A4LE Conference a Success

Yesterday's sessions at the North Carolina A4LE were very informative and interesting.  The keynote speaker, futurist, David Houle, was especially thought provoking.  You can see some of his predictions here: HERE  and you can read his thoughts on education HERE.

We also enjoyed the presentation by Ratio Architects with Sheri Green & Larry Sherrill from WCPSS about consensus building through interactive workshops.  They had some great ideas about how to get feedback from a diverse group of stakeholders in a short amount of time.

While the average cost for all schools in the US is $250 per square foot, costs in North Carolina remain lower at $188. In his State of the State presentation, Dr. Ken Phelps, PhD, Architect/School Planning expressed concern that more data may be needed to get a good picture of school costs in NC and urged school districts and architects to report accurate school costs to NCDPI.

The day ended with an exciting presentation called Educational Commissioning: Realizing Design Intent in Instructional Practice focused on a Sarasota Case Study of the complete transformation of the Middle School learning environment and pedagogy and the importance of one person in spearheading change.  In this case Dr. Page Dettman was instrumental in changing the focus for middle school education so that students are  engaged and energized in a way rarely seen in schools today. See HERE for the Sarasota Tech Active Classroom of tomorrow.