Room: D135-136

Audience: Architects, Designers and Educators

Call to Action: 

1. Observe the natural behaviours of children in age groups you’re designing for, and consider how it can be incorporated in the design of physical and non-physical structures.
2. Use the creative technique learned in the session to complement your current methods for creating physical and non-physical structures in your work.
3. Familiarise yourself with the 5 nuclear learning skills and bring them to mind when designing learning environments.

Abstract: Our aim is the Success of Education. A successful product or service delivers the intended outcome in a way that makes the end-user eager to engage with it again and again. By this rationale, our education is far from being a successful product or service. I invite you to join me in creating an integrated educational structure that leaves the current model as relevant as the phones of the 1980’s are today☎️. This fun, powerful, interactive session will take you beyond “outside the box” thinking. Come prepared to imagine if… Step into a world where education has matured into what it is truly meant to be. You may find yourself with your five-, ten- or fifteen-year-old self: pretending to be a tiger, baking cookies, or gossiping in the corner. You may find yourself laughing as you crawl around on the floor, and serious as you feel the importance of what is being created. Come curious to explore and experience something new. What if we could start from scratch? Why join? This session could be the birthplace of educational structures that become THE way for the future. Do we want to move forward with merely a somewhat better version of what already exists? Dressing up an outdated mannequin?

What if, instead, we create learning environments that children are begging to go to? What if, given a choice between school and Disneyland, children of tomorrow choose the stimulating learning environments we create? Drawing on the work of Peter Senge, Robert Fritz, and other great minds of today, you will be guided in a creative process that will have you itching to get back to your desk and put your ideas to work. You will learn the five nuclear skills that underpin all learning, and how you can stack the physical and non-physical environments to facilitate their development. You will see how the creative use of structures can support every student’s natural growth and development, directing their learning along the path of least resistance to the desired outcomes. You will experience how structure guides function and behaviour, and how the use of the principle: “make it obvious, make it easy” develops structures that guide students along routes that serve their highest good. “A great teacher doesn’t teach, but highlights the learning already taking place, sending the student on a path of discovery that deepens their understanding of what they stumbled upon.” B. Fuller. I look forward to seeing you in Oregon in October, with the intention of sharing great learning and creating outcomes that serve ours and future generations.

Learning Objectives:

1. Deeper understanding of how structures (physical and non-physical) influence behaviour.
2. Understand the key stages of development and how structures (physical and non-physical) can foster the natural developmental sequence.
3. Envision learning environments that lead students through the natural developmental sequence from child to adulthood with ease, and incorporate desired learning outcomes into activities that students at each stage naturally engage in.
4. Learn and implement a proven creative technique to go beyond the mind, beyond “outside the box” thinking, to where “the box” no longer exists and where genius solutions arise.