Back to School 2.0

Education projects such as the Aspirnaut Initiative aim to harness technology to better prepare U.S. students to compete in the global economy

by Rachael King

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Children in Grapevine, Ark., often board the school bus in the dark, some even packing pillows and blankets. For students in Arkansas' rural Sheridan School District, the ride can last as long as an hour and a half, and probably seems longer thanks to rules against behavior that could distract the driver. But lately the 15-hour weekly commute is looking up.

Thanks to a pilot program called the Aspirnaut Initiative, the bus has been outfitted with an Internet router and the children have been given either video iPods or laptops. The machines have been loaded with educational videos such as National Geographic Society's Wild Chronicles to teach concepts such as the relationship between predator and prey.

Closing the Math and Science Gap

The project was started by Billy Hudson, a biochemistry professor at Vanderbilt University, and his wife, Dr. Julie Hudson, an anesthesiologist. Billy Hudson grew up in Grapevine, and knows well how few opportunities there are for children there. "People are seeing in rural areas that the jobs they know about are being outsourced," he says. The Hudsons wanted to help encourage children in rural America to enter math and science fields. So the couple, along with Vanderbilt and the Sheridan School District, are setting out to create, in essence, a one-room schoolhouse on the bus, using online video and podcasts to deliver educational content. The response has been enthusiastic and the kids want more content, Julie Hudson says.

There's a growing awareness among some educators that American public schools may not be adequately preparing children to compete in a global economy (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/10/07, "A Flawed Measure of Ed Tech"). U.S. eighth-graders ranked 14th in math and 8th in science out of 35 countries listed in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study in 2003, the last year the study was released. "We're not just competing with school systems in the state," says Suzanne Freeman, superintendent of Trussville City Schools in Trussville, Ala. "Our kids are competing with India, China, Japan, and other countries around the world."

Freeman says her district is trying to help teach children to solve problems, think creatively, and understand the world on a global scale. To do so, Trussville City Schools and other forward-thinking schools across the country are using technology such as podcasting, blogging, Internet calling via eBay's (EBAY) Skype, and other tools to foster collaboration, creativity, and the ability to connect with others globally. "It's an understanding that having teachers stand up and talk to kids all day long isn't going to cut it," says Cathy Gassenheimer, president of the Alabama Best Practices Center, which received a $430,000 Partners in Learning grant from Microsoft (MSFT). Over the past two years, the center has recruited 40 schools, including one in Trussville, for the 21st Century Learning Project to demonstrate what can be done with an online curriculum.

Expanding Kids' Worlds

Most of the resulting 100 Web-based projects are efforts to tackle real problems. For example, some students at George Hall Elementary School in Mobile, Ala., have struggled to learn to read, partly because many vocabulary words seem foreign, says Gassenheimer. When a class read a story about a trampoline, none of the students knew what one was, she says, adding few students in the low-income neighborhood have ever traveled more than a few blocks from home. Students at George Hall have begun taking a series of field trips to help teach vocabulary words. Field trips are recorded in photos, podcasts, and blogs on a free wiki from Wetpaint. Not only are children reminded of vocabulary words when they revisit the field trip, but students in other classes can experience these field trips virtually as well.