The use of technology in the 21st century workplace is dynamic and pervasive, changing and evolving as new tools revolutionize the way we communicate and create.  Our use of technology at Technology High has, since the inception of school, been intentionally omnipresent and evolutionary, just as it is in the 21st century workplace.  We have sought to employ the richness of technology tools in every subject and have embraced the change in new technologies as a chance to improve our students’ understanding of their world.  There are several key components that will help demonstrate how this signature practice has been implemented at Tech High. 

All students at Technology High are required to take four years of engineering coursework.  These courses are taught by experts in their fields and, by design, employ a great deal of technology, both computer and mechanical technology.  In these project-based courses, students master electronic circuits through the use of hands-on prototyping breadboards and by generating schematics with modern CAD programs (eg. MiniCAD, AutoCAD).  Students learn root cause analysis and CAPA using multimedia programs developed by the Harvard School of Business.  They learn meteorology by studying online satellite loops from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  One of the best known components of the Tech High program is our robotics team and our robotics workshop program, an offshoot of our engineering program.  Students use sophisticated tools to create various robots to compete in FIRST robotics competitions.  Students use a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) computer connected to a three axis mill that allows them to make computer drawings of components and have the mill cut the component out of blocks of aluminum.  Students also program the robots they design and manufacture using C and C++ programming languages.  All of this innovation and dedication earned the Tech High Robotics program a trip to the FIRST National Robotics Competition in Atlanta, the FIRST Engineering Inspiration Award, and the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Entrepreneurship Award for a program that developed a framework for a comprehensive business plan in order to scope, manage, and obtain the teams objectives.

The engineering and robotics programs at Technology High are integral components in our signature practice of using technology to prepare our students for the future.  These programs attract students to our school and help to retain students that might not otherwise make it to graduation.  These programs provide access to state of the art tools for students of all socioeconomic backgrounds, leveling the playing field when it comes to learning what tomorrow’s engineers will need to know.

Another key component of Tech High’s signature practice of use of technology is the thriving online community made up of teachers, staff, students, and parents.  Tech High has a robust online presence, organized through a website that is much more than a traditional website that functions as merely a static information reservoir.  The Tech High website is a perfect example of Web 2.0 technologies, where users interact with users and where users create content.  A great example of this revolutionary new trend in communication is the Tech High Blogroll.  We have over 140 bloggers at Tech High and all of their blogs are networked together through the Tech High Blogroll.  Bloggers interlink their blog entries, creating a rich digital conversation that connects Tech High bloggers to one another, to their families at home, and to like minded individuals around the world.  Students proudly publish their work online, work that spans disciplines from the sciences to politics and literature to mathematics.  Because they are required to push their work into the public realm, students take greater care with their work.  The results have shown a marked improvement in student products across all sub-groups of the population.  Furthermore, parents become more involved in the school community and in their student’s education when they can see the type of work that their student is creating.  It brings the parent into the digital classroom and starts more conversations about school content at home.  This use of technology at Tech High not only improves student performance, it also builds school community.

These two key components, our engineering program and our online community, are just the surface of our signature practice of technology use.  Our use of technology has also connected our staff in discussion, opening up new models of professional development.  We have also sought to make our use of technology fiscally responsible; much of the software we employ at Tech High is free and open-source, and many of the mechanical technologies we employ are donated equipment that students and staff have refurbished. It is our goal to model an easily reproducible technology plan, one that school’s with limited resources could still duplicate.  Making the most out of free and recycled technologies appears to be yet another important skill for the 21st century.

Tech High’s use of technology also addresses all four themes in the SSPI P-16 Council’s report Closing the Achievement Gap.  Our use of technology provides access to modern tools for all students; it establishes a culture and climate of learning the reflects the collaborative nature of the 21st century workplace; it creates high expectations that both students and teachers are held to because our work is so public; it also serves as major part of our strategy to close the achievement gap by improving the quality of instruction, helping to differentiate instruction, and by helping to extend instructional time.

By saturating instruction at Technology High with technology tools, we provide access to essential learning for every student that enrolls at Tech High.  A simple computer that can connect to the internet opens up a world of experiences to the user.  However, not all of our students have access to this technology at home.  By integrating instruction at Tech High with the use of technology, students from all socioeconomic backgrounds gain access to the tools and instruction they will need for their futures.  Our use of technology enables rigorous instruction by allowing us to bring in tools that challenge, motivate, and engage all learners.

Consider the following class session as just one example of how our use of technology provides meaningful access for students. During a discussion on the topic of global warming, we can not only view sections of Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, we can project, through an LCD projector, no less than twenty different video podcasts of Al Gore speaking in greater detail on the nuances of his work.  We can then view criticisms of the research on other video podcasts, reading the comments of others who have viewed the podcast and then adding our own comments to the conversation.  Then we fan out on the internet to investigate different sub-questions that have been raised, grabbing Flash animations of weather patterns, RSS feeds from groups on both sides of the issue, and links from a threaded forum set up for high school students to discuss the issues they will face as adults.  We then post all of our findings on the project wiki, an online sharing space, and engage in a final face-to-face discussion about the days work before the end of class.  Students can then extend this discussion at home by going online to show their family the day’s work, with family members easily able to add their comments and expertise on the project wiki as well.  Class sessions like this regularly play out at Tech High, providing access to rigorous instruction and extra learning opportunities beyond the school day.  Planning and engaging in these sessions, are highly qualified teachers who are both guides for the sessions and participants in the learning.

Because Tech High students and staff use technology to create distinct products, there is an archive of student contributions to the program.  There is a physical robot that a student can point to and say, “I made that drive train” and there is a web link that they can send their friends of a History project hosted on the school server.  The result is that students take great pride in their work and there is a great sense of belonging and contributing to the Tech High program.  This has created a strong and beautiful culture and climate at Tech High, one that celebrates student achievement not just within the school but with the larger school community.

Through our use of technology, the school community has also communicated its high expectations for our program.  We are able to measure data to see if our high expectations are being meet using traditional methods (STAR scores, CAHSEE scores, grade reports), but because of our use of technology and the archive it affords, we can measure student progress in a detailed way by simply looking at the archive of their work.  All of our courses have websites with agendas, grades, and project information; the expectations are clear and whether or not a student meets these expectations is clear to the student, the teacher, and to the student’s family at home.

Technology High’s use of technology has proved to be a powerful network of strategies that closes the achievement gap at Tech High.  By employing all of the resources of the new Web 2.0, our staff has been able to improve the quality of instruction by extending instruction time to students without the need to have the teacher be omnipresent; the projects continue online and the internet never closes.  Our use of technology has increased teacher collaboration time and has opened up our collaboration between teachers and specialists outside of our physical setting.  Our use of technology has also opened up strategies that have helped us to differentiate our instruction; remediation and enrichment become much easier when you have a developed digital toolbox to support all learners.

This use of technology also meets many of recommendations from the Aiming High report, particularly the recommendations for supporting student academic success and promoting family and community supports for student success.  For example, students’ academic success is supported when student-to-student discussions in the online community become a form of peer tutorial and parallel, student-led classes form based on the need and resources of the school community.  The digital community becomes a form of distance learning, where students still participate when at home or across the country.  Also, the range of topics available in our digital curriculum, and with our built in Academic Workshop course, independent studies are not only encourage, but required.

As the Aiming High report recommends, Tech High also uses technology to promote family and community supports for student success, providing an interactive college search website and the ability for Tech High students to use Tech High technology for the college classes they take right on campus.