K-12: Innovative Schools

This page is part of a bibliography/appendix for ‘The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age’ project. It is a work in progress. It is not meant to be an exhaustive or all-inclusive list but is instead a resource for educators and learners striving to make a difference in a digital age. It is also a collaborative effort and will constantly evolve to take into consideration suggestions and feedback. Please let us know what you think by using the comment tool located at the bottom of the page. For more information about this document please see the introductory page.

K-12: INNOVATIVE SCHOOLS

Argyle Magnet School for Information Technology: Silver Spring, Maryland – http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/schools/argylems/
• At Argyle Middle School all students must take a comprehensive technology course each year, earning them a national technology certification. However, students may choose to take a second strand of elective courses that focuses on either programming or digital media. The digital media program, in particular, encourages students to work in teams to develop, market, and create video games, digital music, and digital art. Students are taught to solve problems and explore new information with technological tools available in their Instructional Media Center.

Arthur F. Smith Middle Magnet School: Alexandria, Louisiana – http://www.rapidesmagnet.net/schools/smithjr.php
• At the Arthur F. Smith Middle Magnet School students learn and gain professional training through a curriculum with an emphasis on communication arts. The program was the first in Louisiana to offer middle school students the opportunity to learn animation and digital editing using current media industry standards. Each student works throughout their time at Arthur F. Smith to build a digital and printed portfolio, acquiring cutting-edge technology skills in the process. The goal of this project is to allow students to experience the power of media communication and to give them an opportunity to develop their creative potential. Teachers at Arthur F. Smith are organized into cross-curricular teams and they coordinate interdisciplinary and technology enhanced lessons and projects in such a way that the students become active participants in the learning process.

Beacon School: New York, New York – http://www.beaconschool.org/
• The Beacon School was founded in 1993 by teachers from the Computer School (see below) who wanted to create a high school based on the same principles of technological knowledge and global awareness. The school is located in a converted warehouse that has been retrofitted to accommodate an impressive array of technologies. Beacon prides itself on its extensive use of the internet: all teachers and students have their own e-mail addresses and many have created personal websites. However, this focus on electronic communication has not left students without avenues for personal contact and collaboration. For example, each year they must demonstrate their mastery of the curriculum by presenting independent research projects to a panel of teachers. In developing these projects students are encouraged to make use of the school’s many high tech labs and resources. Another popular program is the annual film festival in which students share and critique each other’s digital media projects.

Brooks Global Studies Extended Year Magnet School: Greensboro, North Carolina – http://schoolcenter.gcsnc.com/education/school/school.php?sectionid=6952
• At Brooks they believe that rapid improvements in technology and communications have made it essential for today's young people to learn about the world and human cultures. Thus, the focus of the school is global literacy with a commitment to collaborative learning and technology. The global studies program emphasizes the five major geography themes developed by the National Geographic Society: location (exactly where on the earth's surface places are found); place (the physical and human characteristics of specific places that set them apart from others); relationships within places (how humans interact with their environment); movement (how people, products, information, and ideas within and among countries change); and regions (how regions form and develop).

Center for Advanced Technologies, Lakewood High School: St. Petersburg, Florida – http://www.cat.pinellas.k12.fl.us/Default.aspx
• The Center for Advanced Technologies is a public school magnet program housed within Lakewood High School. The program opened in 1990 and moved into its own building in 1991. Each year students attending Lakewood must apply for one of the approximately 150 places in the selective CAT program. Aside from small class sizes and a team of highly trained teachers, the CAT program offers its students access to multi-media labs, computer workstations, and a fully equipped television studio where a daily live television show and weekly newsmagazine is produced for the local FOX network affiliate.

The Computer School: New York, New York – http://www.thecomputerschool.org/index.php
• This middle school was founded in 1983 as a result of a grant from the developers of the Logo program at MIT. Although computer programming and technology have left Logo’s green turtle far behind, the Computer School continues to focus on its original mission: to educate children to become technologically aware and to understand the power of the computer and related technology to access information and resources spread throughout the global community. In order to reach these goals technology is integrated into all aspects of the curriculum and school life. The results are, ideally, well-rounded students who are able to express themselves clearly and coherently through a variety of technology and media.

