Being a young person today is not easy. Many are under stress to perform well in school, get into a good college, or excel on the playing field. But what about students who are stressed because they need to earn money to put food on the table for their...

Today’s students are pretty tech savvy. From iPhones to tablets, most children attending school today have grown up with technology as part of their everyday lives. These “digital natives” know how to use these devices to communicate too – from texting to...

The majority of us have gone through the K-12 education system, and have studied many school subjects along the way—some may have interested us, others, maybe not. A recent Gallup study shows that mathematics is considered to be the most "valuable" subject...

Tomorrow’s work environments will likely bear little resemblance to the office spaces of yesterday and today. Open floor plans, co-op workspaces, and remote work are becoming the norm, and more employees are leaving the corporate world to freelance. The rise of the...

The role of teaching has evolved. No longer are we the carriers of knowledge, giving it to students and assessing if they can repeat facts successfully. We are, instead, tasked with teaching students how to find answers themselves. And it all starts with a...

The name Kepler is synonymous with discovery. From the Kepler Telescope NASA uses to discover distant planets to the namesake Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion – “Kepler” means big things. At Kepler Academy, they use the same...

Brittany came to us in October 2015 inspired to open an all natural daycare in Maple Ridge for spring/summer of 2016. As a new business start up in a new geographical location - we worked together to create the dream space that Brittany was envisioning....

Some might argue that creativity in the classroom is a lost art. In many classrooms, this truth is playing out on a daily basis. High stakes testing and meeting local/state/provincial/national standards has put a damper on creativity in our schools and that is not a...

The 1000 Women Child Care Centre, operated by the Intercultural Child and Family Centre, offers a total of 56 spaces for children 12 months to five years of age. Spaces are open to children of NorQuest College students and employees, and the general...

On a recent trip to Toronto we were delighted to be able to visit one of our clients projects at Richland Academy. Richland Academy are a warm and welcoming International Baccalaureate candidate school in Richmond Hill, Ontario. They are a 21st century learning...

Watch the students in the Flexible Studies Program at École Secondaire Reynolds Secondary School work together to create their new Natural Pod better learning environment. Flexible Studies Program is designed for students interested in a structured...

Making learning meaningful is important to children’s understanding of the learning concepts and the world around them. Teachers make learning meaningful when they, link new learning to children’s previous experience, relate concepts to children’s lives...

How we design 21st century learning environments matters. This is just one of the key messages that Bridgitte Alomes, CEO of Natural Pod and President of Green Schools National Network (GSNN), conveyed in her keynote address at the 8th Canadian EdTech...

On the 11th of November, 2017, 500 children from cities all around the world, worked in parallel to design and develop solutions and innovative concepts around water issues. They worked together to build prototypes and present them to each...

This coming April, Rethink Thinking is doing it again! Summit at the Bay — Canada’s only inquiry-based youth summit — is set to kick off on April 21 and 22, 2018, at Royal Bay Secondary in School District 62 (Sooke, BC). Picture 500 grades 9–12 students...

Our current compulsory schooling model was created at the dawn of the Industrial Age. As factories replaced farm work and production moved swiftly outside of homes and into the larger marketplace, 19th century American schooling mirrored the...

Redefining Schools of the Future is the theme for this year’s 8th Canadian Edtech Leadership Summit and we're delighted to announce that our CEO of Natural Pod, Bridgitte Alomes, will be one of the keynotes at the conference this year. It’s never been a...

Gone are the days when students were expected to sit passively at desks while teachers lectured endlessly, expecting children to soak up the information being thrown at them. In today’s educational environment, students are expected to collaborate, think...

R.C. Garnett Demonstration Elementary School is a teaching demonstration school, offering professional development for Langley teachers and teacher colleagues, both within and outside the province. Staff work collaboratively and with a common...

It's wonderful to see projects that we work on and partners that we work with receive recognition for creating better learning environments. Our recent project at Explorer Academy in West Virginia just received an 'Outstanding Project' award from Learning...

Terms every teacher should know - As education continues to evolve, adding in new trends, technologies, standards, and 21st century thinking habits, there is one constant that doesn’t change. The human brain. But neuroscience isn’t exactly accessible...

When I first started teaching, I thought essay writing was the ideal form of assessment. If students could “write intelligently” about an idea (or the big idea of a certain academic standard), they understood. If they struggled, they probably didn’t—and...

I took a day out of my busy schedule (everyone has a busy schedule!) to visit two of our customers in North and West Vancouver. Bringing nature into the learning environment, encouraging collaboration and making a focus to clear away the clutter is evident...

We tend to think of project-based learning as focused on research, planning problem-solving, authenticity, and inquiry. Further, collaboration, resourcefulness, and networking matter too–dozens of characteristics “fit” into project-based...

Teachers mean well. By teachers, I mean you and I. We mean well. After all, here we are, creating and consuming resources to improve the learning of someone, somewhere. And we’re both in education to begin with — that’s a selfless and Sisyphean pursuit in...

We’ve come to accept that just about the only thing that seems to be constant in this day and age is change. But we sometimes don’t spend enough time thinking about how to manage change. Here are some things to have in mind before undertaking...

Create or update your better learning environment with our back to school bundle offer. Save over $600 when you order before the end of August, 2017. The best part is once your order is confirmed we can ship and deliver everything...

There is an irony to bad questions, in that they can be more difficult to answer than a good question. Questioning is the art of learning. Learning to ask important questions is the best evidence of understanding there is, far surpassing the temporary...

Even though teachers have the summer off we usually have a hard time switching off our teacher brains. I find myself on my family summer holidays looking around and thinking about whether I can use different natural objects in my classroom. I can't walk...

Thank you to everyone who entered our recent newsletter subscription giveaway. These giveaways are our chance to give back to our community and to help spread the word of our community work building better learning environments. The winner of this contest...

Most of us are familiar with the idea of homeschooling, which involves parents educating their children at home rather than in a traditional school setting. Generally, these families are using less formal ways of imparting a traditional...

Children spend as much, if not more, time at school than at home, so shouldn’t our learning environments be given the same attention and care as our home environments? While recently reading this article about how to achieve Feng Shui, the...

Throughout history, the learning structures put in place and their associated physical spaces have been a reflection of the needs in society at large. And even before there were schools, there was the master and apprentice model. Ironically,...

Save Money and Take The Summer Off Knowing You'll Be Ready for School ~ How would you like to have the best and most relaxing back to school this year that you've ever had? Spend a few minutes now and you could create the learning environment you've always imagined in...