Del. Schools Get Taste of 'Future' Technology

By Alison Kepner, The News Journal

9/20/06

While Delaware doesn't have any buildings with the bells and whistles -- or media attention -- of Microsoft's Philadelphia model of the School of the Future, some schools here are incorporating some of the technology being heralded to the north.

Red Clay Consolidated School District, for example, has a few interactive white boards, called Smart Boards. Each board costs about $1,500, and the total cost, including the projector and other equipment, is closer to $3,000.

Math teacher Ed Killheffer has a Smart Board at Cab Calloway School of the Arts. Just a few weeks into the school year, he already has seen the technology aid instruction and learning.

His honors precalculus class Tuesday learned the formulas for finding distance and midpoints. Killheffer projected a grid on the screen, then used his finger to draw lines between points.

The Smart Board allows Killheffer to control his computer's mouse from the front of the room, moving the cursor by dragging a finger across the board or tapping twice to double-click. He can write on the board with his finger or special pens. They disperse no ink, but the board senses which color he picked up.

When a problem requires a graphing calculator, Killheffer projects a Texas Instrument 84 model on the screen. Students watch him solve a problem using the calculator on the board. He can save screens from the calculator, dragging them to another document to create step-by-step explanations.

After class, Killheffer saves the work as PDF files, uploading them onto his class Web site so students can print the notes and refer to them as they do their homework.

It also means they don't have to spend class time struggling to jot down all the notes, allowing them to pay full attention to what Killheffer is saying.

"This way, I get them to interact with me," he said.

Parents can keep tabs on what their children are learning, and students with schedule conflicts that prevent them from enrolling in his class can take the course on their own. Three are doing so this semester, downloading his notes each day and meeting with him one-on-one if they need help.

"The kids have access to this. They can see it whenever they want," he said.

Paul Herdman, president of the Rodel Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to improving public education in Delaware, sees technology such as this and School of the Future's innovations as important investments for Delaware schools.

"As a sector, education doesn't maximize the use of technology," he said.

He envisions virtual online learning.

"A kid in a more rural part of the state can get Advanced Placement calculus even though he doesn't have a teacher in the building. Or that kid can be learning Mandarin from kids in China," Herdman said. "I hope we can bring some of these ideas to Delaware."