Agile, Smart Schools

Smart places, objects, and structures combine with flexible strategies, creating schools that can adapt to meet changing needs and conditions.

Real World Application

Infrastructures are flexible and localized
In a world of rapid urban growth, constrained urban resources, and increasing mobility, building and maintaining basic infrastructure will be an ongoing challenge. The concept of permanent, large-scale infrastructure will likely give way to more temporary, localized, and ad hoc solutions—in effect creating temporary structures for bounded purposes or lightweight, portable, and personalized infrastructures. This is true for infrastructures like telecommunications and energy, but will be increasingly true for social, economic, and political structures as well like micro-finance and micro-insurance, home-based health care, small schools, and even micro-learning structures. Technologies and structures that were once intended to provide independence for rural areas could well become tomorrow’s urban solutions.


The built environment becomes instrumented and responsive
Sensor-based technologies that currently track resources and manage logistics, will also be used to monitor and manage the complex, interacting environments of daily life including homes, workplaces, and schools. With ubiquitous wireless Internet access, location-based information, and displays everywhere, schools become adaptive learning environments that respond to the changing needs of administrators, students, and their families. Facilities management becomes a strategic function, working collaboratively with those involved in curriculum development, technology integration, and pedagogical objectives.