Cappuccino Culture in High Schools

My friend Steve Cavrak from the University of Vermont sent me a fascinating article describing how 'In some schools classrooms are being designed to resemble cyber cafés.'
The article, from The Independent, is entitled Secondary teaching: Cappuccino culture for teenagers.

'At Colne Community School in Brightlingsea, Essex, the ICT Learning Centre – despite its 60 or so matt black, flat-screen computers – is designed to look more like a coffee bar than a secondary school, according to Mark Thomson, assistant principal.
Yet despite the significant increases in GCSE grades, the better coursework presentation and what he calls "rising engagement levels among less motivated pupils" that have followed a £3m investment in technology, Colne's cyber café is just the start of things.'

In the article Virginia Matthews describes how some British schools are using technology and new classroom design to engage students and to help them learn.
Traditional classrooms in schools and other educational institutions are dreadful places in which to spend the majority of one's youth. The are poorly designed and uncomfortable – and they haven't changed appreciably in 200 years. I'm pleased to see that some schools are making significant changes.