It's a busy morning here, so I can't write a long post. Just some links:
Blast From the Past: The Purpose of Work
Getting rid of old technology is a big problem. We've got a garage of old computers that need to be properly recycled, but it involves going to the local community college on a particular day and we're just not that organized. Yet.
Media in New Jersey is a HUGE mess. I'm glad that Jarvis is dealing with it. (Thanks, Jeremy S.)
Several people have pointed me to this article on the HUGE mess in this school, which has mishandled large class size.
I see that I've made a HUGE mess themed post. Actually, this is the theme for my life this week. Reforms need to be made!
Apt. 11d 
The headline about the school experiment is “60 First Graders, 4 Teachers, One Loud New Way to Learn”
That headline reminds me of that old line about the advantages of Alzheimers–you get to meet new people every day. Education reporters are like that. They rarely have much of a sense of the history of the institutions that they are dealing with, so they don’t know what’s new and what isn’t. The open classroom in the US dates back to at least the 1970s. For a while it was in vogue, but the inconvenience and the noise eventually led to the return of conventional walls in most places.
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2302/Open-Classroom-Schools.html
I was in a recently-built elementary school in the early 1980s and our school was built with folding partitions rather than solid walls. As I recall, the teachers did occasionally join classrooms by opening up the partitions, but it was only for special occasions.
I’ve heard that these large, noisy classrooms can be very hard on children with attention or sensory issues.
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“The open classroom in the US dates back to at least the 1970s. For a while it was in vogue, but the inconvenience and the noise eventually led to the return of conventional walls in most places.”
I was in a program like this from 1974 to 1977 (4th-6th grades). Loved. It. We basically had two “rooms–about 5 classrooms, 3 combined into one, and 2 sort of combined–I feel like there was more of a barrier there. I was in the room with 3 rooms (with the inner walls knocked down) for 2 years, same teacher. It was called the Learning Center.
It might have been selection bias, but of those classmates, 6 of us were in the top 12 in our high school graduating class.
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“we’re just not that organized. Yet.”
Yes, I have that fantasy, too, that sometime in the future I will be that just organized.
Apple offers to recycle a computer when you by a new computer. But, I’m not organized enough to have taken advantage of that, either.
I disliked open classrooms quite a bit as a kid. I think there might be a certain kind of extrovert who thrives in that environment, though (the same kind who love Disneyland, I think).
From teachers, I hear that in addition to the issues of noise, there are issues of heating/air management. This is especially true in 70’s open plan classrooms that have now been subdivided because they weren’t working well.
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