Deb Norton Tech

Inspiration for Redesigning Your Learning Space As I have mentioned many times, I love listening to podcasts when I'm commuting.  Recently I listened to this podcast from The Cool Cat Teacher - "Do Students Learn Better in Chairs or Couches?"  In this podcast, the guest, Oskar Cymerman, talks about how he plans to Starbucks his classroom. Oskar is a  Chemistry and Principles of Engineering Teacher at Woodbury High School in the Twin Cities Metro Area, MN. After listening to the podcast, I went to Oskar's website, focus2achieve.com  and read his blogpost about redesigning his learning space. In the blog post, Oskar mentions checking out the hashtag #StarbucksMyRoom on Twitter. So I went to check it out. Ready. Set. Go School starts tomorrow. Excited! #classdesign #StarbucksMyRoom pic.twitter.com/EcJmHR1hZD — Alison Hannon (@AlisonHannon) August 14, 2016 Love flexible seating! #Kidsdeserveit #flexibleseating #StarbucksMyRoom pic.twitt...

Active Learning Spaces I heard an advertisement for back to school the other day. It suggested that no one is every ready to go back to school because summer is just too short. The message was that even though it's tough to go back to school, you can do it in style. The advertisement then went on to promote a clothing line.  "My goodness", I thought, "Gone are the days when going back to school was a positive and exciting time."  I used to get so excited about going back to school when I was younger. I looked forward to buying school supplies, to seeing my friends, to new learning opportunities and to new experiences.  But, today's students may not feel that same anticipation that I did. I know my own two high school boys don't.  Perhaps we can bring back some of the enjoyment and fun by thinking about designing our classrooms to look different from the traditional classroom and provide our students with an active learning space that fits th...