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Agile Learning Center @ MFS

by Jerry Mintz

On December 19th I visited Manhattan Free School with AERO staff member Kamala Bhusal and her two year old daughter. I was interested to see how they are doing and to find out about their new enterprise, creating an Agile Learning Center as part of the school. Here are a few pictures and a description of what they are doing. Among other things they have built a 3D printer that the students have learned to use:

alc2The Agile Learning Center @ MFS uses leading edge tools to support young people in their self-directed learning and living. Agile Learning Centers are designed with an intentional social architecture to evoke a specific hidden curriculum. In an Agile Learning Center, students are learning to: 

  • Identify their own needs and priorities
  • Create projects which accomplish those priorities
  • Organize their time and activities around those projects
  • Focus and follow through on those projects toward a creative end
  • Share their creative output (in a digital portfolio)
  • Reflect on personal progress and impediments (in a personal blog)
  • Co-create a collaborative, supportive social environment
  • Be Responsible for their action and inaction
  • Engage in new technologies to develop digital literacy

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