Creating More Powerful Learning Environments

EduCrate Learning Centers are designed to respond to the need for instant and permanent places of learning to restore education hope for children. EduCrate Learning Centers are built in response to the needs of local educational authorities, and customized to the exact specifications of the user. EduCrate Learning Centers come filled with ready-to-use and grade-appropriate online curriculums for K-12 and adult coursework. EduCrates can be customized to any order, and can include generators, bathrooms, water stations and medical support, but their primary use is intended as a place of learning.

Need: Permanent Schools

Haiti has suffered a devastating setback to its schools when the earthquake leveled an estimated 3,978 buildings. UNICEF has supported school re-construction in three different phases: temporary, semi-permanent, and permanent schools. UNICEF has done an incredible job in providing 1,644 tents as temporary schools while looking towards semi-permanent structures. There is a need right now to establish a permanent school building program, and EduCrate Learning Centers can help.

Solution: EduCrate Learning Centers

EduCrate Learning Centers can be used as stand-alone centers or modularly combined into schools and delivered anywhere in the world within a few months of placing an order to engage struggling minds, change the way we learn and acquire knowledge, and to restore hope in educational possibilities. EduCrate Learning Centers are designed as modular classrooms, and can be combined in a variety of ways to suit local educational needs. Modular learning stations can be configured to suit the purpose of teaching individuals, groups of two, or many students. Learning stations are supported by computers networked to servers with thousands of curriculum units available on demand. Curriculum can be downloaded for K-5, 6-8, 9-12, college and adult learning modules.

Our crisis management solutions are research-based, and comply with the International Rescue Committee’s Minimum Standards for Education Emergencies. In consultation and collaboration with key stakeholders, there is a rapid initial assessment of education Capacity , vulnerability and risks that conveys an accurate representation of the situation to inform an education response.

Instructional rescue continues where learning opportunities are identified, created, and provided in a safe and secure environment where all stakeholders collaborate and cooperate to ensure inclusivity in activities and services. It is paramount that the learning environment — and routes to and from — must provide a physically secure and protected space that is conducive to learning, and supports personal well-being. A responsive curriculum is developed and implemented to address the needs of the learners. The outcome of our work is to start with instructional rescue and end by providing a safe environment and age-appropriate curriculum to advance learning and restore hope.

Who is Behind EduCrate?

"I think all children are incredible learners," says Dr. Rob Southworth, inventor of the portable classroom called EduCrate. "I have dedicated my life's work to helping create circumstances where children can learn. When we create or restore learning environments that support success for every student, we are harnessing the power of learning to improve our world. EduCrate is one way that we can help make this possible for every child, in any circumstance. We must give them the power to learn and the power to make our world a better place." (February 13, 2007).

The power of learning is the power to make our world better, and children who are given that power can grow up to change our world. Sadly, for many children throughout the world, school is out of reach or non-existent. EduCrate, a portable classroom that can be delivered anywhere in the world where there is a lack of school buildings, grows out of The SchoolWorks Lab's mission to support greater learning, and new possibilities, for all students:

Our research work in urban instructional environments, arts-integrated classrooms, and different styles of assessment resulted in helping our partners create more powerful learning environments. It also revealed thousands of school sites that have been destroyed by natural or man-made disasters, a problem we had not predicted. One of our responses is to provide a portable classroom that delivers the power of education to children who have lost all hope of learning.

Dr. Robert A. Southworth, Jr. (President and Principal Investigator of the SchoolWorks Lab, Inc.) is a teacher, scholar, and leader with expertise in evaluation and research, specializing in research strategies to uncover and analyze “hard to understand” social problems. After teaching theater in K-12 schools, conducting a professional career in theater as an Assistant Director at the Denver Center Theatre Company and The American Conservatory Theater, he returned to higher education and worked at the National Center for Restructuring, Education and Schools (NCREST), while attaining his doctorate in the Curriculum and Teaching Department at Teachers College Columbia University.

Dr. Southworth has taught at Adelphi University, Bank Street College of Education, and for seven years as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Teachers College, where he taught courses on school reform and change employing assessment of instructional learning goals in order to produce new leaders.

He is the founder and president of The SchoolWorks Lab, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to school reform research, assessment and dissemination. Rob has been successful in supporting schools, districts, cultural organizations, and educational leaders in evaluating the effect of their organization's efforts on the improvement of student achievement. Dr. Southworth has conducted scientifically based research studies to examine the impact of the arts on academic achievement. He is currently studying national models for assessment in theater, alignment of standards across the arts, the transfer of learning from the arts to other subjects, and the assessment of all four arts nationally.