At Archbishop Stepinac High School in upstate New York, almost every textbook is now digital and accessible from students’ laptops and tablets. The cost of books has dropped from $600 to $150, and all of the digital textbooks are kept in cloud storage. And more than just migrating traditional content onto a screen, the digital textbooks offer a much richer learning experience. The material is supplemented with videos, assessments, virtual labs and blogging capability. Students can also highlight passages or write notes in the margins without damaging a book for other students. Teachers say that student learning has improved, and homework with the digital texts is more productive, so they can engage students in more discussion and analysis in class. As tablets and computers become less expensive and more online lessons and books become available, either through publishers or through platforms that teachers find or create themselves, more students will benefit from digital textbooks and materials. “It’s all great,” said one Stepinac junior. “As long as the Wi-Fi doesn’t go down.”
Tag: high school
What if Students and Teachers Became Equals?
Usually teachers run classrooms and assess student work. But some educators at the Brooklyn Collaborative Studies high school find that students learn better when they take responsibility for their own learning. So teachers are leaving the front of the room and sitting in desks just like their students. “The students create the class,” one teacher says. “It’s not guided, except by what they’re saying. It’s breaking down all the old paradigms.”
The ‘High-Tech Ride’ That’s Getting Kids Excited about Coding
Rather than trying to motivate students with statistics on juicy job prospects, Project Lead the Way teaches them to create mobile apps—a “high-tech ride” they can test drive on a tablet as they code or show off on their phones once it’s completed. The nationwide program—now in 60 high schools—aims to get students excited about the complex subject of computer language by making technology not just something that students can use, but something they can create.
Why 5 States Are Introducing Longer School Days
Schools in Connecticut, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York and Tennessee are redesigning their 2014-2015 schedules to include an extra 300 hours per year. Those hours will be used to provide students (most in high-poverty areas) with extra instruction and enrichment, like letting students experiment with personalized learning technologies or teaching them about world cultures, healthy living, foreign languages, independent study, and art. “We really did this because we really believe that students can benefit from these enrichment activities and the typical school does not accommodate all of that learning,” said one Connecticut superintendent.