Crowdsource My Basement Design

Okay, so this is kind of a silly post that I actually don't believe will generate anything, but I thought it might be fun anyway. We're about to finish our basement and I am not a very visual person, so trying to picture what it might look like is difficult for me. I'm sure we'll get lots of help with that from the contractor and most likely will go with one of the designs they come up with, but I thought it might be fun to see if I could tap into the wisdom of my small crowd.

We currently have a "full," unfinished walkout basement with a wood floor (with some crawl space underneath). We've just finished replacing the furnace, air conditioner and water heater figuring it made more sense to do that before finishing the basement instead of having to go in after. There are two windows and a sliding glass door that lead the backyard. When we adopted Abby we put down the cheapest linoleum we could find in one part of the basement to have a play/craft area for her, and the rest of the basement has just been used for storage.

As you'll see from the pictures, we do have a fair amount of "stuff" down there, but most of it will be gone before finishing the basement. We have lots of empty boxes that we've used as a "wall" to keep the dog out of the storage area, and those will mostly get recycled. We have a whole bunch of boxes of old school stuff, most of which we'll go through and probably get rid of because our philosophies have changed. What will still need to be stored are various holiday decorations, suitcases, and camping stuff (and a few miscellaneous other things).

There are a few things we have planned for the basement area. First and foremost is a bedroom/bathroom combination. This is initially designed for Abby (soon to be twelve) to have a larger space than her currently fairly small bedroom. But it will also be designed for the possibility of one or more of our aging parents to move in with us. Consequently it will need to be designed in an accessible manner, including wider doors and a walk-in shower (no tub). We'd also like it to have a walk-in closet for Abby and/or the parents. It should be large enough to fit a queen bed, a desk, and probably a couple of dressers.

The bathroom should have a sink (probably single), a toilet and that aforementioned walk-in shower, and perhaps a small linen closet. While it will function as a "master" bath for that bedroom, we also want it to be the bathroom for the basement, so therefore we envision it having two entrances, one from the bedroom and one from the rest of the basement.

We also have ideas for the rest of the basement, but they are a bit more flexible. Right now we're thinking a video area (couch and chairs, decently large screen), a mini-kitchen (sink, microwave and cabinets, perhaps with some kind of counter with seating), an area that could be a ping-pong table or a kitchen table if our parents moved in, and perhaps a workout area (big enough for perhaps two machines - treadmill and elliptical, for example). We'd also like to build some limited storage closets in wherever we can.

Here are some pictures (please ignore the junk, it's messier than usual as we just shoved stuff every which way as they were putting in the new furnace, water heater and ductwork) to try to give you an idea of what it looks like right now.

I used both graph paper and the free Autodesk Homestyler to get a rough layout of the basement. Here's the graph paper version:

And here's the Homestyler version:



These are reasonably accurate in terms of measurements, but could be off by as much as a foot or so in any given dimension. The brown rectangular shapes are my lame attempt at indicating pre-existing obstacles, such as the furnace (that's the big one), on-demand water heater (against the wall), support poles, and drainage pipes (the drainage pipes could possible be moved). You can also see the sliding glass door and the two existing windows at the "bottom."

Here's my first attempt at coming up with a layout (as you can tell, I'm not much of a designer):



So, as I said in the beginning, I'm not really expecting much from this post. But, if you're really into design and want to take a shot, I'd love to see your ideas. Create your own online (at Homestyler or somewhere else) and link to it in the comments, or create it with some other software and upload it somewhere and link to it. Or, if you have a finished basement that you really like and think part of it might work for us, upload a picture or two and link to those. (Or, if you did something and you really regret, let us know about that as well.) And, of course, you can always just leave a text comment with your ideas.

So, can you help out a design-challenged blogger? I'd love to see what ideas you might have.

The Learning Studio

The School of Medicine at the University of Virginia has created a room called "The Learning Studio."

Photo Credit: Norm Shafer (original source)

[I]t coalesced into an unusual, functionally innovate design, one built around a new pedagogy.

Shades of the Collaboratory at Rutgers. You see, UVA figured something out:

Most universities continue to follow a blueprint introduced in 1910, which called for two years of in-depth study of the basic sciences followed by two years of clinical experience. A cookie-cutter approach, it means that students spend two years sitting through long lectures and regurgitating facts on tests, followed by the shock treatment in their third year of suddenly dealing with patients in a hospital ward.

“It’s become pretty clear in the last couple of decades that this is probably not the best way to learn something as complex as medicine,” says Randolph Canterbury, the medical school’s senior associate dean for education. “The idea that physicians ought to learn the facts of all these various disciplines—anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and so forth—to the depth that we once thought they should doesn’t make much sense.”

About half of all medical knowledge becomes obsolete every five years. Every 15 years, the world’s body of scientific literature doubles. The pace of change has only accelerated. “The half-life of what I learned in medical school was much longer than what it is today,” adds Canterbury, a professor of psychiatric medicine and internal medicine.

Huh. Who knew? Oh yeah.

So what happens in that Learning Studio?

. . . In teams of eight, the students debate a patient case: Walt Z., a 55-year-old chemist, comes into your clinic complaining of intermittent chest pain. As his doctor, you’ve arranged for an exercise stress test. But Walt Z. is an informed consumer of health care, and he has lots of questions about the test’s accuracy in diagnosing blockage in coronary arteries. Five large media screens hanging throughout the room delineate his medical details and a series of multiple choice questions.

Gone is the traditional 50-minute lecture. (Also gone is paper, for the most part.) The students have completed the assigned reading beforehand and, because they’ve absorbed the facts on their own, class time serves another purpose. Self-assessment tests at the start of class measure how well they understand the material. Then it’s time to do a test case, to reinforce their critical thinking and push their knowledge and skills to another level.

