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Writer's pictureEe Noch Ng

Rewiring Education - Spaces


One of the many assignments given to us was to read a book called Rewiring Education by John D. Couch, Apple Inc.'s First Vice President of Education.


Many of this thoughts and ideas resonated strongly with me and my view of what education needs to be if we want to prepare our children to be future-ready. I call it Redefining Education (following the SAMR model) while he calls it Rewiring Education. Whatever the term used, one thing's for certain, there is a urgent need to "think differently about how we motivate, train, develop, measure, and evaluate our children and the extraordinary people who teach them. And it means understanding and unlocking the unlimited potential for children to learn and succeed".


In this post, I would like to share my thoughts on one of the chapter in the book titled, "Spaces". In this chapter John D. Couch shared different types of learning spaces that our students need to ensure effective learning.

From my experience, the most effective schools and classrooms contain some form of all these spaces.

John D. Couch, found that most effective schools and classrooms contain some form of all these spaces. These spaces are the campfire (designed for one-to-many learning), the watering hole (designed for many-to-many learning), and the cave (designed for one-to-one learning). He also mentioned that all these spaces must co-exist either in the same building or even in the same classroom so that students can thrive in their learning.


As I read about these spaces, I was reminded of the Station Rotation Model by Dr. Catlin Tucker that many of my colleagues and I have been exploring and using a lot in our classrooms. When students move through the Offline, Online and Teacher-led Station, they are essentially moving from one learning space to the next.


Allow me to elaborate on how each station matches each of the learning spaces:

  • The Offline Station can be designed to be a watering hole where students can collaborate, learn from their peers and share their ideas and thoughts about the topic or concept they are learning.

  • The Online Station can be designed to be a cave where students can use technology to do research, studying, thinking, reflecting and so much more on their own.

  • Finally, the Teacher-led Station can be designed to be a campfire where the teacher can share stories, ideas and excite students in their learning!

What do you think? How can we design our learning spaces to allow students to thrive in their learning?


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