Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Apple, Detroit schools team up

$1.2 million deal gives students a tech push with iPods, laptops, digital cameras for new high school.

By Christine MacDonald / The Detroit News

What's next • The new technology could be used in the classrooms in a matter of weeks. • Next year, when the freshmen become sophomores, half the class will continue with the Digital high school and the other half will go into a health care-related high school program. • Also next year, a new freshman class will be added. Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery

DETROIT -- The Detroit Public Schools and Apple Computer Inc. have inked an up to $1.2 million, four-year deal in which the district will lease computer equipment for a new small technology-focused school inside Crockett High School.

Apple in turn will give the district more than 100 days worth of technology and teaching support, including on-site help in classrooms as teachers and students learn to use the laptops, said the district's Chief Academic Officer Juanita Clay Chambers. Detroit is using federal dollars to pay for the lease.

The district will get about 780 laptops, as well as iPods, digital cameras and computer software. About 240 of the computers will go to the freshman class of the new Detroit Digital Learning Community High School at Crockett. And another 14 Detroit middle schools will get the remaining laptops, in hopes that many of those students go on to enroll in the new school once they get older.

Chambers said this new high school will be a wireless environment where students do everything from take notes to create multimedia book reports with their computer equipment.

"It is just reshaping the whole teaching and learning environment," Chambers said. "We have found that type of learning has motivated them to do a better job."

Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Detroit Public Schools officials and representatives from Apple plan on revealing more details about the program today at a press conference at Crockett. It was originally scheduled to be announced last month, but was postponed because details needed to be worked out.

This school fits the mold of what Granholm is trying to replicate across the state. The small high school push is popular across the country as educators try to reform what some see as ineffective traditional high schools.

"The governor sees this as the first of a whole new generation of high schools in Michigan," said Chuck Wilbur, Granholm's education adviser. "It is the first of what we will hope to be a wave."

Granholm is trying to get support from the Legislature for a $180 million loan fund that would pay for the creation of more small high schools. And the state has partnered with the Skillman Foundation to reach out to private lenders to support those schools as well, Wilbur said.

No one from Apple would comment Monday.

The Apple professional development would go to other schools as well.

You can reach Christine MacDonald at (313) 222-2269 or cmacdonald@detnews.com.