New school in East San Jose offers manicured campus, plus ...

New school in East San Jose offers manicured campus, plus tech
tools for every student

By Lisa M. Krieger
San Jose Mercury News
[email protected]

Posted: 08/27/2011 09:30:05 PM PDT
Updated: 08/28/2011 07:49:18 AM PDT

Using a colorful iPad app to become a vocabulary ninja, and scoring points by solving
word puzzles: awesome.

At Saturday's opening of the long-awaited San Antonio Elementary School -- the newest
and most wired elementary school in Silicon Valley -- children clustered around iPads,
iPods and MacBooks with an enthusiasm rarely seen for books.

"They think they're playing, but they're learning," said Esau Ruiz Herrera, a trustee of
the Alum Rock Elementary School District. "The road to college and professional careers
starts right here."

The new facility -- in one of the valley's poorest neighborhoods -- replaces portable
classrooms with sparkling new construction. In addition, there are improved playing
fields, landscaping, parking lots and cutting-edge digital tools -- a free iPod Touch for
each student in kindergarten through the third grade, iPads for fourth- and fifth-grade
students, two MacBooks per classroom, plus "touch boards," replacing blackboards, that
are integrated with each teacher's personal computer.

The campus even has a new principal: the award-winning Norma Rodriguez, who moved
to the neighborhood at age 14, from Chihuahua, Mexico -- and who vows to boost the
tech literacy of its students.

"If we don't close the digital divide, who will?" she asked, at a reception of giddy
parents, children and neighbors. "We need to prepare our students for the future.

"These families are focused on food and a roof over their head," she said. Although
technology is critical to students' future, "it is not an immediate need. It's a luxury they
see on TV."

The campus upgrade packed a powerful emotional punch to a community only miles
away from manicured and tech-savvy schools in places like Cupertino and Palo Alto --
yet which lags in learning, earning and digital literacy.

"If a school is old, with trash and graffiti, if cement is broken, the windows aren't clean -
- it sends a very negative message," said district Superintendent Jose L. Manzo. "But
when you come to a school that is brand new, clean and there's no trash -- that sends a
powerful message to students.

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"It says: 'Something important is going on here,' "

Before construction, the grassy fields were filled with portable classrooms needed to
accommodate the growing student body -- most of them children of immigrants, new
English speakers who were struggling to achieve.

"A portable is not a campus," said Rodriguez, awarded the 2009 Principal of the Year
award by the Association of California School Administrators. "It's like a Porta-Potty, just
something temporary you bring in an emergency."

Campus View San Antonio Elementary in a larger map construction cost $20 million,
paid for through $12 million in bond funding and $8 million in state aid. The tech
upgrades cost $450,000, courtesy of federal stimulus funds.

The school's textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say
that the iPads and iPods can replace tools such as a globe, calculator, dictionary,
thesaurus and set of encyclopedias.

These digital devices may actually prove cheaper, over time, because they don't need to
be continually updated or replaced, like books and encyclopedias, school administrators
say.

Nationally, there's been controversy over the use of digital tools in the classroom -- with
many of the early "laptop for every student" projects ending in disappointment.

Embraced by philanthropists and political leaders as a quick fix, they left teachers
puzzled by how best to integrate the new gadgets into curriculums. And many early
computer-based classrooms tools needed to be frequently repaired by stretched-thin
tech experts.

It's important not to merely stick children in front of a computer, education research
now shows. Instead, good teachers matter a lot -- and nothing improves student
performance as much as one-on-one human tutoring.

But if devices are well-designed with the latest generation of learning-focused apps,
experts say, they can engage students by turning tedious drills into games such as
multiplication competitions and word-forming puzzles. And digital recordings offer easy
and useful ways to practice reading English.

"It's better than just lecturing -- especially for English-language learners, or students
who are visual or tactile learners," said first-grade teacher Claudia Cadenas.

And students will use them for intellectual exploration beyond the "kill and drill"
exercises needed for test taking. They can practice navigating through a million possible
sources of information, or communicating with students in other countries, teachers
said.

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"It's easy for them," said Thong Tran, watching daughter Emily and son Nelson wrestle
over a word-forming iPad game. "My only concern, with a lot of these things, is: How do
they learn to write?"
The students will be responsible for their own devices, administrators say. For now, the
tools stay in the classrooms, but someday they can be taken home -- and children will
be held accountable for them, just like textbooks.
Irresponsible use -- for instance, playing games or updating their Facebook status -- will
lead to punitive action, teachers say.
If the San Antonio Elementary School experiment succeeds, and funding is available, the
use of devices might be expanded to other schools in the district, said school district
spokesman Ryan Ford.
"This is a celebration not just for a facility," former state Assemblyman Joe Coto told the
crowd, "but the future it represents for our students and the community."

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