What’s Not to Like about Innovation?

Posted on by Brian Hughes

Like creativity, innovation is a diffuse concept that requires a significant amount of rehabilitation to be used in an effective, precise way. The two concepts are indeed often intertwined. But I would want to argue that “innovation” is analogous to corporate personhood—and deserving of the same liberal ire.

OK, let me unpack this a bit. First, it appears as if organizations more often (are said to) seek innovation whereas individuals seek creativity. To wit: “innovation will lead us to the next big product.” Creativity seems to align better with masterpieces and experiments.

Innovation is “new;” creativity is “original.”

Both these statements drive me a bit bonkers (insofar as they are often unsubstantiated) , but can of course be meaningful and profound. But are these perhaps two sides of the same coin? Or should they be understood entirely differently?

Shouldn’t they be viewed analogously to persons and corporate persons —one aspirational, and the other antagonistic to the aspiration?

Yet at every turn both concepts will resist definition. Is innovation about technological change? Well, not exactly. Is creativity about imagination? Well, again, not exactly. An essay would have to focus on a broad-yet-common conceptualization of each term, and locate historical uses that exemplified their similarities and contrasts.

Could pitting them against each other be instrumental in expressing value for humanity over technology-fo-technologies-sake? Maybe!

It seems worth trying.

The Three R’s of Team-building

Posted on by Brian Hughes

I just want to throw out an admittedly gimmicky way of thinking about a big part of the work we do as EdLab managers: we spend a considerable amount of energy on recrutiing, retooling, and retaining. I’d like to call this “the three R’s of team-building.”

As part of the academic library at Teachers College, EdLab has a unique set of people, projects, and goals. Because our work is “in between” worlds – academia, libraries, technology, and media – our priorities are often in a state of flux.

By design, many of our staff appointments are short term (one semester or one year, for example). This allows us to work with different cohorts of students and professionals. It also means we are continually putting energy into building, shaping, and sustaining our teams.

Reflecting on this work causes me to consider a few questions:

  • What strategies are effective and efficient in each of the three areas? There is of course a lot of literature on this, so: What works well for us specifically? What are some new approaches we should consider? Can better communication make our work more effective or efficient?
  • What is the “cost” of investing in the 3 R’s? What specific outcomes do we seek? What are the indicators we look for to see if we need to change our approaches?

Will Educators Own the Future?

Posted on by Brian Hughes

Likely not.

I just finished reading Jaron Lanier’s ‘Who Owns the Future?‘—about a year after the rest of the world, it turns out—and I’m not optimistic.

It was an excellent read, especially due to Lanier’s broad experience with technologies and his interest in economics. He offers educators a lot to think about, such as:

Will teaching be a middle class job (at least) in the future?

Will humans even be paid to teach?

How will education be limited by software? And how will that software hide the contribution of humans?

These are some questions at the core of his ruminating, and the thesis of the book (that the world is generally headed in the wrong direction with respect to how networks are designed and used) opened up these questions in new ways for me.

I am afraid I am quite sympathetic to his worries. Unfortunately his bleak vision of the future isn’t well-balanced by his ideas for how to mitigate the present dangers of technology and create a better world for humans.

In general, I’d like to think I’m working on a solution just by working in the education sector. But Lanier gives me pause, and a lot to think about.

Flashcards for training

Posted on by Brian Hughes

Earlier this year we implemented a new staff-side training tool at the Gottesman Libraries: flashcards. That doesn’t sound progressive (it’s rote learning!), but we’re using a very cool tool developed by Teachers College alum Andrew Cohen: Brainscape.

Our library has a public knowledge base (FAQs), and a staff knowledge base that is more extensive, but with the variety of services we offer, it’s difficult to include nuances (even very important ones!) in these resources. So we use flashcards to extend and deepen staff knowledge of key services.

For example, the library hosts and supports the TC community blogging on Pressible, which is built on WordPress. There are a myriad of details that a library patron might want to know, especially if they are familiar with WordPress. Since our system includes many customizations, flashcards cover issues such as:

  • Q: “How do I get an image on my bio page?” A: Pressible uses Gravatar.com — a tool built and run by the company that supports WordPress. If someone has a Gravatar, Pressible will use it automatically.
  • Q: “Can anyone sign up as an author on Pressible?” A: No, only individuals with TC or CU emails can sign up. However, site administrators can manually add anyone (with any email) as an author using the “Add User” menu.
  • Q: “Why is there a big empty gray bar across the top of my site?” A: This is automatically filled with links to posts when authors use Categories (displayed as Topics).

Knowing the answers to these kinds of questions has helped staff better understand our tools (we’ve confirmed this via various anonymous surveys). Anything that makes staff more confident in correctly answering questions is very helpful—more responsive staff means a better (more accurate and speedier) experience for our learning community.

We’ve already developed dozens of flashcards on a variety of topics to date, and our experience with Brainscape has given us the confidence to continue to develop flashcards as key staff training tools.