Philly-Microsoft's High School of the Future

In a story to be published Wednesday, I write about my impressions from Microsoft Corp.'s School of the Future Summit going on this week in Seattle.

There were plenty of school principals and teachers sharing their experiences building innovative new schools that use technology to empower kids so that they can learn online or at their own pace, to satisfy their own intellectual curiosities and passions.

Apart from a speech by Microsoft's general manager for US education, Anthony Salcito, demonstrating Microsoft technology such as its PhotoSynth photo-stitching software and its Surface tabletop computer, the conference was otherwise largely free of Microsoft sales pitches.

One attendee I spoke with in some depth was Rosalind "Roz" Chivis, principal of The High School of the Future in Philadelphia that is a collaboration between that city's school district and Microsoft.

I won't go over the background of the two-year-old school, where all 750 students tote around Gateway laptops and project, rather than subject-based learning, is the standard. Colleague Julie Sartain profiled it in January, calling it "the most wired school in America."

Chivis set the tone by introducing herself as "Chief Learner." It's all part of seeing her job as "terminating" problems that prevent her teachers being effective and students from learning, rather than being a top-down manager.

Hopeless hippie talk? Not coming from the African-American Chivis, who has been in education for three decades, was a former assistant superintendent in Philadelphia, and was willing to share some of the problems they've solved and tradeoffs they've made.

For instance, having teachers assign cross-disciplinary projects rather than the same old English, Math and Science curriculums may mimic real life better, but it initially created problems such as how to enter grades into the central database, which would've hurt students' chances of getting into good colleges. That has since been fixed.

Or take the School's policy on social networking sites. "Our kids use MySpace and FaceBook," she said. But using a content filter or firewall to block pornography, besides presenting a tempting target for hackers, would've interfered with students downloading and using JPEGs for class projects, she said. So the School is instead looking at technology that will let teachers view Web traffic in real-time instead.

Also, students can bring cellphones to the school, but they may not use them. Those who do have their batteries confiscated. "Because we are in the inner city, our challenge is if there are gangs that get into an altercation, they might use the cellphone to call for backup," she said, adding that the policy so far has "worked very well. Kids get the message after they tire of paying $15-20 every time for a new battery."

That does seem to be a good compromise to the policy in force at New York City public schools, where students are not allowed to bring cellphones into the school. As a result, some students are taking their cellphones over to local deli shops, called bodegas in New York, where they can have them stored for $2 or $3 a day.

On whether online learning encourages cheating or plagiarism by students, Chivis disagreed. "We did have one instance where a student was clearly getting help from a dad or some other older relative," she said. That was dealt with. "It's the only instance. I would like to think it's not a problem. And we use other technology to spot plagiarism."

The High School of the Future is still traditional in many senses. Teachers still appear to have more control over classrooms than some advocates of "disruptive education" such as Michael Horn probably like.

And while there are few textbooks as most of the material and coursework is online, kids still physically come to the school and work in classrooms, unlike virtual schools such as the Florida Virtual School, which served 64,000 high school students nationwide last year, or the e4 Academy run by the Clear Creek public school district near Houston, Texas.

"I do think distant learning can be just as rich, but it depends on how the course is structured and it depends on the learner," she said.