Microsoft Starts a High School
 

This kicks ass!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/ptech/0....ap/index.html

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has famously called high schools "obsolete" and warned about their effect on U.S. competitiveness. Now, his company has a chance to prove that it can help fix the woes of public education.

After three years of planning, the Microsoft Corp.-designed "School of the Future" opened its doors Thursday, a gleaming white modern facility looking out of place amid rows of ramshackle homes in a working-class West Philadelphia neighborhood.

The school is being touted as unlike any in the world, with not only a high-tech building -- students have digital lockers and teachers use interactive "smart boards" -- but also a learning process modeled on Microsoft's management techniques.

"Philadelphia came to us ... and asked us to design a school," said Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer of Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft. "We're going to take our best shot."

The company didn't pay the $63 million cost -- that was borne by the Philadelphia School District -- but shared its personnel and management skills. About 170 teens, nearly all black and mainly low-income, were chosen by lottery to make up the freshman class. The school eventually plans to enroll up to 750 students.

Sabria Johnson, a 14-year-old from West Philadelphia, said she is excited to be attending the school.

"We're getting a chance to do something new," said the freshman, who hopes one day to go to Harvard or to the London College of Fashion. "We don't get a lot of opportunities like the suburban kids."

Mundie said companies have long been concerned that schools aren't churning out graduates with the skills and know-how that businesses require in employees to compete globally -- and mental acuity is especially critical to Microsoft.

"Our raw material is smart people," he said.

School district CEO Paul Vallas said he was impressed by more than just the company's technology.

"I was also taken by their culture," Vallas said. "They created a culture within which ideas can be generated and acted upon."

At the 162,000-square-foot high school, which sits on nearly eight acres, the day starts at 9:15 a.m. and ends at 4:19 p.m., simulating the typical work day. Officials said studies show students do better when they start later in the day.

Students -- who are called "learners" -- use smart cards to register attendance, open their digital lockers and track calories they consume. They carry laptops, not books, and the entire campus has wireless Internet access.

Teachers, or "educators," rather than using blackboards, have interactive "smart boards" that allow teachers to zoom in and out, write or draw, and even link to the Internet.

There's no library, but an "interactive learning center" where information is all digital and a "multimedia specialist" will help out students.

Instead of a cafeteria, there's a food court with restaurant-style seating. The performance center -- where two sections rotate close to create a smaller space -- replaces the typical auditorium.

"This is completely different from any Philadelphia school I've ever seen," said Tramelle Hicks, 39, of West Philadelphia, whose 15-year-old daughter, Kierra, is going to the school. She said she believes her daughter would benefit from learning strategic and organizational skills from Microsoft.

The high school will use an "education competency wheel," patterned after a set of desirable traits Microsoft encourages among its employees. Officials, teachers and students are to be trained in dozens of skills, including organizing and planning, negotiating, dealing with ambiguity and managing relationships.

Students have scheduled appointments with teachers, typed into their online calendars, instead of being limited to structured times for classes. Their laptops carry software that assesses how quickly they're learning the lesson. If they get it, they'll dive deeper into the subject. If not, they get remedial help.

Lessons will have more incorporation of current events to teach subjects. For instance, a question of whether Philadelphia is safe from the avian flu will teach students about geography, science and history.

"Learning is not just going to school," said Shirley Grover, the school's energetic principal who came from the American School in Milan, Italy. "Learning is equal to life."

In addition, students at the school must apply to college to get a diploma.

This new approach to education has sparked the interest of Doug Lynch, vice dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

"Two things are quite intriguing -- the willingness of the district and Microsoft to try something different," Lynch said. He cautioned, however, that while trying new methods may be valuable "we have to be careful because you're messing with kids' lives."

damn i want to go back to highschool

10 bucks says 50% of the laptops get pawned in the 1st year

Interesting experiment. Why does he think highschools are obsolete? How are people learning in other countries? Are the nations whose kids are leading in academics attending schools lined with computers and the best technology at their fingertips?

it should be very interesting

$63 million dollars? If I lived there, I'd be really pissed that the government decided to spend that much money on an experement which has not even been proven. And why didnt Microsoft pay for it? Surely they can afford it.

It sounds to me like a huge amount of money wasted on fancy stuff. Kids today dont need more things to beep and flash at them. They need less distractions. And public schools are obsolete as a whole. I like the Libertarian party's approach to education much, much better.

Keeps runaway spending binges like this from ever taking flight.

Wow! That man never runs of great visions..

i disagree with you. education in the us sucks for the most part. i think school should be more like the work environment. technology can be used to help kids get real world education and also learn faster.

i am interested in seeing if this makes a big difference since it seems that most of the kids are low income minority. i hope it works out and become a model for future schools...

I agree.... it takes more than fancy equipment to build minds. It can help, but I don't think that the root problems of the American educational system stem from not having $63 million schools in every district.

would love to see some pictures of it

it crashed

this thread is useless without...

I wouldn't mind attending a high school like that :thumbsup

There's no library, but an "interactive learning center" where information is all digital and a "multimedia specialist" will help out students.

And so it begins my friends, the demise of those paper monsters that have cost so many lives over the years. Through Gate?s mighty hands shall they fall before the might of the Empire, cleansing us from their evil inked pages once and for all. No longer shall books be allowed to have their way with our women and children, no longer shall we have to worry about trees giving up their lives for these creations of hatred and propaganda. NO LONGER shall we have to fear paper cuts!

Justice shall yet be served to these paper menaces. Do your part people, pick up a lighter and the nearest book you can find and set it ablaze. Destroy it as it would destroy you if given the opportunity. And don?t just stop at one book: destroy them one after another, showing them that you are not going to take it up the ass anymore!

High schools ARE obsolete. Go visit one. Kids spend time getting into trouble and making other kids feel like shit. Its fun but not educational.

Im all for it if they can keep it a charter style school. Keep out the teachers union. Pay the teachers on performance. Oh and fire any that get lazy or do not meet set standards of performance.

A while back I read an article about this and he basically said, as I remember it, that high schools are always behing the times and they do not teach the kids the skills they need to compete in the modern workplace. Also schools have so many students that the teachers are forced to teach to the slowest student. If you have 30 kids in the class and half of them get it and the other half don't the half that get it are forced to wait around while they go over agian and agian for the slower kids. It looks like this system tried to fix that by letting the kids that understand a lesson move on by themselves and frees the teacher up to help the slower kids without slowing down the faster ones.

Something need to be done in our public schools because they keep throwing money at the system and nothing ever seems to improve.

sounds pretty cool

I hope they could really realize that plan.