Denali Borough School District: Alaska – http://denali.ak.schoolwebpages.com/education/school/school.php?sectionid=2
• Beginning in the fall of 2004 laptops were distributed to all 6th-12th grade students and teachers in the remote Denali Borough School District. Unlike many such programs, which often fail to see desired results due to the privileging of equipment over more fundamental change, the Denali Borough is committed to accompanying the laptops with a long-term revision of the curriculum and a new approach to learning. Their program has created a classroom environment in which students take on greater responsibility for their own education and work together with their teachers to learn new skills and ways of approaching problems. The traditional classroom structure and environment has been replaced by a project-based curriculum in which students use networked programs to create digital research projects, electronic drop-boxes to turn in assignments, and school servers to store their work. In the years since the program was initiated academic performance has increased and discipline referrals have decreased. The borough’s home-schooled students were also the only group in the state to meet the national AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) standard. The mission of the project is as follows: The Denali Borough School District, with proactive student, parent and community involvement, provides a nurturing, diverse, quality education that empowers students, promotes life-long learning, and produces conscious locally involved citizens.

Francis Scott Key Technology Magnet School: Baltimore, MD – http://www.fsk.org/school/index.html
• At Francis Scott Key technology is integrated into instruction to create a curriculum that is able to adapt to a very diverse population, including developmentally delayed and ESOL students. For example, tools such as Smart-Boards and the Opass (an interpretive device) are used to enhance the learning environment for these students. Teachers and students also engage in learning activities in a Distance Learning Lab (DLL) in which the walls of the classroom are literally and figuratively broken down to encourage collaborative telecommunication activities with other students and teachers across the country.

Frost Lake Magnet School of Technology and Global Studies: St. Paul, Minnesota – http://frost.spps.org/
• Frost Lake is a K-6 (including a full-day kindergarten program) school in which students use a variety of technology tools to explore the theme of global studies. They call themselves a school that is ‘technology infused, globally based, and literacy focused.’ What makes Frost Lake unique is its small class size (no more than 22 students in grades K-4) and an emphasis on collaborative instruction and the use of technology to enhance and support teaching and learning in every classroom.

Gaming School: New York, New York
• Slated to open in the fall of 2009, the Gaming School is a joint venture between the Gamelab Institute of Play and the nonprofit organization New Visions for Public Schools. This innovative middle and high school redefines the learning paradigm and actively seeks to change the way institutions of learning are conceived of and built by blurring the traditional line between learning and play. It aims to prepare students for a digitally mediated future through a curriculum structured around the creation and execution of alternate reality games. The project will also act as a demonstration and research site for alternative trends in education funded in part by the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Initiative.

Gary & Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High School: San Diego (Point Loma), California – http://www.hightechhigh.org/
• Housed in a converted naval training warehouse, HTHS makes maximum use of an open floor plan, high ceilings, and low central walls to encourage students and teachers to interact more freely. Students learn in specialized labs equipped with computer workstations as opposed to traditional classrooms. This redefinition of conventional notions of face-to-face interactions within institutional learning spaces supports an integrated project-based curriculum in which digital portfolios and internships are part of the curriculum. The goal of this publicly funded charter high school is to provide its approximately 400 students (drawn from the ethnically diverse surrounding urban community) with the technical experience, academic excellence and leadership skills that will allow them to succeed in today's high-tech industries. The school was originally conceived by a coalition of San Diego business leaders and educators who founded HTH Learning, a private non-profit organization, to oversea the development and construction of the school. Since it was first authorized as a single charter high school in 2000, HTHS has expanded significantly and is now part of a family of seven K-12 schools. The HTHS network does not believe in centralized management for its member schools but instead gives them the freedom to maneuver within the original set of design principles, thereby allowing them to continually adapt to local circumstances. The network has received significant funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology: Brooklyn, New York – http://www.hstat.org
• HSTAT is dedicated to the integration of an interdisciplinary curriculum with the creation and modification of online content. It is the only high school in New York City to have its own Web server and to teach every student HTML. Among the school’s high tech offerings is a course specifically dedicated to creating and maintaining the school’s website (which ironically has been down for some time now) and a fully equipped television studio.

