Program+Outcomes


 * //Classrooms for the Future//** seeks to comparably equip core curricular classrooms in public high schools and comprehensive AVTS/CTCs across the Commonwealth; however, this initiative is not about what schools get – it’s about what they get out of it.

The introduction of technology into a classroom focuses, at first, on the technology as teachers and students alike become familiar with a new tool. However, once the novelty is gone technology can be used as commonly as a textbook or a pencil is used in today’s classrooms. Just as a teacher creates lesson plans based upon textbook passages or assigns written work, technology must be frequently and similarly employed if it is to become seamlessly integrated with teaching and learning.


 * //Classrooms for the Future//** is about recognizing and embracing the need for reform, understanding the role of technology as a catalyst for, and adopting practices that may be unfamiliar.

For teachers, it can be about moving from lecturer to facilitator of student-driven work. But every destination begins with a single step and technology-enabled, project-based modules are a great way to start the journey. For instance:
 * A Social Studies teacher might have students create a weblog to identify views on the most significant causes of World War II which can then be used as theses for collaborative multimedia presentations.
 * Math teachers might use the design and construction of virtual stair systems as a meaningful, standards-based approach to bridge theory and practice.
 * English teachers might develop webquests with rubrics that support critical literacy and advanced research skills through producing digital movies, composing songs, or writing narrative essays on Langston Hughes’s poetry.
 * Science teachers might lead students on a NASA eMission where they need to analyze jet propulsion forces and cargo load requirements to outmaneuver a meteorite.

And for students, it can be about moving from passive listener to active learner through contextual immersion. For example, students might:
 * Examine artifacts of the antebellum South and then participate in web-based interactive discussions with anthropologists to better understand the cultural exigencies that lead to slavery.
 * Observe Martin Luther King delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech and then digitally produce a presentation that might have similar social and historical ramifications on a group of people today.
 * Travel underwater to discover sunken treasures of lost civilizations or the golden scales of a new species of fish through live streaming video from a research vessel.
 * Create a 'virtual' universe using online Hubble Space Telescope resources and calculate the event horizon around a black hole or the lifespan of a red dwarf star.
 * Take on a leadership role in a simulation that places the student at a particular historical moment, like Germany’s successful annexation of Austria in World War II. The student has to make economic, military and international and domestic policy decisions, each of which results its own consequences that may, or may not, match the historical record.

As evidenced by these examples, not only is technology relevant to the world in which we live, it can transform the learning experience – but it requires a fundamental shift in methodologies. Therefore, we have provided selected guidelines and indicators for developing 21st Century students, teachers, and instructional settings, as well as some recent research and reports on analogous programs, to assist you to build your **//Classrooms for the Future//**.

//(Information found on [|PDE])//