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By Mona R. Litt Education professionals try to find the best way to prepare future generations for the real world. To meet the needs of students growing up in the Internet age, New Technology High School located in Napa, Calif., has set up a learning atmosphere quite similar to that of a start-up business. "We're not trying to turn out techies here--definitely not at the expense of the fundamentals," explains Dennis Pasadis, president of Innovation Solutions, the company that designed the high school's computer network. Students have the opportunity to take a variety of college classes in computer applications and technologies, but they also need to enroll in basic English, history, mathematics and science courses. Since this specialized high school does not provide music, art and physical education classes, students attend a local high school for instruction in those subjects. In addition, students are required to accumulate 30 hours of internships--often from the businesses that support the school--to graduate. Currently, 120 juniors attend New Technology High School. The school's administrators say they hope to expand the school's enrollment as well as garner additional sponsorship from local businesses. About 150 companies, including Lotus Development Co. and Hewl ett-Packard Co., support the school both financially and educationally. Real-World Applications To better prepare its enrolled students for life after high school in a business environment, the school runs applications that are in use in the corporate world. Both student s and instructors use Lotus Development Corp.'s Notes and Novell's GroupWise for groupware and e-mail and Netscape Communications Corp.'s Navigator and Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer for Internet access. In their multimedia classes, students flex their creative skills by using Adobe Systems' Photoshop for photo editing and Macromedia's Director for making movies. Not only could the next Bill Gates be in those classrooms, but the next Steven Spielberg could be there as well. The school's Hewlett-Packard NetServer LX Pro server runs Microsoft Windows NT 3.5.1. Pasadis says he hopes to upgrade to NT 4.0 by this summer. The school uses Microsoft's Systems Management Server software to inventory the desktops and servers as well a s for software distribution and remote control of any machine. "Our greatest challenge is how to determine how much latitude should be given to the students," Pasadis says. "We always have a couple of kids who like to change the computers and then the others can't use them. How customized can we be?"
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Updated March 7, 1997 |
