Technology Counts - March 14, 2013 - 21

VIDEO: Educators and students at Lady Bird Johnson Middle School describe

how the school building enhances learning. www.edweek.org/go/tc13video

Photo by_Brandon Thibodeaux for Education Week

online curricula. They check out MacBook Airs at
the beginning of the school day for their work and
check the laptops back in before they go home.
“We want them to work here so they have
teachers here to help them,” says Dwyer. “The
teachers are constantly getting feedback [from
the online curricula], and every kid is on a personalized learning plan.”

CREATING LEARNING STATIONS
In a similar model, the Cornerstone Charter
Health High School in Detroit, a blended learning
program aimed at helping high schoolers considered academically at risk connect their learning to
careers in the health field, occupies a large open
space where 75 individual stations are set up.
Students learn under a flexible model in which
they spend a majority of their time working
through a competency-based online curriculum,
provided by Apex Learning or Compass Learning.
Drawing on data from those e-learning companies’ programs, teachers schedule workshops to
help small groups of students who may be struggling with a certain aspect of the curriculum. Students use desktop computers in their individual
stations to complete online coursework.
The school, which opened in August of last
year, enrolls 75 9th graders, 80 percent of whom
qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, says
Thomas Willis, the chief executive officer of Cornerstone Charter Schools. Cornerstone operates
three K-8 schools in Detroit and its suburbs in
addition to the high school.
The average student’s reading proficiency at
Cornerstone Charter Health High School is at the
6th grade level, and the average student’s math
competency is at the 4th grade level, says Willis.

“When you’ve got kids [performing] all the way
from the 1st grade level up to 10th grade, I don’t
know how to begin to serve all their needs [in a
regular classroom,]” he says. “In that way, this
model was perfectly designed.”
Students work through the curriculum at their
own pace. In some cases, they are able to make several semesters’ worth of progress in one semester,
allowing them to catch up if they are behind.
For now, students are required to attend school
from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. But Willis hopes that as
they move through the grade levels and reach
greater mastery of the curriculum, more-advanced students will be able to work in internships with local hospitals two or three days a
week while attending school the rest of the time.
That flexibility could provide an incentive for
students to work hard through the online curriculum, and could free up the facility to teach more
students, he says.
Willis also hopes the school will be able to find
a bigger facility—preferably its own building.
(Right now, the high school operates on the second floor of one of Cornerstone’s K-8 schools.)
The current model of 75 students in one room
does help create efficiencies, says Willis, because
teachers can monitor a large number of students
at one time.
The move to blended learning could provide the
ability to educate more students in less space,
says Curtis J. Bonk, a professor of instructional
systems technology in the school of education at
Indiana University Bloomington and the author
of The Handbook of Blended Learning.
“Not only are we going to reduce the space
[needed for schools], we’re going to change the
spaces and make them more like the kinds of
places where we see natural, seamless learning
happening,” he says.

Blended learning will allow students to attend
a physical school space only when they absolutely
need to, which will most likely be for collaborative
and hands-on projects, predicts Bonk.
“It’ll place an emphasis on social exchange, problem-solving, and trying things out in new ways,” he
says of such education.
That is already happening on some postsecondary campuses, which have done a better job of
harnessing the power of informal learning spaces
than the K-12 system has, says Philip Long, the
director of the Centre for Educational Innovation
and Technology at the University of Queensland in
Brisbane, Australia.
Long, a former associate director of the office
of educational innovation and technology at the
Masachusetts Institute of Technology, studied
learning-space design in the United States before
his move to Australia.
Colleges and universities routinely create informal learning spaces in hallways, cafeterias, and
multipurpose areas that promote collaborative
and reflective learning, he says.
Though most K-12 schools have not embraced
such an approach to space as rapidly, says Long,
postsecondary institutions also have lessons to learn
from what’s happening at the precollegiate level.
“Higher education can learn a lot from kindergarten classrooms,” he says. “They often have a single
large room that is zoned [for different activities].”
Long says that while having flexible and adaptable space is important to accommodate different
styles of learning and changes in technology, it’s
equally important to make sure those spaces fulfill their intended purposes well.
“There’s a fine line between flexible and useless,”
says Long. “We have typically fallen into the trap of
building boxes that try to be flexible, but in reality
do nothing well.” n

TECHNOLOGY COUNTS 2013

ENERGY LESSONS:

Jennifer Ascencio,
a field-trip facilitator
for the Irving
Independent School
District in Texas,
presents the
wind-energy
learning module
to visiting students
inside the main hall
of Lady Bird Johnson
Middle School.
The school’s main
hallway, which
attracts students
from around
the district, acts
as a small exhibit
area for displays on
how energy for the
building is produced.

>> www.edweek.org/go/tc13

http://www.edweek.org/go/tc13video http://www.edweek.org/go/tc13

Technology Counts - March 14, 2013

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