Interesting article in the NYT on a classroom fitted with standing/sitting/perching desks. One teacher got the idea after seeing children squirm, and now the students are being studied:
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Researchers should soon know whether they can confirm those calorie-burning and scholastic benefits. Two studies under way at the University of Minnesota are using data collected from Ms. Brown’s classroom and others in Minnesota and Wisconsin that are using the new desks. The pupils being studied are monitored while using traditional desks as well, and the researchers are looking for differences in physical activity and academic achievement.
“We can’t say for sure that this has an impact on those two things, but we’re hypothesizing that they may,” said Beth A. Lewis of the School of Kinesiology, or movement science, at the University of Minnesota. “I think we’re so used to the traditional classroom it’s taken a while for people to start thinking outside the box. I think it’s just a matter of breaking the mold.”
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I think this really great news on a variety of levels. Kids can burn off energy without being labeled disruptive or ADD and they also will have a mindset less accepting of poor ergonomics when they get to college or the workplace.
Technorati Tags: chairs, design, ergonomics, perching, sitting
Hey, remember the “open” Waynesville School, where it was “sit, stand, lay on floor, lounge on pillows, talk, discuss, as long as you get the work done”, as opposed to next school where it was “sit in straight lines, in alphabetical order, etc, etc.? You and brother had problems getting used to the “rigid,puritanical rules (too nice words for the institutional jail-like systems that still exist here). Today, here, the “pill system” is order #1, student disruptive – just give student a pill!!!!! For every study that is done, and for every “new” idea to solve the learning problems, there are 10 school boards that cling to the old methods, and “new” ideas are evil to them!!