Catching Up! March 16, 2015

Whew! Last week was our accreditation visit and this past weekend, our tech team spent two full days learning more about Future Ready, the federal 1:1 initiative. Today is the first day of Spring Break.  Yeah!  A chance to sit down and catch up!

A lot is happening with our project, thanks to the great weather we've had.  Let me share some photos from last week and today.

The water fountains were installed in the new classroom building.  The kids will love that they can fill up their water bottles using the sensor.

These paper drawers are so much lighter than the ones in the present classrooms, and they're on wheels so teachers can move them easily.

The fire lane for the new building is still being worked on.  This is the area for the fire trucks if there is ever a fire (hopefully never!). 

Last week, they started installing the elevator for the classroom building. It's a 2-story building, so an elevator is a requirement.

This is the view from the second floor of the classroom building.  You can see the progress since last time when we shared a similar photo.

The electricians worked on Saturday to get ready for the installation of new fans in the cafeteria.  These are huge and are supposed to be really quiet.  I'll go by later to see if they've installed the blades.  

This is what the fans look like in the learning hub of the classroom building.  The classroom fans are a smaller model of this one.  Because we are in a cool area of the island with lots of tradewinds, our design team decided that air conditioning was not a necessity and these fans would be more energy-efficient.  

If you look closely, you can see the fans (as well as the lighting) in the classrooms.  Today, they are installing the movable walls.  I tried to take a photo, but it didn't come out.  Since collaboration is an important part of 21st century learning, the classrooms were designed to encourage different configurations.  There will also be movable walls in front of the classrooms so students can use the learning hub (hallway) as a learning space. They also installed the acoustic panels on the walls; you can see them in the top part of this photo.

The elevator is working!  In fact, we were treated to the very first ride, and it was so smooth. The elevator worker said they didn't use cables; they used belts.