Stephen Heppell: 21st Century Learning and its Environments

I'll put up my observations from my day with Stephen Heppell progressively, because they are in note form at the moment. First up are Stephen Heppell's top practical tips for enabling learning in today's environment

Think about how you celebrate learning, so that learning is on display. Create a sense of a place of learning:

• Label the trees with their names – more like a campus
• Get the children’s work on display – on screens, on screens leading up to the school, some schools take out billboards in the local town.
• Run a school radio station 

 Listen to the voice of the learners.

• Ask students how they learn better - they often have a very good idea.
• 21st century learning is ‘fuzzier at the edges’. “All the edges are a little softer”
• Harnessing kids’ capability to teach staff
• How can we work with others in the global community and hear their voices? simple eg - video screens up in the playground streaming live video to and from a sister school in Japan.

Make the learning space more playful, more personalised.

• Important to think about the physical environment - makes learning more memorable. Colour is great, in secondary or primary. 
• Don't stick stuff to glass. Look on the walls - not just in the classroom - and make sure they aren't covered in lists of things you can't do. 
• Get rid of projectors. For the same price you can have multiple flat screens that can be placed around a learning space, and have the option to give kids control over what they see. 

Display the process of learning in a way that invites you in. 

• Show the learning as it is happening, and invited feedback. 
• Display drafts.

Think about the exterior learning spaces too.

• How can the bus turning area be used pedagogically?
• Label the trees
• put screens around outside
• Use video capture outside – places where you can easily capture – still camera that captures you as you go past. Great for sport.