Johnson Street Global Studies K-8 Extended Year Magnet School: High Point, North Carolina – http://schoolcenter.gcsnc.com/education/school/school.php?sectionid=7019
• Johnson Street Global Studies Magnet School originated as an elementary school and expanded to include a pre-kindergarten and middle school program in July of 2006. The Global Studies theme provides an environment in which students learn about global issues and the relationships and interdependence among peoples and nations. Beginning in kindergarten, students study two different countries each year and by the end of eighth grade they have covered topics such as the economics, education, environmental conditions, cultures and technologies of countries on each of the seven continents.

Jonas Salk Middle School: Sacramento, California
• The Jonas Salk Middle School has achieved a complete turnaround in student and teacher commitment to learning through the implementation of a technology-infused curriculum. With the help of funding and technology support from Apple Computers the school now organizes its days around the creation and execution of collaborative assignments. One of the most popular of these programs is the daily newscast, which is almost entirely student-produced and stresses innovation through digital storytelling. The school has found, not surprisingly, that when students were encouraged to share their work with their peers via online networking the turn-in rate rose to nearly 100 percent.

Kellman Corporate Community School: Chicago, Illinois
• Kellman Corporate Community School was founded in 1988 by Chicago businessman Joseph Kellman. Kellman wanted to create a school in which business concepts were integrated into the educational environment. As in a well-run business, teachers and students are expected to meet frequently, exchange ideas and collaborate. Although the school is public, the Kellman Family Foundation funds an extra hour of class Monday through Thursday. These ‘banked’ hours allow the students to leave school at noon on Fridays, giving teachers the rest of the afternoon for professional development. Due to its location in one of Chicago’s poorest African-American neighborhoods, the school’s largest obstacle was finding a way to give its students equal access to technology and media. Thus Kellman seeks to level the playing field and bridge the digital gap by giving each student in grades 4-8 a wireless laptop. As an added bonus, each graduating eighth-grader also receives the gift of a laptop to take to high school (the computers used during the previous years were leased).

New Technology High School: Napa, California – http://www.newtechhigh.org/Website2007/index.html
• NTHS advocates a union of technology and curriculum. Students are taught by teams of teachers who take a student-centered approach in the classroom, creating computer-based academic content through the development of problem-solving and experiential assignments. Classes are not organized around the traditional divisions of subject, but are instead interdisciplinary and collaborative. For example, as a final project, students create an online portfolio of their NTHS career from 10th grade through 12th grade that is then shared through digital networking. The school also offers a variety of other clubs and organizations, often technology-oriented, that are student-created and student-driven. Although originally developed for the community of Napa, California, the New Technology High School network now includes 25 schools with seven in northern California, four in southern California, six in North Carolina, two in Oregon and Louisiana, and one each in Alaska, Colorado, Illinois, and Texas.

NYC Museum School: New York, New York – http://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolPortals/02/M414/default.htm
• The 400 high-school students at the NYC Museum School spend up to three days a week at a chosen museum (either the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, and the South Street Seaport Museum) studying with specialists and museum educators. Students work on different projects depending on which museum they choose (i.e. geometry and computer animation at the Children’s Museum or navigation at the South Street Seaport Museum. At the end of their senior year each student shares a thesis-like project on a chosen theme. The NYC Museum School was founded in 1994 by a former Brooklyn Museum assistant director in partnership with a former teacher with the Lab School in New York. It has been featured in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ‘High Schools for the New Millennium’ Report.

Putnam Valley Middle School: Putnam Valley, NY – http://www.pvcsd.org/ms/index.php
• Putnam Valley Middle School aims to create an environment where learning is a collaborative experience between teachers and students. The school is involved in Apple Computers’ 1 to 1 learning program, which allows for every 7th and 8th grader to receive a personal laptop computer. Consultants from Apple were then brought in to conduct workshops on how best to integrate the use of technology into the curriculum. Putnam, and other school’s participating in Apple’s 1 to 1 learning program, hope that through consistent and extended access to technology students will be better prepared for the job market of the future.

