Author Archive for emily

“How Will my Education Serve the World Positively?”

That’s what one of the high school students in one of Designer Trung Le’s summer workshops answered when asked to give some ideas on how to best facilitate learning.  I’d like to meet that student!

I first became familiar with Trung Le and his collagues at Cannon Design when they were selected as the design group for my daughters’ school’s campus unification project.  They are examining how design and education can be married to best facilitate learning at all ages.  He spoke earlier this month at the TEDxRESET conference in Istanbul.  It’s a fantastic way of looking at how we educate our children and how they actually learn, and how the environment they learn in plays an integral role in that.

He is also one of the authors of The Third Teacher.

From Amazon.com:

Created by an international team of architects and designers concerned about our failing education system, The Third Teacher explores the critical link between the school environment and how children learn, and offers 79 practical design ideas, both great and small, to guide reader’s efforts to improve our schools. Written for anyone who has school-age children in their life, from educators and education decision-makers to parents and community activists, this book is intended to ignite a blaze of discussion and initiative about environment as an essential element of learning. Including a wealth of interviews, facts, statistics, and stories from experts in a wide range of fields, this book is a how-to guide to be used to connect with the many organizations, individuals, and ideas dedicated to innovating and improving teaching and learning. Contributors include children’s singer and advocate Raffi, author and creativity consultant Sir Ken Robinson, scientist and environmentalist David Suzuki, inventor James Dyson, and other experts who are working to create fresh solutions to problems and create a new blueprint for the future of education.

From the group’s facebook page:

The Third Teacher Group is an inclusive network within the “ideas based practice” of Cannon Design that believes the “quantum entanglement” of design and learning transforms the ossified education system. The core group consists of Trung Le (moderator), Stephen Johnson, Sarah Malin, Christian Long and Peter Hourihan at Cannon Design as well as ad hoc global thought leaders and design thinkers representing a range of disciplines including Bruce Mau, Dr. Stephanie Pace Marshall, Jeff Leitner and their networks. The team engages and collaborates with learning/teaching communities to formulate systemic strategies for pedagogical, curricular, and environmental change, which are then manifested and solidified in the physical environment – “the third teacher.”

Our name is based on Loris Malaguzzi’s Reggio Emilia approach to education, which states that children learn through interactions. First are interactions with the adults in their lives, then with their peers, and ultimately the environment – which he called the third teacher. By redesigning a child’s learning environment, we change her reality and thus open the doors to new possibilities.