From Cornfields to Computers: Reinventing a Township for the ...

digital-age literacies

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skills such as critical thinking, self-direction, cultural competency, and technological fluency.

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To engage modern kids and prepare them for the lifelong learning the wired world requires, teachers needed to personalize lessons, shape them into meaningful projects, and put students in the driver's seat.

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With a $5.9 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, a local philanthropic organization, the district had turned veteran teachers into digital-age literacy coaches -- thirty-three of them for the first three years, and half that number for the following two. The coaches worked one-on-one with teachers to help them plan lessons and hone their approach to project learning. Secondary schools had carts of laptops available for students' use. The district had also built a Web site with personal pages for teachers and students and online professional-development courses.

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Still, the transformation was patchy.

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The district pays for two project-learning coaches who devote half their time to the Harrison Hill School of Inquiry, an elementary school that reopened with the new name and an all-inquiry approach in 2007. The coaches use the other half of their time to reach out to other schools.

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