. . . In this “flattened classroom,” as it’s been described, the traditional top-down educational approach is reconfigured and the responsibility for learning shifts to the student.

Interesting. What about accountability?

Problem solving by teams mirrors the reality of health care today. “The traditional approach has been one patient, one doctor,” says Waggoner-Fountain. “Now, it’s one patient, one doctor and a team, in part because medicine has gotten more sophisticated and patient expectations are different.”

Studies also show that individual grades improve when working within a team. The first-year students have embraced it. Not isolated in auditorium seats bolted to the floor, they can easily move and mingle because everything is in the round.

“Working in a team reinforces what you learn in class,” says Chelsea Becker (Med ’14). “We all have different backgrounds and everyone knows something different.” Science majors don’t hold dominion; the class comprises more than 60 different majors, from astrochemistry to art.

“It allows us to teach each other,” adds Tom Jenkins (Med ’14), who estimates he’s collaborated with just about every person in the class at this point. “I think that helps with retention.”

I could go on, but it would be better if you just go read the article. Okay, just one more quote:

Every team experience was singular. “We have the sense that education should be standardized and everyone should have the same experience, but that’s not really the case for us,” says Littlewood. “The new Carnegie report talks about having standardized outcomes for individualized experiences, and I think there’s no better example than over here.”

So, let's sum up. Teaching like it's 1910 doesn't make much sense (teacher-centered, lecture-oriented, fact-recall, paper-based, standardized instruction.) Ahh, so glad all the current education reform in K-12 matches up with this vision. They have to be college-ready, ya know.

By The Numbers: New York Times Visual Op-Ed Columnist

Charles Blow is the New York Times "visual" Op-Ed columnist. His column appears every other Saturday and he often includes visual representations to help him try to make his point. I find it very interesting that the New York Times has an Op-Ed columnist who focuses on statistics and visual representations, not just text, to try to communicate. I think it's another indication of the power of visuals - often, but not always, in conjunction with text - and the changing nature of both communication and literacy in the 21st century. It's also another example of the transformation of "traditional" newspapers and how they deliver content in a technological age.

He's also just started a blog, called By The Numbers, where he intends to discuss "all things statistical - from the environment to entertainment - and their visual expressions." Like many blogs, it appears to be designed to be more immediate and more interactive than a traditional New York Times column, and will definitely focus on the visual as much as the textual.

[Warning: Shameless self-promotion alert.]

Now, I don't know yet if this is going to be a blog that I'll stay subscribed to, or how well he'll make the transition from columnist to blogger. But one thing's for certain, he has excellent taste in videos.

It's a Thirsty World

Jeff Brenman, who created the amazing SlideShare version of the original Did You Know?/Shift Happens for their World's Best Presentation Contest last year, has an entry in this year's contest in the same style titled "Thirst."

While not directly related to the usual content of this blog, I thought I'd share it out for two reasons. First, I think it's an important issue to discuss. Second, I think it's another example of the power of imagery and how we should help students (and teachers) learn that PowerPoints/Keynotes/Slideshares don't have to have a ton of text on them to be effective (and, in fact, rarely should have a ton of text on them).

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Innovate or Die: Utility and Significance

I thought this contest sponsored by Specialized and Google was an interesting example of Daniel Pink's suggestion that design has to have both utility and significance. Here's the YouTube video (AHS teachers use your filter override if you want to view at school, students view at home) of the winner.

NAESP's Vision 2021

The National Association of Elementary School Principals has a video posted on YouTube titled Vision 2021 (also embedded below). You can learn more about the vision:

The mission of VISION 2021 is two-fold:

1. Understand the drivers that are shaping teaching, leading and learning; and how the future is changing for pre-K-8 principals; and
   
2. Envision strategies, models, structures and relationships that will realign NAESP with the future.

NAESP also has a blog.

A few things about the video bothered me. First, I just don't think the video is done that well. I know I'm one to talk, since my presentations aren't exactly high quality either, but I'm also not the NAESP creating a public service announcement. And - except for Did You Know? 2.0 where XPLANE took care of the higher quality - I wasn't originally intending them for the world. But the part where the four of them are on screen speaking in unison didn't inspire me to think of 2021. (And, yes, I know, I should go back and improve my presentations now that they do have a wider audience - so this is a little bit of the pot calling the kettle black.)

Second, in the About This Video section they do a nice job of describing their video, but they don't link to their website. I know they list the main NAESP site at the end of the video, and the vast majority of folks would be able to find it, but I would've thought they wanted to make it easy to click through directly to Vision 2021 to learn more.

Third, and I don't think this is just because they take a shot at 2020 Vision, but - for me - the tagline of "Hindsight is 20/20" doesn't quite work with the title of Vision 2021. 2021 doesn't have much of a ring to it, and I don't follow the logic of 2020 is hindsight, so therefore 2021 is the future. If you're looking back at 2020, wouldn't that mean you were in at least 2021?

Fourth, in their blog entry about the YouTube video, they don't link directly to the video. They link to YouTube, but they tell their readers to:

access the video on the YouTube Web site by typing “NAESP” into the search engine.

Finally, I just can't help noticing the irony that they posted it on YouTube, when presumably a very high percentage of K-8 schools can't get to YouTube because of their Internet filter. I couldn't find it on TeacherTube, so they must think YouTube is special in some way - has some quality that inspired them to post it there. (In their defense, I did eventually find it on the Vision 2021 site in RealPlayer format).

As I read over the above, it sounded pretty negative, so I almost decided not to post this. I do think it's good they are taking a look at the future and trying to figure out what our students need, and I don't want to knock them for their effort. I just wonder if they could've made their video - and associated posts - just a bit more appealing.