I am a first year teacher that was asked to help design new facilities for our ag/IT program. It will be in a separate building from the school. We are designing 2 classrooms with science labs, a greenhouse, storage facility, etc. I have no idea what I am doing.
What are things to consider?
What suggestions do you have?
What are things you wish you had thought of when designing a facility?
Ashton, I will shoot you an email of the new facilities I am getting. You can look over the plans and see what fits for you!
Ashton,
Joni has good points. Some others gave me good ideas here in this thread http://communities.naae.org/thread/4804 If you are using CASE, a good facility design for lab/classrooms is at DMACC where the Iowa CASE Institutes are held. The layout and flexibility there are great. You can see some pictures on facebook of those classrooms.
I'm in a temporary trailer facility right now, so we have some major pains right now. The greenhouse is separated from the trailer and is not visible from the class, so it's a supervision and liability nightmare. We also don't have any communication system in the greenhouse (phone/intercom or bells), so make sure that is included. In your class/lab make sure you have running water... I don't and it is a huge pain to take everything out to the greenhouse to wash it with cold water.
Ashton...
Here is a document that might help with your thinking.
Dann
Ashton,
Here is the facility guidelines for Kentucky: http://education.ky.gov/CTE/Documents/FacilitiesGuideFinalDoc2009.pdf
I have never had the opportunity to build my own facility, but when I was in college I did a project over this and I am currently teaching in a school where the Agriculture/Family & Consumer Science building is a cross the street from the main building and is about 60-70 years old.
A few suggestions that I would suggest, simply based on what I have and what I would like to have!
1. Make sure that you vision from your classroom to your office, office to shop, shop to classroom, etc. This is something that in the 40's when they were building this building, probably wasn't something they thought much about.
2. Give yourself an office. I don't have that and boy would it make somethings much more simple.
3. Make sure that you have plenty of restroom facilities as well as locker storage area for students to store their "shop clothes." I have recently acquired some storage and it is very nice, but it would be nice if I had a place for more than one student change at a time.
4. Arrange your windows and wall space so that you have somewhere to display your chapters achievements plus your students projects and work!
5. I would very much consider air condition (I don't have ), ceiling fans, automatic overhead door opener, plenty of storage, bulletin boards, etc.
6. Easy access from greenhouse to building, outside storage, etc. You don't want to have to spend more time getting there than you have time to work!
Please keep in mind that I am in a building that was build many years ago and what I have is what I have and I utilize it the best way I know how, but if my administration came over and said we can make some changes, what do you need and want....well these are a few things I would list out.
Good Luck and enjoy your new facilities when they are all done!