Landscapes as an Educational Medium


Book Description

In the American elementary school environment, the school yard, playground, and overall master plan of the facilities are a major part of each child's personal and educational experiences. Just as the interior environments are designed to be conducive to the educational arena, the exterior environments of these schools should also be designed to provide the same educational experiences. Although these elementary school landscapes should reflect the educational needs of the children, many schools' exterior spaces are not addressing what the quality of school landscape should address. The current state of design in the outdoor environments of public elementary schools does not focus on learning, but rather focuses on meeting codes and budget. Landscapes of public elementary schools should be designed to meet the demands and needs of all stakeholders with the primary focus of design remaining on the schoolchildren and their education and experience of the designed site.




Landscape Model of Learning


Book Description

Help students take the lead on reaching their own personal highest level of success by shifting from the current paradigm of education to create a more meaningful and inclusive learning ecosystem. This essential guide offers the landscape model and its three elements: understanding what students bring to the ecosystem, defining the horizon, and charting the pathway. Access practical strategies for drawing on students’ experiences and strengths to create a more meaningful and inclusive educational ecosystem. Educators committed to lifelong learning, diversity, equity, and inclusion will: Retire the inadequate goal of access and move education toward the higher and more urgent, equitable goal of helping every student reach their highest possible level of individual success Embrace the concept of inclusive prosperity, which goes beyond diversity to accepting and supporting all students—their experiences, gifts, and challenges—to build communities where all students belong Receive practical, research-based strategies for developing agency and engagement so that students become the protagonists of their journey through the learning ecosystem Design systems for student protagonism by implementing student-centered strategies for cognitive and cultural inclusion Obtain reproducible tools to deepen understanding and implementation of the material Learn how to successfully implement the model despite common hurdles and potential challenges, such as traditional academic contexts and economically disenfranchised schools Contents: Introduction Part 1: Understanding the Landscape Model Chapter 1: The Landscape Model’s Three Elements Chapter 2: Eight Guiding Principles Part 2: Implementing the Landscape Model Chapter 3: Element One: The Ecosystem Chapter 4: Element Two: The Horizon Chapter 5: Element Three: The Pathway Part 3: Leading the Landscape Model Chapter 6: Student Growth Assessment on the Landscape Chapter 7: Challenges of Implementation Chapter 8: Landscape Model Implementation for Long-Term Success Chapter 9: Opportunities for the Future Epilogue: Why This Work Matters Appendix References and Resources Index




The New Landscape of Mobile Learning


Book Description

The New Landscape of Mobile Learning is the first book to provide a research based overview of the largely untapped array of potential tools that m-Learning offers educators and students in face-to-face, hybrid, and distance education. This cutting edge guide provides: • An essential explanation of the emergence and role of Apps in education • Design guidelines for educational Apps • Case studies and student narratives from across the US describing successful App integration into both K-12 and Higher Education • Robust, research-based evaluation criteria for educational Apps Although many believe that Apps have the potential to create opportunities for transformative mobile education, a disparity currently exists between the individuals responsible for creating Apps (i.e. developers who often have little to no instructional experience) and the ultimate consumers in the classroom (i.e. K-20 educators and students). The New Landscape of Mobile Learning bridges this gap by illuminating critical design, integration, and evaluation narratives from leaders in the instructional design, distance education, and mobile learning fields.




Landscapes and Learning


Book Description

"Places are made after their stories. Just as place names describe complex, and conflicted, place-making aspirations, so with all marks associated with the marking of places: tracks, the symbolic representation of these in song, dance and poetic speech, indeed all the technologies that join up distances into narratives--they all inscribe the earth's surface with the forms of stories. Of course, these are not the same as the foundational myths of imperial cultures, whose aim is to displace any prior discourse of place-making. They are stories of, and as, journeys: passages in a double sense, constitutionally incomplete because they always await their completion in the act of crossing-over, or meeting, which, of course, is endless." Paul Carter 'Landscapes and Learning' maps some of these stories and passageways to open up new place making possibilities. The book uses the lens of place to explore how we can respond differently to some of the major questions of our time. Postcolonial global concerns such as increased displacement and migration, the loss of indigenous knowledges, and the imperatives of environmental degradation and climate change, require critical educational responses. Place studies provides new languages and fresh metaphors to open up interdisciplinary conversations in the space between local and global, and indigenous and non-indigenous knowledges. Through its focus on the mutual constitution of bodies, identities, histories, spaces and places, place studies offers a conceptual tool for important cultural and environmental transformations.




Landscapes for Learning


Book Description

A growing legion of landscape architects is exploring and exploiting the ability to create outdoor environments that optimize the learning experience and mirror the ideas, values, attitudes, and cultures of those who inhabit them. In Landscapes for Learning, Dr. Sharon Stine presents 11 case studies of the very best of these design projects from around the world. Her findings describe not only design concepts and end results - rich outdoor learning environments - but, more importantly, the processes that led to the creation of these environments. She examines the roles of designers, teachers, and the children themselves, and how their interaction affects the planning, building, and use of the space.




