The 21st century High School requires new models of teaching, learning, and meaningful assessment. Instructional technology is one of the most exciting and significant ways to support and facilitate high school reform.

In order to obtain a snapshot of the infrastructure for, and the use of technology within the Commonwealth, the Pennsylvania Technology Inventory (PATI) is conducted on an annual basis. PATI also provides a means to explore changes in teaching practices that result from technology, as well as ascertain educator's views on technology's impact on student achievement.

In 2006 when Classrooms for the Future was started, the PATI data indicated that although technology was used throughout the Commonwealth, it was inconsistent and in many cases not available when teachers needed it. As a result, they did not regularly incorporate technology into their regular lesson plans.

A key principle of Classrooms for the Future is providing teachers the necessary technology-related professional development that helps teachers change teaching practices, which would have a significant impact on the results provided above.

Using the platform for infrastructure established through the Commonwealth's E-Fund and federal E-rate initiatives, Pennsylvania is building high-speed connectivity to all classrooms to enable 21st Century education to flourish. These connections make it possible to support timely and global communication and collaboration in classrooms.

Classrooms for the Future provides appropriate technology tools in classrooms for student use and provides extensive professional development and support for teachers and administrators to make sure that these technologies are effectively used. Schools are provided an instructional technology coach and are encouraged to work with a district leadership team including building, district, technology, library, teacher association and maintenance leadership to ensure effective implementation.

Thrill, Inspire, Capture Their Imagination

Students live in a digital world and our schools must adapt instruction to complement learning in today's environment. We have the opportunity and the responsibility to utilize research-based, technology-enabled instructional strategies to thrill, to inspire, and to capture the imagination of our students.  Classrooms for the Future creates environments for deeper cognitive development through

• inquiry,
• real and relevant project-based learning, and
• differentiated instruction.


In a Classroom for the Future:
Teachers are Students are
Facilitators Producers
Guides Apprentices
Co-investigators Co-explorers
Classrooms for the Future are 21st century instructional settings using 21st century techniques to enable 21st century children to succeed.

To support this reform, Classrooms for the Future is designed to ensure there are laptops in public high school English, math, science and social studies classrooms across Pennsylvania. A robust companion professional development program including instructional technology coaches in every participating school guarantees that high school teachers are prepared to integrate these and other technologies into their instructional practices.

High school students are poised to enter the global marketplace or to continue their education beyond preK-12, and it is our obligation to prepare them, within a short window of opportunity, for a "flat world" in which opportunities for jobs and higher education are highly competitive. By focusing on high schools, the program emphasizes these critical 21st Century skills while expanding learning opportunities, creating relevant and personalized information-driven learning environments, and ensuring our other investments in the success of these students, such as the state's Project 720, Dual Enrollment, Keystones: Technology Integrators, and Job Ready PA initiatives, are fully leveraged.

Goals
The overarching goals of the Classrooms for the Future program are to:

Classrooms for the Future seeks to comparably equip every core curricular classroom in public high schools and AVTS/CTC 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 and technology is as common as a textbook or a pencil, it can be overlooked and under-utilized.  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 change agent, 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 anti-bellum South and then webcast 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.

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.