Theory is good, but not when you can put it into practice years later and find out that your knowledge is not knowledgy but knowlagged. An more agile approach to learning helps in better understanding what is being learned. Agile is a term introduced in 2001 and is now mostly used in software development. Like any approach, of course this can be applied in other development projects as well and it really sots education. It is a group of development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. It is a conceptual framework that promotes foreseen interactions throughout the development cycle. It comes with a very clear and simple manifesto (taken en remixed from wikipedia):

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We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
In agile development, self-organization and motivation are important, as are interactions like co-location and pair programming.

Working software over comprehensive documentation
Working software will be more useful and welcome than just presenting documents to clients in meetings.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Requirements cannot be fully collected at the beginning of the software development cycle, therefore continuous customer or stakeholder involvement is very important.

Responding to change over following a plan
Agile development is focused on quick responses to change and continuous development.

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
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In the description above, replace ’software’ by ‘learning’ of ‘learning methods’, and ‘customer’ or ’stakeholder’ by ’student’ and you’re on your way on having a definition for an educational development model.

Intershops fits into this idea. Schools are not only preparing young people for society, they are the society. And because gained knowledge does not unlock itself the moment you get your diploma, creating real learning environments is a good idea. The more because there is an increase in vacancy of offices, shops and even churches. To start with the latter one as an example, in Friesland in the north of the Netherlands there are 770 churches. Churches used to be the heart of villages and cities. Mostly villages are build up around them. In the next few years, hundreds of them will loose its function, simply because people don’t go to church anymore. Next to villages loosing their heart, this will also massively impact the famous Frisian landscape, since a lot of them will not be redeveloped and will be torn down. Wouldn’t it be great to repurpose some of here into experiential learning environments?

The same goes for offices. Of the available 47 million square meter office space in the Netherlands, 6.5 m2 is vacant (based on DTZ Zadelhoff report Van veel te veel, january 2011). That’s 13.9%. And probably a lot more by now. So why build new? Why not use these spaces for educational (or other) purposes?

The same thing goes for shops. One of the key drivers why people visit less shops is the fact people buy more online. A recently released report by the Economical Office of ING (pdf) predicts that a quarter of the Dutch retail purchases will go through online channels. In short — more clicks, less bricks. Shops are always where people are, in the heart of communities.

If we could only use these spaces to do real life try-outs, to create learning by doing places, we would not only fill these empty spaces, but also give them new meaning and relevance for the communities where they’re located. We do not necessarily need new, we sometimes do, we just need to rethink what we do with what we have.

If we don’t, what could also happen is what I saw in Domfront, France earlier this year. Domfront is a nice mediaval village and is found in the Orne department of Normandy, between Argentan and Vitré on the Varenne River in France. It’s a nice village in a great area, especially if you like cycling. The old village has a nice old historic centre, but lost its soul. A lot of shops are empty and have life size stickers of what used to be in that space. By doing this, the owner is trying to show the potential of the space to a future tenant, but meanwhile it creates a sad image because quite likely the spaces will not be filled in a near future. Shopping malls would be even worse — there is even a website full dedicated to dead malls. Sad future? I only see potential.