High school learns to love students' tech habits

Mimi Shirley

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/31/tech/innovation/new-tech-high-school/

This article by Heather Kelly talks about the success a technology-based public high school in California. It sounds like the school is having the ideal experience. The staff, students and community as a whole has taken to the idea of this technology based curriculum.

The school has the support form the parents at home. For parent't who aren't technologically savvy the new curriculum provides the opportunity for parents to have more interaction with their children by being walked through step-by-step by their child. Which in turn is a good lesson for the students. By being able to walk their parents through assignments shows that they are familiar with and are able to use the new technology as well as the subject material.

Besides the technological and content material, students are also building trust and learning responsibility. Whether it is caring for the supplies or just using the open web, students at The New Technology School at Napa are being careful with this heavy trust program. The school believes in "teaching responsibility" as opposed to battling it. They rely on trust and feel that unrestricted web access (without filters) is a privilege.

A lot of the classes are found on cloud. Students no longer have to rely on school issued equipment, but can bring their own. There are some challenges, but overall their program seems to be running well. I think this is fantastic and convenient but slightly unrealistic. It would be fantastic if all of our students had the access to technology throughout their education much like the Napa students. Hopefully one day we'll get there. It will be interesting to see the differences between a technology-based education and a more traditional education where technology is used in moderation. It makes me wonder, though technology-based students may have the upper hand when it comes to new technology, if the organizational, social and skills without autocorrect will be noticeably different to the traditional student. I would be interested in some statistics.

Technology is always changing and with that, so is education. Will students catching up on the latest and ever-changing technology be left needing to catch up in life offline?