Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

For generations, most high schools have been designed with a cookie-cutter approach “that can be reproduced easily,” said Ashley Smith, who works with the architectural firm Smith Design Group. But that’s certainly not true of the new THINC College & Career Academy in LaGrange, Ga., which Smith helped design.

Housed in a building on the campus of West Georgia Technical College, THINC looks nothing like a traditional high school. Instead, it has the look and feel of a Google office building, with brightly colored carpet tiles, lots of glass walls, and stylish furniture that can be moved around easily to create flexible, collaborative workspaces.

Within those spaces, students work in teams to design and build parts for forestry machines, market a college radio station, or even launch their own start-up company. To complete these activities, they use the same technologies that professionals in those fields would use to do their jobs.…Read More