I was recently invited to facilitate an event held at Our Lady of Mercy College, Parramatta. It was hosted by Learning Environments Australia, who are an organisation with an interest in designing school environments – so a mix of architects and educators. I must admit I hadn’t heard of them before, which was a shame, because there are so many things that I would have liked to have worked with them on, especially in the past. Anyway…
I was facilitating a discussion between some experts in artificial intelligence. We had Daniel, a school leader from OLSH, Kensington, and Chris, a well known educator who has done some work with Google in the past, and also two students in Year 11, who were fantastic. We had three questions that we put to them, and each of them spoke for about 7-8 minutes, mostly about the human need for education, and the challenges that AI might pose to that.
I’ve shared some thoughts elsewhere about what they discussed, but I just wanted to write about what happened after our discussion. The architectural firm, who had done some work at the school, then got up to speak about the renovations and new building works they’d undertaken – and it was an absolute pleasure to listen to them share their expertise.
I know very little about architecture, which is amusing in some respects, because I’ve worked in schools that are brand new, and have been involved in discussions about them. But it was a real pleasure listening to two architects talk us through their plans. Some of the language was familiar to me, but the way they used it was different. There was an element of precision that showcased their expertise. For example, I might say a ‘wood floor’ – but they would say a ‘reconstituted timber flooring’. Often, that level of expression is characterised as being a bit presumptuous, but not in this context: it was about using the exact right word at the right time. And often, that’s something that categorise an expert.