Changing Educational Landscapes


Book Description

Analyzing educational landscapes – the fundamental values, principles and institutions of the sector – is a highly complex and demanding task for any researcher. Like shifting desert sands, these aspects of education are in a constant state of flux, changing according to the unpredictable economic, social, cultural and geo-political circumstances of late modernity. Key aspects of the intricate, fluid and multifarious contemporary setting can always escape the researcher’s necessarily selective observation. The contributors to this book share the view that it is wise, therefore, to take note of other people’s ideas, perceptions and perspectives, to compare notes and reflect critically on them. Thus the papers presented here are a critical and comparative analysis of today’s changing educational landscapes. They are an exploration of some of the forces and factors that induce these changes, and also examine some of their most significant implications. The work takes a fresh look at received ideology and institutional practices and delineates the increasingly internationalized educational discourses and policies. Among other things, the book discusses the obsession with quality in education and the alternative perceptions of educational equality; the rising concern at the obstacles to truly multicultural education, and the debate about the epistemological foundations both of knowledge and knowledge production. Underlying all of the papers in the book is the authors’ intention to enhance our understanding of educational change in this era of transition and to further our appreciation of its multifaceted expressions across the world.




Learning in Landscapes of Practice


Book Description

If the body of knowledge of a profession is a living landscape of practice, then our personal experience of learning can be thought of as a journey through this landscape. Within Learning in Landscapes of Practice, this metaphor is further developed in order to start an important conversation about the nature of practice knowledge, identity and the experience of practitioners and their learning. In doing so, this book is a pioneering and timely exploration of the future of professional development and higher education. The book combines a strong theoretical perspective grounded in social learning theories with stories from a broad range of contributors who occupy different locations in their own landscapes of practice. These narratives locate the book within different contemporary concerns such as social media, multi-agency, multi-disciplinary and multi-national partnerships, and the integration of academic study and workplace practice. Both scholarly, in the sense that it builds on prior research to extend and locate the concept of landscapes of practice, and practical because of the way in which it draws on multiple voices from different landscapes. Learning in Landscapes of Practice will be of particular relevance to people concerned with the design of professional or vocational learning. It will also be a valuable resource for students engaged in higher education courses with work-based elements.




Landscape Painting


Book Description

Because nature is so expansive and complex, so varied in its range of light, landscape painters often have to look further and more deeply to find form and structure, value patterns, and an organized arrangement of shapes. In Landscape Painting, Mitchell Albala shares his concepts and practices for translating nature's grandeur, complexity, and color dynamics into convincing representations of space and light. Concise, practical, and inspirational, Landscape Painting focuses on the greatest challenges for the landscape artist, such as: • Simplification and Massing: Learn to reduce nature's complexity by looking beneath the surface of a subject to discover the form's basic masses and shapes.• Color and Light: Explore color theory as it specifically applies to the landscape, and learn the various strategies painters use to capture the illusion of natural light.• Selection and Composition: Learn to select wisely from nature's vast panorama. Albala shows you the essential cues to look for and how to find the most promising subject from a world of possibilities. The lessons in Landscape Painting—based on observation rather than imitation and applicable to both plein air and studio practice—are accompanied by painting examples, demonstrations, photographs, and diagrams. Illustrations draw from the work of more than 40 contemporary artists and such masters of landscape painting as John Constable, Sanford Gifford, and Claude Monet. Based on Albala's 25 years of experience and the proven methods taught at his successful plein air workshops, this in-depth guide to all aspects of landscape painting is a must-have for anyone getting started in the genre, as well as more experienced practitioners who want to hone their skills or learn new perspectives.




Illustrated History of Landscape Design


Book Description

A visual journey through the history of landscape design For thousands of years, people have altered the meaning of space by reshaping nature. As an art form, these architectural landscape creations are stamped with societal imprints unique to their environment and place in time. Illustrated History of Landscape Design takes an optical sweep of the iconic landscapes constructed throughout the ages. Organized by century and geographic region, this highly visual reference uses hundreds of masterful pen-and-ink drawings to show how historical context and cultural connections can illuminate today's design possibilities. This guide includes: Storyboards, case studies, and visual narratives to portray spaces Plan, section, and elevation drawings of key spaces Summaries of design concepts, principles, and vocabularies Historic and contemporary works of art that illuminate a specific era Descriptions of how the landscape has been shaped over time in response to human need Directing both students and practitioners along a visually stimulating timeline, Illustrated History of Landscape Design is a valuable educational tool as well as an endless source ofinspiration.




Our Landscapes


Book Description