By Ana Campoy And Julia Harte
Summer vacation is over for students at Houston's A+ Unlimited
Potential school, but they won't be stuck in a traditional
brick-and-mortar classroom all day.
Instead, the middle school's students will have class in places
such as coffee shops, tapping into free wireless networks to
collaboratively edit texts, or visit city parks to photograph
wildflowers before researching them online. They will spend roughly
half their time out and about, and the other half at a rented space
in the heart of Houston's Museum District.
The private school of about 40 students, in its second year, is
part of a range of experiments around the country that have
students spending less time in classrooms, or even dismiss
traditional classroom instruction altogether--pushing the
boundaries of where, when and how students learn.
Proponents of the approach say portable devices and wireless
networks have the potential to redefine K-12 education, lifting
student performance by making learning more fun while lowering
administrative and facility costs.
But education experts and school officials say there are limits
to the model, noting that not all students have consistent access
to mobile devices, and that gadgets can be useless as a learning
tool without a good teacher who knows how to use them
effectively.
"Technology is awesome," said Cicely Benoit, an instructor at A+
UP. "But you still can't replace the human and physical
connection."
While schools like A+ UP are extremely rare, experts say,
efforts to incorporate mobile devices into traditional classroom
instruction are quickly gaining ground. A poll of roughly 2,600
school administrators around the country found 10% had policies
allowing students to use their own electronic devices to learn in
school in 2013, up from 3% in 2010, according to Project Tomorrow,
an Irvine, Calif., nonprofit education group that conducted the
survey.
"Learning is always mobile," said Richard Culatta, who heads the
Office of Education Technology at the U.S. Department of Education.
"But what we're talking about here is technology catching up with
that."
While studies show that technology can boost students' interest
in learning, its impact on achievement is less clear, said Darrell
West, director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the
Brookings Institution. "The research is inconclusive," he said.
At Harvard University's Graduate School of Education,
researchers are studying how mobile devices can help students learn
through a project called Ecomobile. Some 1,500 fifth- to
eighth-graders in Massachusetts, Georgia and New York have
participated, venturing into pond or stream ecosystems guided by
smartphones that use GPS coordinates to point out elements of
interest that aren't visible.
The phone might direct a student to an area that is frequented
by nocturnal animals, and then offer information about raccoons,
including night-vision video footage of them rummaging about.
"It helps them take what they're learning at school and making
it very useful on a personal level," said Amy Kamarainen, a senior
research manager involved in the project, which is funded by the
National Science Foundation.
At Nexus Academy of Royal Oak in Beverly Hills, Mich., one of
seven charter high schools operated by a unit of Pearson, an
education company, students are only on campus for four hours a
day, four days a week. Charters receive public funding but operate
independently.
Alexis Baker, a 16-year-old sophomore there, says the flexible
schedule gives her more time to spend on dance practice. Some
courses are taught by remote teachers via teleconference, with
students spread out in a lounge area on campus. To engage students
who seem shy or need extra help, instructors can deploy a robot
that transmits their faces and voices on a screen.
"A lot of people think that if you're doing an online class you
don't get to talk to the teacher," Ms. Baker said.
At Houston's A+ UP, students ride public transit to travel to
places beyond the classroom.
"You get to experience more stuff than at our old school," said
Laysha Chapa, a 12-year-old starting seventh grade.
School administrators say the approach is improving academic
performance. On the Stanford Achievement Test, which measures
student performance nationally, more than half the school's
students scored in the top half in math by the end of last school
year, up from 29% at the beginning. The gains in reading were
bigger, with 66% of the students scoring in the upper half at
year's end, up from 35%.
Per-student costs at A+ UP, which doesn't charge tuition, are
expected to be around $9,000 this school year, more than the $8,000
or so spent by neighboring districts. But officials believe
per-capita costs will decline as more students join.
The nonprofit behind the school, Houston A+ Challenge, is funded
by donors such as the Brown Foundation Inc., a Houston-based group,
and grocery chain H-E-B. Now, A+ UP is applying to become a
charter.
The school might have to work on changing attitudes about
technology in some places. Ms. Benoit, the instructor, had to
resort to pen and paper after officials at the Museum of Natural
Science balked when her students tried to use laptops to take notes
on an exhibit on ancient Egypt.
"The docents went berserk," she said. "You would have thought
that we were trying to steal the mummies."
Write to Ana Campoy at ana.campoy@wsj.com
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