School of the Future: New York, New York – http://www.sofechalk.org/home.aspx
• The School of the Future in New York City is one of many schools successfully integrating the principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools (small class size, an emphasis on depth rather than coverage, teachers who function as coaches and guides, an interdisciplinary curriculum, the creative use of technological resources, and collaboration between teachers – http://www.essentialschools.org). The curriculum at this 6th-12th grade institution is project-based and focuses on peer-to-peer evaluation. Eighth grade students must present a portfolio (often, but not exclusively, digital) to a panel of 6th and 7th grade students at the end of the year. This portfolio is used to evaluate whether they are ready for high school. High school students, for their part, must complete four separate research projects (one per year) that are exhibited/presented to a panel of fellow students, parents and teachers. These projects are designed and carried out entirely by the students, with guidance from a team of specialized teachers.

School of the Future: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – http://www.phila.k12.pa.us/offices/communications/press_releases/2006/09/07/soffacts.html and http://www.microsoft.com/education/SchoolofFuture.mspx
• The School of the Future in Philadelphia is unique in that it is the first urban high school to be built in a working partnership with a leading software company, Microsoft Corporation. The school opened in September 2006 and serves approximately 750 students in a state-of-the-art, high tech and ‘green’ facility. The school is not a magnet school: it was built in a low-income, high-crime rate neighborhood in the belief that the ‘school of the future’ must be accessible to all students, regardless of their economic status or existing skill sets. Thus, the school has set up a lottery system to ensure that every applicant has an equal chance to ‘cross the digital divide.’ Microsoft’s Partners in Learning initiative played an integral part in the design and conceptualization of the school, not through a monetary donation (The School of the Future is funded by the School District of Philadelphia), but through the development of new technologies for both teaching and administrative purposes. Among the most innovative, and controversial, of these technologies is a smart card that allows access to digital lockers and that tracks calories consumed during school meals (breakfast and dinner are also served before and after school). Class schedules and locations change every day (the goal being to break down our culture’s dependency on time and place) and all rooms are designed with flexible floor plans to foster teamwork and project-based learning. Instead of a library and textbooks all students are given a laptop with wireless access to the Interactive Learning Center, the school’s hub for interactive educational material. These laptops are linked to smartboards in every classroom and networked so that assignments and notes can be accessed even from home (eventually, through the ‘Wireless Philadelphia’ initiative web access will be universal, but until then the School of the Future has decided to subsidize its students’ home internet access). The building itself is also unique in its holistic approach. Rainwater is caught and repurposed for use in toilets, the roof is covered with vegetation to shield it from ultraviolet rays, panels embedded within the windows capture light and transform it into energy, room settings auto-adjust based on natural lighting and atmospheric conditions, and sensors in the all rooms turn lights on and off depending on whether the space is being used. The School of the Future is just the beginning for Philadelphia: it is part of a capital construction campaign that includes five new high schools, four elementary schools and additions and improvements to existing schools, all to be completed by 2008. The goal of this program is to reconstruct the learning environment—an alternative to the more common approach of overlaying a traditional curriculum with high-tech tool. A rebroadcast of a segment on the school from The News Hour with Jim Lehrer is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mug66WnoSk.

Walt Disney Magnet School: Chicago, IL – http://www.disney.cps.k12.il.us/
• The Walt Disney Magnet School’s approximately 1,500 lottery selected students are drawn from a variety of ethnic and economic backgrounds. The school aims to meet the needs of their diverse students through an arts and technology focused curriculum that takes place in an open-space environment. Projects are arranged around themes such as art, music, dance, animation, and digital music. At least once a year each student is able to carry out a two-week integrated art and technology project in the 30,000 square foot Communication Arts Center, which includes, among other things, an animation lab and a digital music lab. The goal of the curriculum is to train students to be independent and creative thinkers who have the tools to problem-solve in today’s technology-oriented landscape.

Webster High School: Tulsa, Oklahoma – http://www.tulsaschools.org/schools/webster/
• Webster High School is a magnet school that includes three strands: the Digital Media and Broadcasting strand, the Information Technology strand and the Journalism, Marketing and Advertising strand. All paths aim to give students access to essential knowledge and skills to prepare them for careers in the visual and print media industries. The campus includes a state-of-the-art student-run television studio that encourages for hands-on learning and collaborative thinking. The curriculum for Webster High School was developed in conjunction with leaders in professional associations, institutions of higher education and career technology.