Dyett Middle School in Chicago and the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora are far apart geographically, economically and socially.
Dyett’s South Side neighborhood is troubled by street gangs, drug deals and high unemployment. Almost all the school’s students come from poor families.
The Mathematics and Science Academy is an advanced high school with a quiet suburban campus. The state-funded school attracts some of the top students from across Illinois.
But soon 8th-graders at the middle school will be able to take the same advanced science course offered students at the academy-at the flick of a switch.
The two schools will be linked by fiber optic telephone lines, enabling teachers and students in Aurora to perform science experiments in front of video cameras while pupils in Chicago follow along watching television monitors.
New interactive technology is about to form an electronic fast track between the two schools, a development that educators say has the potential to provide all students with the same new educational opportunities while preparing them for an increasingly global society.
“I think it’s a great way of evening out the playing field,” said Dyett principal Yvonne Minor. “The students that they’ll interact with from IMSA will be smart and talented-but not geeks. They’ll see that it’s OK to be smart.”
Such technologies are opening up a whole new world for students in schools across the Chicago area. Beyond traditonal textbooks, they are being exposed to a vast and growing information network offered through computers, CD-ROM systems, on-line computer networks, fax machines and the latest in video and audio equipment.
Personal computers have been in many schools for more than a decade, but the rapid development of electronic equipment and computer software for homes and offices is fostering even more changes in the classroom. Some examples:
– At Hinsdale Central High School, biology students use computers to simulate dives off the Kohala coast of Hawaii to study fish. They can select their spots to dive, explore the water in any depth, see video of actual fish found there and research facts about the aquatic life.
– With the touch of a control pad, a teacher at Jacobs High School in Algonquin can switch on a camera, linking her class by a video conference system with neighboring Dundee-Crown and Hampshire High Schools.
– Middle school students in Vernon Hills, Buffalo Grove and Mundelein have access to an electronic encyclopedia and research articles through an on-line computer system that connects the school libraries to each other and to public libraries.
Most teachers view the infusion of technology in schools as positive both in the short and in the long term.
The immediate benefit, according to educators, is that today’s students take quickly to the high-tech teaching tools, since most have grown up with such gadgets as Nintendo, CD players and VCRs. Teachers say that because students must interact with the technology, by using a keyboard or computer mouse or by touching a screen, they are more active learners.
In the long run, having students exposed to the new technology should make them more competitive as adults in the worldwide economy, especially in math and science, teachers say.
“What this is really giving us is an opportunity to break out of the isolation and limitation of the traditional American classroom,” said Sandra Welch, executive vice president for education at the Public Broadcasting Service, a major player in school technology.
“For 200 years the education system has been really limited by what kids can get inside the four walls of a classroom with a single teacher,” she said. “This new information highway and new connection will put in the hands of teachers and students the research and experts not only from our country but all over the world.”
Some educators see the new technology serving a more basic need: It has the potential to provide the same level of education to students in all schools in Illinois.
“If I can’t get a teacher in an inner-city school or a Downstate rural school to teach Japanese, then I can teach it using technology,” said David R. Taylor, dean of the college of education at Western Illinois University. “I can have the same curriculum in a poor school as I have at New Trier,” the elite North Shore public high school.
But educators say that fulfilling the promise of quality education for all will require sizable public funding, even though broadcast and communications companies such as Ameritech, TCI and Whittle Communications are paying some of the startup costs to bring the new hardware and software into schools.
“We need, as a state, to make sure all districts have access,” said Karol Richardson, associate superintendent for the Illinois State Board of Education. “If we don’t, technology will become a disequalizing force.”
The cost can be high. Starting up the Dyett-Math Academy video conferencing program is expected to cost $300,000. It cost Jay Elementary School in Mt. Prospect $600,000 to open a state-of-the-art technology lab, and High School District 211 in Palatine will spend almost $220,000 this year alone to upgrade its computer equipment.
The State Board of Education is urging the Illinois General Assembly to provide some $1 billion in funding for educational technology. Under the plan, the legislature would sponsor a bond issue for the money and schools across Illinois could qualify for grants by submitting a technology plan meeting standards set by the state.
Still, while they see the opportunities in new technology, not all educators are completely sold on electronic teaching. They say it can never replace the personal touch.
“Sometimes students seeing you on the screen are reluctant to respond,” said Ken Slimko, who teaches advanced accounting at Jacobs, Hampshire and Dundee-Crown High Schools. “It’s especially tough for a shy student who might not want to talk in front of others in the same class, let alone students from two other schools.”
