What is a learning environment?
Learning and its environment gives reference to anything that stimulates the mind, and engages the learner. The context and diversity of this environment is limitless especially in the ever changing fast paced 21st Century. The addition of modern technology has opened vast new doors into learning and its has also helped us to understand the facets of learning that have nothing to do with technology.
Warger (2009) suggests that the beauty of modern technology compared to the past is incredible. Technology has opened up a whole new world of information. Warger states that 'the introduction of technology into every aspect of our lives has led educators to think differently about where and how learning takes place.
Where do people go to learn? What do those spaces look like?
Learning is versatile and not necessarily limited to the classroom. Outdoor learning experiences include; Classrooms, Museums, Beaches, Countryside, Forests, Parks. Each learning space offers its own primary resources and opportunities for enquiry.
How does the arrangement of a learning space contribute to—or detract from—the task of education?
The way a learning space is designed can either encourage or restrict learning. For instance, learning from an open space such as a beach or forest can contribute to learning due to the excessive primary resources that a child can engage with using all their senses. However, sitting in classrooms, facing the front and learning from secondary resources such as books, can diminish and detract learning. Karl Waldo Emerson states that learning from primary resources free us and secondary resources imprison us. However, a classroom environment can be improved by promoting and encouraging critical engagement and discussion, e.g tables together for group work, group tasks such as making an animation.
How important is the learning environment?
The environment in which we learn plays a crucial part in whether a child engages, or not. There is a strong connection between stimulation and engagement. The more stimulating the environment, the more inclined a child is to engage in their learning.
An effective way to engage a child is through multi-sensory learning. Engaging all the senses is best done through outdoor learning experiences which standard classrooms fail to provide.
