The Program at a Glance

Since the fall of 2007, Harrison School District 2 (HSD2), in Colorado Springs, Colorado, has been piloting a 21st Century Curriculum program designed to "teach students skills/curriculum to become active learners that critically think and construct knowledge from resources through technology and experiences in a 'global' classroom." Housed within Carmel Middle School, the program involves completely rethinking the traditional curriculum. It has 80 students in the 7th and 8th grade working with tablet computers, and the district hopes to gradually expand the number of students and sites until it is a district-wide program.

Objectives

Each student will demonstrate knowledge in a variety of ways utilizing a computer, field trips, projects, in-depth hands on learning, and classroom interactions in the following classes:

• Critical Thinking and reasoning
• Information literacy
• Economics and globalization
• Math and science reasoning
• Foreign language (Chinese)
• The Arts

To Learn More, visit the district web site

Teachers and students participating in Harrison School District’s 21 st Century Curriculum pilot program are deciding whether students should take their tablets on the school trip to Japan. The middle school students have safely taken them with them as they interview CEOs and ranchers in the community--and they use them when they report back to the class. The decision to bring their entire tablet investment abroad is not so simple.

At Carmel Middle School, where the pilot is taking place, the goal is to mirror the way business uses technology, and the tablets are central to a curriculum that was created with those capabilities in mind. Regardless of what they decide about traveling with their computers, there’s one technology toy they have no doubt about bringing: Students will bring their flip video recorders to vlog the trip (their tour company hosts a webpage for parents to check daily to get reports and read the daily blogs).

For the middle schools involved in the 21 st Century pilot traditional courses and structuring are gone. In their stead, the course listings read:

• Economics and Globalization
• Information Literacy
• Critical Thinking and Logical Reasoning
• Mathematical and Science Reasoning
• The Arts (which include yoga and karate along with fine arts)
• Mandarin Chinese

These subjects can be woven together. A project for Economics and Globalization, for example, had metacognition questions embedded in them from the teacher for Critical Thinking and Logical Reasoning. Of course, the teachers collaborated digitally, and the students receive the assignment on their tablets. Eighty students are participating in the first year, and the district hopes to expand the program.

Funding

A grant proposal to the Daniels Fund allowed for the initial purchase of the school’s Gateway tablet laptops. The name of the organization and the cable entrepreneur who founded it are well known in the state. Its mission is “to partner with individuals, organizations, and communities to recognize inherent value, develop abilities, and provide opportunities in order to fulfill our collective potential.” Its vision is “a world where every individual has an equal opportunity to live a healthy, productive life.”

Julie Drago, coordinator, explains that the staff chose tablets rather than standard laptops for their students because “we liked the fact that the tablet allows them to use One Note and keep a notebook with their handwriting that can be converted into text. We felt the tablet was more versatile for our needs.”

Drago is confident that there are numerous creative strategies for funding the technology, though diverse models merit consideration. As she looks at the requirements for sustainability, she focuses curriculum. “Really it is the curriculum that makes the difference,” she explains, rather than the hardware alone. “It is the grouping, the interaction, the fieldtrips, the exploratory experiential activities that are really lending themselves to the students’ growth.”

Professional Development

Especially important to Drago is “the freedom the kids have in their thought process -- so that there is no ceiling on where they can take their assignments or where they can take their thinking.” Tablets are central to that freedom, and the staff understands this.

This pilot program was born with tablets in-hand. Teachers were selected on the basis of their understanding of 21 st century needs, given the vision created by the superintendent and school board, and asked to design the curriculum. Here, technology is not added to an existing program. Teachers walk in the door as experts, and they benefit most by communicating with each other.

How It's Working

Monthly parent meetings show a positive response. The students, according to parents, feel that school has become applicable and relevant. Indeed, the curriculum and the tablets are all about applying knowledge, not just acquiring it. Seventh graders, for example, just finished a multi-week project in which they researched and reported – with help from the Internet and graphing tools – on diseases that were having a global impact,

Drago sees middle school as an often-overlooked but ideal age for such a pilot. Elementary schools have given them foundational skills, and it is time to start applying those abilities to the world around them.

“Our vision is to make the 21st Century Curriculum not merely a “special” program for a select few, but to instigate a change in the entire educational system,” explains the web site FAQ. Indeed, they hope to expand next year. First, however, they need to study funding, community support, and student performance. That’s because they want to “get it right.”

And often that means taking time for planning and discussion. As principal Tina Vidovich , puts it, “We live in this instant society, and so there is always this pressure to get things out there on the Internet. Through our critical thinking classes and metacognition lessons, we have shown students that you can jump the gun on things. You want to make sure that the pressure of an instantaneous society, with the news and the media and everything flashing at us constantly, does make us stop and reflect.”