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General Knowledge

A Space for Every Child

We spend a lot of time learning about learning environments. After all, it’s part of our mission to team with educators and administrators alike to create spaces that are most conducive to learning. If you scan through our previous posts here, you’ll find quite a few dedicated to educational spaces and the designs, technology and even colors that best promote learning.

Different types of spaces promote different types of learning, from the traditional teacher-in-front classroom setting to smaller, more interactive arrangements, which is why we’re big fans of the agile classroom approach.

But we need to remember not only that different types of learning take place, but that every student is different as well. There is no one-size-fits all solution in educational spaces, simply because some students will thrive in a quiet setting that promotes concentration, while others will really blossom in more hands-on, interactive settings. Those fidgety kids who disrupt the traditional classroom setting might well turn out to be real leaders in a small group session.

The ideal environment supports not only different types of learning, but different types of learners, and the classroom that’s stuck in the traditional lecture-hall setting may prevent some students from reaching their full potential.

Questions about design for educational spaces? Contact a design expert at Douron.

Baby Got Backless…Seating

By now you’ve heard the phrase “sitting is the new smoking,” and you’ve probably seen more than a few people using stand-up desks in an effort to improve their posture and overall health. All of that is great, but the reality is that for many of us, standing up for a full workday isn’t practical. Long hours in a standing position can also lead to lower back pain and even leg or foot issues.

So is there a compromise between standing up and sitting like a lump in your office chair? There is, and it’s called backless seating. The name is self-explanatory, and the idea is to stop letting the back of your office chair do the work your core muscles are supposed to be doing. Perhaps you’ve seen one or more adventurous co-workers using an exercise ball as a chair … same idea here, but with a lower risk of falling off (exercise balls have fallen out of favor as seating options in any event as experts have determined that they may actually place additional pressure on the spine).

Probably the most common form factor for backless seating is the saddle stool. Picture the thing your doctor or dentist scoots around on sometimes and you’ll get the idea. Most have wheels, some don’t, and many will adjust from a standard desk height to more of a barstool elevation.

There are a number of benefits: the saddle shape of the seat is designed to encourage a forward tilt in your pelvis, which in turn maintains the natural lumbar curve of the spine. The inability to lean back keeps your core engaged, and the wheels on most stools keep you from slouching forward, because if you lean too far you’ll suddenly find you don’t have a stool beneath you anymore.

Like stand-up desks, you’ll probably find you don’t want to go backless for eight hours at a time, especially right off the bat. Your muscles will need time to adjust, and you may find spending a full day on a backless seat uncomfortable.

In any event, the ideal solution is a combination of positions: sitting, standing and perhaps most importantly, moving around the office on a regular basis, all have a place in your workday and should be used in combination. For the sitting portions of your day, though, consider going backless.

The Colors of Learning

There’s little question that the colors used in a learning environment can have a significant impact on the students … many studies over the years have confirmed the important role colors can play in learning.

The question, though, is which colors are most appropriate for a classroom and most conducive to learning? And how should those colors be used: in furniture, wall colors or other accents?

The answers vary depending upon both the students and the goals, and sometimes practical considerations as well (for example, lighter colors may be more calming, but any parent can tell you that lighter-colored furniture might not be the best choice in a room full of children).

The broad-brush consensus is that large amounts of bright colors, especially reds and oranges, are best avoided, as they can lead to overstimulation and anxiousness. The calmness and comfort engendered by cooler colors like greens and blue will offer better results in most cases, as will neutral off-whites.

Most rules have exceptions, though, and there’s a big one here: younger children tend to thrive in brightly-colored environments. Babies are born without the ability to see color, and seeing bright hues helps them learn to distinguish one color from another. Brighter colors also help to hold their attention as they age through the preschool years.

And of course the answer for your given situation depends on the physical space. A traditional main classroom area might feature neutral and calming colors, while areas designated for free play or other hands-on activities will benefit from more dramatic choices. And in a more modern setting like an agile classroom (see a previous post about agile classrooms here), fixtures and furniture can be swapped in and out with color schemes to support any given activity.

If you’re considering a redesign of an educational space, contact Douron today to schedule a tour of our showroom for ideas!

Douron’s 50th Anniversary

In 1969, Eugene and Shirley Hux started a dealership specializing in educational furniture for K-12 classrooms in the basement of their home. Struggling to name the new company, they decided to blend the first names of their two sons into a one-word brand for the firm. Taking the DOU from Doug and the RON from Ron, the DOURON name was created.

No one could have known that those humble first steps would create a regional powerhouse in the educational furniture market. A half century later, Douron is not only a leader in the field of education, but in interior environments across many disciplines including public libraries, federal and local government facilities and corporate spaces.

Douron is now one of the largest family-owned and operated furniture dealerships in the Mid-Atlantic, continuing a half-century of growth from its beginnings in a basement to its current status as a regional industry leader in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. (DMV)

From Eugene and Shirley’s original idea in 1969 to their son Ron Hux assuming leadership of the company in 1984, from a basement to our current 100,000 square-foot headquarters and showroom in Owings Mills, MD, Douron has seen many changes in design trends, and to this day we stay ahead of the curve in the always-changing field of commercial interiors.

But Douron remains a regional industry leader not only because of our ability to change with the times, but because of the things that haven’t changed: the concept of a business built on honesty and integrity, and with a corporate culture of respect for its employees, many of whom have been with us for decades.

New products and design trends have come and gone, but these basic principles have remained a constant guiding principle in the way we work with both our clients and our employees.

The Douron Way—Honesty and Integrity.

Moving Target: Technology in the Classroom

One of the great challenges in modern learning space design is accommodating the shifts in technology that have come to the classroom. The pace of change is so rapid that we really have to plan for the unknown.

Perhaps the biggest question in deploying technology in the classroom is not the “what” but the “how.” Often, new devices are employed to support the same teaching methods from decades past. In a book we’ve referenced in previous posts, From the Campfire to the Holodeck: Creating Engaging and Powerful 21st Century Learning Environments, author David Thornburg notes that interactive whiteboards have become all the rage of late. These are wonderful and versatile tools, but when they’re used just as blackboards were – to support a teacher standing in front of a class and lecturing (the ‘campfire’) – the potential of all that new technology is diluted at best.

Thornburg also notes that many schools continue to ban classroom smartphone use by students for fear that the devices will be used to Google test answers or otherwise take shortcuts. The solution is to craft tests with answers that require independent thought and can’t be answered by an internet search, but in fairness that approach creates a much bigger demand on an educator’s already limited time, both in the creation and the grading of open-ended challenges. It’s much quicker to review multiple-choice answers than to assess the effort in independent research.

So when we don’t know what new technology the coming years will bring, and when different schools use the same technology in very different ways, where does that leave classroom design? What are the design elements that allow us to plan for the unknown?

In a word, flexibility. The same approach that allows a classroom to support different models of learning – and to quickly adapt from one to another – also supports ever-changing technology. The ideal modern learning space is a design chameleon, changing quickly to accommodate the teacher at the whiteboard, the students circled up with their smartphones to research a new assignment as a group … and whatever comes next year, and the year after that.

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