I happened to be working the other day at Caribou Coffee, which has pretty good coffee, a cool northwoods atmosphere, and free wifi.  It's a fairly big space, with ample electricity, different table sizes, and a really nice environment for reading, writing and learning.  A wide range of people use the space, including high school kids.

As you might imagine, its filled with people using laptops and other forms of mobile technologies.  People come and go, people re-arrange the furniture.  No rows. No desks.

So, I was interested when a group of high school kids invaded the table near me.  They were kids from a school I taught at for 10 years and I had some fun talking with them about my recollections of the school.

These kids were working on calculus, talking, using their cell phones to text, and their graphing calculators.  No surprise there, they're kids.  But what was interesting to watch was the way they interacted.

I've been interested in learning spaces for awhile, and I'll be doing a conversation about such spaces at Educon.  

Watching these kids, and knowing the classroom (a word I use intentionally here) that they would go back to, I wonder where they would rather learn and interact in.  We all know the answer.

We need different spaces for kids today.  Yet, there is very little focus on establishing or creating spaces that serve today's learners.

When kids walk into Caribou, what kinds of interactions do they believe will happen?  When the same kids walk into a classroom, what kinds of interactions do they believe will happen?

My question:  How does the design of the learning space influence the perception of the type of teaching and learning about to take place?  In other words, how does design inform the intent?