The Peddie School pushes the envelope in secondary education
Salvatore Salamone
The Peddie School, in Hightstown, New Jersey, enjoys an unusual distinction among private secondary schools: In 1993, alumnus Walter Annenberg gave it $100 million, the largest single donation ever made to a prep school. The gift launched Peddie into national prominence and afforded it the opportunity to implement an ambitious technology program. While its wealth is by no means typical, Peddie has certainly blazed a trail by demonstrating what technology can do when resources are relatively unconstrained.
Rather than simply computerizing traditional teaching methods, Peddie has used computers to change the enti
re educational process. Students complete their course work using E-mail, an electronic library, and unlimited Internet access, all of which can be accessed from PCs in dorm rooms or from one of 60 public PCs connected to the school's campus network. Peddie features a student-centered learning environment in which teachers are guides to information resources, rather than imparters of canned material. In fact, teachers are as likely to be other students as they are faculty members; this redefinition makes students more responsible for their own educations.
Quick Start
The process begins on a student's first day at Peddie when, as part of orientation, he or she is given an E-mail account and is taught--by other students--how to use the E-mail system. ``E-mail is presented as a common thing: Here's the library, here's the cafeteria, here's your E-mail account, and here's how you use it,'' says Patrick Clements, a teacher and program director.
E-mail has become a way of life f
or the 500 Peddie students and 70 faculty members: There are, on average, 2400 log-ins per day to the mail system. (Peddie uses Lotus cc:Mail with a gateway to the Internet.) While E-mail is certainly used for mundane chores such as distributing homework assignments, its real value lies in the way that it changes the student-teacher relationship. Outside of class, students can ask instructors questions without having to make an appointment or swing by the teacher's office. And they can ask questions when they think of them, instead of waiting until class meets the next day.
E-mail is especially useful for foreign students or students who are reluctant to speak up in class. Students who don't formulate quick questions in the classroom find they have plenty of time to pose inquiries over E-mail.
Good teachers take advantage of this. For example, Clements says he once received a message from a quiet student concerning a question about Huckleberry Finn; after responding with several observations, Cl
ements asked the student the same question in class the next day and solicited his feedback. In this way, Clements was able to draw out the student; he's convinced this wouldn't have happened without E-mail.
Tools of the Trade
Peddie students are trained in Internet access and the use of an electronic library, which includes an on-line card catalog, the full text of several years' worth of the New York Times, citation indexes, and other resources. Students learn the basics of using these services so that other courses can draw on common skills.
One difference at Peddie is that there are no ``classes of usage'' for most information on the network, says
Tim Corica
, director of academic computing. ``If something is made available on the network, it is available to everyone,'' he explains. This philosophy typifies a shift in the teacher-student relationship that's designed to transfer more responsibility to students. ``They must now go out and find answers
to questions. And, more important, ask their own questions,'' says Corica.
In one Peddie course, students must demonstrate proficiency at using a dynamic-modeling program. In traditional teaching, the class might be given specific homework assignments that use the model, meaning that everyone does the same thing and all the answers come out the same.
Without such constraints, one Peddie student chose to model population growth as his project and built a model involving birth rates, death rates, and assumptions about current population levels. Using the Internet, the student found census data, plugged in parameters, and ran his model.
This was enough to satisfy the requirements of the course. But then he went further, locating on the Internet results from other population models to see how his simpler version compared. Contrasting the different models became part of the project. In the end, the student had learned not just about the assigned software program but also about the science of p
opulation modeling.
Preparing for Life
Peddie's faculty members strongly believe in multidisciplinary studies to mold students who can tackle challenges in the real world. After all, business problems aren't parsed into neat little subjects where you only have to think about one thing at a time. To address this issue, last fall Peddie started a course called the
Principio Project
, which aims to break down traditionally fragmented approaches to learning.
Directed by Clements, the Principio Project centers around the constant use of a laptop by every student and faculty member in the program. Thirty sophomores started this year in a pilot project with an academic focus on Western culture. So far, they've struck up E-mail conversations with students living in the countries they're studying, and they're conducting research through a WWW site at the University of Granada in Spain.
If the Principio Project is as successful as other efforts at Peddie
, the school will have shown yet again how computer technology can be used to change education. The best news is that not all of this technology is wildly expensive. But the cost of doing it right is a lot more than just buying the hardware.
Organization
: The Peddie School (Hightstown, NJ)
Technologies
: E-mail; Internet; digital library
Success factors
: A wealthy patron; new instructional models
Effects
: Reduced barriers to communications; increased student enterprise
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Students in Peddie's multidisciplinary Principio Project discuss their work with program director Patrick Clements.
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s)
Peddie's Tim Corica believes the role of teachers must change to that of being a guide to resources instead of being a conveyer of facts.
Salvatore Salamone is a BYTE news editor based in New York. You can reach him on the Internet or BIX at
ssalamone@bix.com
.
When Money Is Plentiful
