6 months from playground to Media Center

Our new media center is almost complete. 6 Months ago this area was part of the play ground. Next month the building will officially be open for business. When designing the new media center we used the word seamless to define what we wanted information to be for students. Whether paper, digital, audio, or video…information needed to be accessible in this space…I think we did a pretty good job.

Here it is the whole first floor is the media/information center the second floor is art and music classrooms. The three out coves are two teaching areas and a storytelling area for teachers and the librarians to use.

Another view with students playing at recess

This is from the hallway looking through the computer lab clear into the library. Yes, the computer lab is completely glassed in, so even though it is a true computer lab set up, it fits seamlessly into the whole library. When not in use by a class, students could drop in and easily be supervised by adults in the library area. This computer lab will sport a state of the art video conferencing system and a SmartBoard. It is completely wireless and you can see there are drops every 4 meters in the floor throughout the lab and the entire library, so if your laptop is low on power you are always within 2 meters of a plug in and wired access.

Another angle from in the tech lab looking into the library area.

The library standing at one end and looking the length of it. A huge space that will be fun to fill with books and computers. The computer lab is on the right and the story telling area on my left.

Story telling area, there will be cushions on the seats when it’s complete.

More of the library, you can see the outlet/Ethernet ports every 4 meters on the floor.

My favorite area. This is a total seamless tech area. It will look kind of like a computer lab with furniture in it, but this picture is taken from me standing in the middle of the library. I like to think of it as a Digital Information Intensive area. It will be home to the Elementary podcast station, a SmartBoard on the wall, and different levels of desks for different aged students. As you can see there is a folding wall, so if a teacher wanted to they could section it off as a closed in lab of sorts.

On the second floor looking down the hallway, there are two bridges connecting the new building to the existing building.

A view of the entire campus…one lucky music teacher gets this view.

Oops, one little mistake. This closet is to the hub room for the existing building, when they built the bridge to the new building they, well, you can see for yourself. Not a real big deal as it’s not used too often, but still funny some of the things that you don’t see in 2D. 🙂

After Gwen (our librarian shown above) is all moved into her space and has it all set up. I’ll have Gwen take you on a tour of the “Information Center” as she calls it…and yes she is a CIO “Chief Information Officer” I gotta quit calling her a librarian. 🙂

[tags]SAS, School2.0[/tags]

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