Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

School's Innovation Lab Greeted With Success

  • 03/01/19
SMARTdesks

Chatham Middle School in New Jersey partnered with SMARTdesks to create collaborative learning spaces for their STEM Program.

It took some time to accomplish the STEM micro campus serving the 960 sixth, seventh, and eighth graders at New Jersey’s Chatham Middle School, Danielle Dagounis, supervisor of Instructional & Design Technology, will tell you. “Five years ago, we started our STEM Program, offering a wide array of programs. To get things started, we had to take over the computer lab. The one downfall of that is: it’s a computer lab,” she explains. “You didn’t have any supports to allow the students to collaborate.”

Dagounis continues, “The plan was to make a new STEM focus area with classrooms set up to serve different purposes. The classroom we are talking about today is what we call our Innovation Lab. The Innovation Lab is the room that features SMARTdesks collaboration furniture.”

Dagounis had a difficult time finding collaborative computer desks. “Apparently, if you want collaborative computer desks, they’re like unicorns,” she says. “I went to the New Jersey School Board Convention two or three years ago and saw some of SMARTdesks’ products being demonstrated in person. When I Googled ‘collaborative computer tables,’ SMARTdesks was the most relevant result. I got some measurements, gave them to my architect, and asked if these SMARTdesks collaboration tables would fit. And they did.”

“Yes, we had interface with the architect,” adds Jeffry Korber, SMARTdesks CEO. “They called us. We have our own design department, so we did a layout. That is one way we differentiate ourselves. I was directly involved in the engineering.”

“And that is good, because now we have an effective collaborative learning classroom,” Dagounis says. “It is important for our students to be able to collaborate with one another, and not just come in and work on their own without having to work with other people.”

www.smartdesks.com

This article originally appeared in the School Planning & Management March 2019 issue of Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • South Carolina District Starts Construction on $50M Middle School Renovation

    The Aiken County Public School District in North Augusta, S.C., recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for the $50-million renovation and expansion of North Augusta Middle School, according to a news release. The project’s funding comes from the 2024 renewal of a one-cent sales tax approved by local voters.

  • New Arizona Fine Arts School Reaches Construction Milestone

    Construction of the new Hilltop School for the Arts and Theater in Litchfield Park, Ariz., recently hit a significant milestone, according to a news release. The Agua Fria High School District held a beam-signing ceremony to celebrate the building’s topping out, or the placement of its last structural beam.

  • North Carolina District Completes New Elementary School

    The Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) in Holly Springs, N.C., recently announced that construction on a new elementary school has finished, according to a news release. Rex Road Elementary School measures in at 133,000 square feet and is the fifteenth school that general contractor Balfour Beatty has completed for the district.

  • Round Rock ISD Completes New Early College High School

    Round Rock ISD near Austin, Texas, recently announced that construction is complete on a new, 46,500-square-foot campus for Early College High School, according to a news release. The new facility will allow the school’s students and staff to move from portables into a permanent building and increase its enrollment to 500.