On October 27th, the Steering Committee sent a team to visit Lillian Osborne Secondary School in Edmonton. The school opened in September of this year and features only grade 10's this year and will be adding grade 11's next then grade 12's the year after. For this reason, there is only 330 students in the school this year which is built for around a 1000 students at a cost of $26 million with 25 rooms and 4 miscellaneous rooms.
The main entrance features a very large library and informal area that not only contains what you would find in a library, but couches, chess boards, etc. A lot of the students say that this is one of the best features of the school and the library has glass floor to ceiling for sound proofing. The library has 30 foot ceilings with an open design and 120 laptops for students to be able to sign out.
Every classroom has an FM wireless system and a Smart board and WiFi throughout the school. The hallways are designed in a wedge shape. They are wider in the middle and then tapered at the end so the wider portion served to store the lockers on either side of the hallway. They also had a bank of lockers running down the middle of the wider area but these lockers only went up to waist level and there was a bench-type structure on the top of these. This bench served as an area for students to do school work as was a very creative design. The hallways also had very high ceilings with lots of natural light giving a very warm atmosphere while having limited noise problems.
All the classrooms had a full length window for natural light and each one of these windows had pull down blinds which was very aesthetically pleasing and very good for security. The classroom entrance doors were also impressive because the woodwork above the door was the same material as the door itself giving a very smooth design. All classroom lights went off automatically when the doors are shut and there is a green house attached to the science lab. The school features one video conferencing suite and there was one gym. The school uses a key fob to electronically open the doors and there exists a student union room for the leadership students. The staffroom had flexible furniture and the staff washrooms were right inside the staffroom as opposed the a small hallway leading to the these areas.
The school contained the technology, art, and construction all in one area and did not appear to be well coordinated. All the floors were grey concrete which made cleaning difficult according to the custodian. The main office was quite small and there was very little room for the secretaries while having counters that were way too high. The main conference room that branched off the office area had a glass wall into the main student gathering area. The school had no Multi-purpose room, no cafeteria, and the science labs were small.
To see more photos of Lillian Osborne Secondary, click here.
All the classrooms had a full length window for natural light and each one of these windows had pull down blinds which was very aesthetically pleasing and very good for security. The classroom entrance doors were also impressive because the woodwork above the door was the same material as the door itself giving a very smooth design. All classroom lights went off automatically when the doors are shut and there is a green house attached to the science lab. The school features one video conferencing suite and there was one gym. The school uses a key fob to electronically open the doors and there exists a student union room for the leadership students. The staffroom had flexible furniture and the staff washrooms were right inside the staffroom as opposed the a small hallway leading to the these areas.
The school contained the technology, art, and construction all in one area and did not appear to be well coordinated. All the floors were grey concrete which made cleaning difficult according to the custodian. The main office was quite small and there was very little room for the secretaries while having counters that were way too high. The main conference room that branched off the office area had a glass wall into the main student gathering area. The school had no Multi-purpose room, no cafeteria, and the science labs were small.
To see more photos of Lillian Osborne Secondary, click here.
Cool features we should think about:
ReplyDelete- classroom lights going off when doors shut. If there a switch to keep them on as well if you closed the door while teaching?
- fobs instead of keys
- couches/chess boards in library