Redesigning Common Spaces

Students at Howard D. McMillan Middle School used 3D design and virtual reality to redesign common spaces in their school building. “The objective of the project was to provide students an opportunity to be part of the redesign of our school,” says Learning Studio teacher Dale Adamson. “In an effort to increase student voice in our building, I challenged the students to find a space in our school building that was being misused or underutilized. Their stated goal was to ‘reimagine a space in our building to improve the learning experience for students at Howard D. McMillan Middle School.’”

After brainstorming what they could redesign, students chose spaces ranging from the library, to the cafeteria, and even the main office. “We really did not leave many spaces untouched between 28 groups,” Dale says. They started by measuring each of the room’s dimensions and creating scale drawings on grid paper. Using their scale drawings, they created a first prototype of their space on paper, then used TinkerCad to create their second prototype.

The next stage of the design process created opportunities for reflection and collaboration as students finalized their designs. Using Flipgrid, students shared short videos justifying their designs to peers who then provided feedback. Based on their peer’s feedback, students created final prototypes and exported them to CoSpaces for viewing.

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