Photography courtesy of TR,I Architects
400 DeMun
Clayton
314-725-4999
The Wilson School may be a century old, but its use of technology has rocketed it into the future. Headmaster Thad Falkner explains that the private elementary school’s mission is “to offer the most unique educational experience.” With that in mind, the school dug out a 4-foot-tall crawl space in the lower level, removing nearly 200 truckloads of soil, and built the oval-shaped Innovation Room. The focal point is the 24-foot-wide interactive Immersion Wall.
“How do you capture the students’ attention, and how do you get them involved in a lesson?” Falkner asks. “One of the ways teachers do that is through visuals. But what we found is, they use multiple things at the same time. The Immersion Wall can have one large map, or we can add Google Earth to make it real-time, or we can segment those so we can show them at one time.”
The school hired CineMassive to create the wall, which comprises 18 individual screens that students can control on iPads. A class might “illuminate” poems, reciting the words and following along on their iPads. In other cases, students have interviewed NASA scientists and Skyped with students in other cities. “Each one of the panels is independent, so 18 things can be happening at one time,” Falkner says. “It is really, really neat.”
