Day 1: Opening Plenary

Immediate Past Director and Current Principal Investigator at

Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education

What does it look like to create places that are designed for learning? How we design spaces for learning reflects our conception of what learning is. We can see that in many old-school designs, featuring lecture halls and rows of seats, that were created during times in which good learning was thought to be a process of efficiently transmitting information into the individual minds of students. However, the past decades of research have revealed that learning is much more. It is emergent, social and visible. Moreover, learning is not something that happens just inside the walls of the school. What does it look like to design places that reflect contemporary conceptions of learning?  This talk will engage participants in considering the qualities of spaces and places that support how we learn.