Are School Buildings Obsolete?

A “school without walls” is typically a euphuism for a building that substitutes collaborative learning for the standard approach of stationing teachers in front of a classroom full of students.

But the internet age has brought us to a point where walls literally are superfluous — where students do their work online as part of a “virtual school.” And such a model exists just south of the Kansas City metropolitan area in Spring Hill, Kansas.

Is this a blueprint for the school of the future? The approach certainly has its supporters, as Take Note discovered during its ongoing look at the school of the future.

But in researching the question of where students will learn in the school of the future, we also discovered other area school districts taking a more traditional approach to adapting schools to the project-based learning that so many experts say must be part of education today.

Follow along in the video above as Take Note moves around the horn from Spring Hill to a variety of school districts on the Missouri side.

Take Note is Kansas City PBS’s multi-year education reporting project. In this season, we are examining all aspects of the school of the future. Keep an eye on the website and join the conversation at #TakeNoteKC.