The redevelopment of this space was made possible through a generous donation from the Amherst Schools Educational Foundation.
Creative Learning Spaces provide an active learning environment for twenty-first century learning. Twenty-first century learning means that students master content while producing, synthesizing, and evaluating information from a wide variety of subjects and sources. Students demonstrate the three Rs but also learn the four Cs: creativity, communication, critical thinking, and collaboration, thus creating learners who take intellectual risks, fostering learning dispositions, and nurturing school communities where everyone is a learner. In this setting, educators can leverage technology to create an engaging and personalized environment to meet the emerging educational needs of this generation. No longer does learning have to be one-size-fits-all or confined to the classroom. The opportunities afforded by this Creative Learning Center will be used to rethink twenty-first century education, focusing on preparing students to be learners for life.
Steele Language Arts teacher, Laura Brogan, and Steele senior, Carys Trubach, join Superintendent Sayers on the first Comet Conversation of the year to discuss the ways in which the ASEF Creative Learning Center has already transformed learning at the high school!
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The Grand Opening of the Amherst Schools Educational Foundation Creative Learning Center was a huge success! Read more about the event and how you can receive more information about the Creative Learning Center.
Informal gathering spaces for small group discussions or comfortable individual seating with access to power for charging.
Another area for small group discussions with power under the seats and visual dividers for semi-privacy.
This space features high top counter tables with areas at each end to charge mobile devices.
Teachers and students will be able to press one button and follow on -screen instructions to record a presentation and have it encode and saved to a USB storage device.
This space features moveable and configurable furniture with portable white board surfaces. This space can be used any number of ways as a group space or for individuals working on a virtual online class. This is also an area where a student can check out or reserve a book for the Amherst Marion L. Steele Overdrive collection of eBooks.This area will have a cart of Macbook Air computers to be signed out for use.
The four semi-private Brody Seating study spaces can be used for makeup testing or when there is a need to eliminate visual distractions.
This space features a mediascape table and flat panel display. This space is made for students and teachers to plug into the mediascape table and visualize whatever media is on their MacBook, laptop or ChromeBook.
Collaboration Spaces are four rooms that hold eight student each. These rooms are equipped with flat panel displays, and an Apple TV. A cart of iPads will be available for students to collaborate and share their ideas on the display. These rooms allow a teacher to divide their class into four collaborative study groups working independently to create problem-based learning projects and solutions in a small group environment.
This space will have three flat panel presentation displays and full audio system to support large groups presentations of 150-200 or a smaller professional development settings. The tables and chairs will be mobile to provide any configuration a group desires with plenty of audio and video options.
Active Learning Classroom is a place for teachers to use the moveable furniture and embedded technology to configure their class for a full blended-learning and project-based experience.
The space is easy to set up learning stations for student to cycle through. This space has a cart of iPads available for use.
This is an overall view of the Creative Learning Center.