10 Tips for Creating a 21st Century Classroom Experience

Can design help children learn? That’s the cover story of in the February Metropolis Magazine lent to me last week by parent-trustee  Stan Lichens.  It’s worth a look.

And the magazine also includes design firm IDEO’s 10 Tips for Creating a 21st Century Classroom Experience. It’s a quick must-read.

This is thinking to guide designers and architects when it comes to the schools we need. The headlines:

1. Pull, don’t push.

2. Create from relevance.

3. Stop calling them “soft” skills.

4. Allow for variation.

5. No more sage onstage.

6. Teachers are designers.

7. Build a learning community.

8. Be an anthropologist, not an archaeologist.

9. Incubate the future.

10. Change the discourse.

To my mind IDEO has got it right. This is very much aligned with sound educational thinking. Now – what does it actually look like?  Deb Vrabel at Artful Innovation has already commented.

Any other opinions out there?