kathleen.johnston

Over the past few months we have been trying to revamp our old ICT suite – to create a learning environment for our children which encourages motivation, innovation and a freedom to learn. We rearranged the room, created storage space for resources and created focus points around the room. I had this vision that children would walk freely to and from their classrooms, using the room to enhance their learning experience. I hoped that children would make use of the room during intervals, to research personal topics, or just to try some of the fun activities. But the children didn’t come.  It puzzled me and bothered me that the room was not being used to any great extent. Children dabbled in the room, but usually only to carry out tasks on the computer, or practical maths work. There was no real evidence of children using the room because they wanted to, or because they felt motivated by the activities. Over the past few weeks I have watched the children come and go and suddenly I realised what the problem is – the jump from set task work to freedom to learn has been too great. We have expected the children to change the way they learn overnight. If the room is to be a success, we have to let the children dip their toes in the water of independent learning and then encourage them to go for it! I have been talking this over with my colleagues and Maggie – P5/6, suggested starting off with a couple of lunchtime clubs to give the children some free time in the room. Maggie is going to take a research club and I am going to take a media club. Our news team for our Eco Committee already make use of the room to carry out their publicity tasks. At the moment they are working on a newsletter, a new members’ leaflet and updating the blog – www.brilliantbeginnings.blogspot.com. I also need to work with the staff to encourage the children to use the room more often. P6/7 are going to take responsibility for setting weekly problems for the rest of the school to tackle. I have also just introduced our new ‘media centre’ to each of the classes and the kids have had great fun making little movie clips. Finally, we have settled on a new name for the room – it was the ICT Room. We had a whole school vote and from a choice of four – ‘The Learning Lab’, ‘Discovery Kids’, ‘The Studio’ (teachers’ favourite) and ‘The Fab Lab’, the children voted overwhelmingly for ‘The Fab Lab’. Here’s hoping!