Did you know that lighting can affect the mood and behavior of students in a classroom the same as it can affect adults at their work? Now there is some experimental work which shows that school lighting can be changed at different times of the day to help students learn.
On a bright sunny morning we may feel very much awake and want to be more active than at other times. When a day is dark and dreary we may not feel like doing much. We all know that it is difficult to read or study when the lighting is not good and researchers have now taken these ideas a step further. Here is a nice summary of some of this work by Philips Corp.
Schools in Holland and Germany tried some new lighting developed for schools that can be changed during the day to help the students perform better. The link above takes you to the full story and includes a video showing the differences in the lighting.
In short:
The light system has four settings; Energy, Calm, Standard and Concentration. Philips installs the lighting with a a switch for the teacher to change levels.
The teachers use the very bright lighting (Energy) at the first part of the morning to help the students wake up and pay attention. They also use this light after lunch to give the children an energy boost or other times if the children seem to be getting tired.
If you read my earlier post on SAD, you can see some of the reasoning behind this lighting. We know that lighting can energize us and improve our moods. Changes in lighting can cause us to concentrate, relax, or feel more energetic.
Have you ever seen this lighting system in use?
Do you think it is a good idea?
Philips says: This also saves schools on their energy costs.
Green is good.
What do you think?
Comments
You are welcome, Bob, and I love reading your blogs a lot. I think I should tell you that. Thanks again for nice and useful information here on your blogs. Cheers!
It is an interesting study Yupa. Thank you for your comment.
Interesting, Bob, I never know that before. Thanks for this useful information.
I think we can try some simple experiments using some portable lighting and see what difference it makes. I know that coming into a gloomy classroom after being outside in the sunlight is one of the worst times to get students to pay attention to their work.
Mr. Bob,thanks a lot for the topic. It is very new to me. But it seems to me it is very important for us. Light must have impact in our life. Lighting can change our mood. Lighting can change our behavior and attitude to work. So we need to find out the impact of light in our life and focus it to right direction. Wish you all the best.
I would love to try it Expector. Maybe a school in Hong Kong can volunteer for a trial study. I will volunteer our school in Saudi Arabia if Philips would like to test it here.
It sounds a good idea. So, let's see if it can really help improve the students' performance.
Thirty years ago when I was experimenting with lighting, we just increased and decreased the number of lights (lamps) and the type of lights. This, no doubt, increased our electricity usage, but made a difference in people's moods and their work. With the modern LED (light emitting diode) technology the color and intensity of the lights should have little impact on the electricity cost. I would love to try this technology here in Saudi Arabia, when students need a change in mood. It sounds very reasonable and I wonder why it has taken so long to apply this idea to classrooms.