Despite the constant back and forth on its health and productivity benefits, the standing desk—the Skechers Shape-Ups of office furniture—has gone fromworkplace curiosity to a fixture of the modern office. But there's a yet untouched desk pasture ripe for colonization by our favorite love-to-hate workstation: schools.

A handful of classrooms have already ditched traditional sit-only desks for their standing counterparts, but following a new study from Texas A&M this week, a lot more could follow. Researchers found that standing desks had a positive impact on the body mass index (BMI) of kids who use them. 

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Whatever you decided, the clunky, heavy, built-to-last furniture was inflexible and would likely stay put for the year. Some of the more eager teachers might consider moving around furniture from time to time, but the work involved usually meant the furniture stayed put most of the time. The limited mobility not only hampers interaction among students, instructors and content but the static environment actually became a barrier to learning.  

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In 1998, when Don Tapscott published “Growing Up Digital” the definition of the classroom of the future was not fully clear. No one definitively predicted the full spectrum of changes in curriculum, culture and technology we are experiencing today.

In multiple school districts across the country of all sizes, shapes and settings, a cultural transformation is occurring as a result of the pull of an ever changing workforce economy and a push from students who want to be engaged, who want to create their own pathways for advancement.

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An experimental learning space at the Hillbrook School in Los Gatos, Calif., was created with agility in mind. Equipped with highly mobile, flexible, and technology-enabled furniture from Bretford, the Idea Lab—or “iLab” for short—is like a blank slate for learning. Each time the space is used, the teacher and/or students decide how it will be configured—and teachers overwhelmingly notice that their students’ energy picks up dramatically when they enter the space.

A private day school for students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, Hillbrook has equipped each middle school student with a tablet computer they can take home as well. As Hillbrook leaders saw how these mobile devices changed teaching and learning, they began thinking differently about the learning spaces as well.

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Back-to-school conjures images of desks in neat rows, and the smells of crayons and glue. Teachers work hard to make warm, inviting learning spaces for students, but let's take a step back. What does a desk represent? Imagine a classroom that looked less like a traditional classroom and more like an artist's studio. Our physical environment, as explored in The Third Teacher, tells us what is possible in that space. What if, instead of making our space for our students, we made it with our students? This is what design thinking allows us to do.

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A decade of research from the national nonprofit group Project Tomorrow tells us that students want access to anytime, anywhere learning opportunities through the use of mobile digital devices. And K-12 leaders have responded in kind, with a growing number of schools creating mobile and digital learning environments. But this shift has important implications for how we design K-12 learning spaces to support more agile learning.

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Improving student achievement is the main priority for all schools. Research shows that classroom design has a significant impact on student performance. So today I’m looking at 5 things you should prioritize in order to design a classroom that creates an environment conducive to learning and student achievement.

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The post-WWII Baby Boom ushered in an era of construction on a massive scale, from the Levittown-like suburbs sprouting up across our cities to an unprecedented expansion of higher education facilities. Today, we continue to learn and live in many of these mid-century structures, but often they are misaligned with the way society has changed in the last half dozen decades. From sustainability and energy performance targets to accessibility requirements, what was once a good fit for a college or university can suddenly be an expensive (and exclusionary) burden. 

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