Futurelab - Showcase - Other projects - Classrooms of the Future

Bedfordshire County Council and the Science Museum in London have been working together to reinvent learning environments. The results are three pioneering classrooms and a series of innovative outdoor interactives that are set to challenge how children learn and play at school.

As part of the DfES Classrooms of the Future scheme, a unique partnership was formed between Bedfordshire County Council and the Science Museum in London to reinvent the learning environments in three Bedfordshire Schools. At the heart of this project was the desire to challenge the traditional relationships between indoor and outdoor learning environments and the perceived barriers between play and lesson time.

Working closely with the children and teachers at each of the schools, the Science Museum developed a series of electronic outdoor interactives, each of which was designed to encourage learning and interaction through play. These are complemented by brand new classrooms, designed by Sergison Bates architects, featuring state of the art IT and audio-visual infrastructure, as well as innovative spatial, lighting and acoustic properties designed to maximise their potential as educational spaces.

The interactives, which include the world's first outdoor MP3 jukebox and a solar-powered speed reaction game, are powered by renewable energy sources and were designed to cater for the specific needs of the different age groups at each of the schools, improving the children's break times.

Traditionally the time that children spend outdoors during break times has been largely ignored by educationalists, but the Science Museum wanted to create a vision of a classroom of the future in which learning was no longer seen as ending the moment the bell rings. The outdoor environments that they have created with the interactives achieve this by using play and interaction to improve essential basic skills such as problem solving, communication and physical dexterity.

Keith Greaves, the Science Museum's Development Manager: "The Museum is a key player in the field of informal learning and we're bringing decades of experience to influence learning outside the Museum walls."

"We wanted to use interactives outdoors to challenge the traditional concept of classroom learning. Children are constantly exploring and learning about their physical and social environments and we wanted to tap into this by improving their break times."

"These developments are absolutely state of the art, none of us had outdoor MP3 jukeboxes when we were at school. But what's really special about this project is how we've managed to get input from all stakeholders at all stages of the process which has guaranteed such an excellent result."

The interactives had to meet the individual needs of each school and appeal to a wide range of kids. They also had to be challenging and interesting enough to keep them coming back and this required an extensive developmental process lasting several years. At every stage the Museum worked closely with the children and staff at each of the schools, conducting focus groups and testing prototypes to find out how the schools used their playgrounds and what they would like to be able to do in their break times.

After early research, evaluation and brainstorming with the schools and experts in the field of outdoor learning and interaction, nine prototypes were developed. These were installed in the playgrounds of the schools themselves to see how the children would interact with them. The results of this evaluation informed the development of the permanent interactives, which were opened at the schools in June 2003. The Bedfordshire Classrooms of the Future project was carried out by a team from Science Museum Solutions, the enterprise arm of the Science Museum, which supports the activities and skills of NMSI family. This family of museums includes the Science Museum in London, the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford and the National Railway Museum in York.

For further information on this or any other Science Museum Solutions project please contact Keith Greaves on k.greaves@nmsi.ac.uk or 0207 942 4856.


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