Summit’s Thoughtful Use of the Network

Summit Preparatory Charter High School is rethinking how schools should be designed and built to meet the needs of today’s students who are comfortable with technology. And you can help.

Summit will be leading one of the discussions at this year’s Maker Faire, the annual invention, creativity and resourcefulness exposition at the San Mateo Event Center this weekend, May 19 and 20. The Make: Education Stage will be a part of the invention showcases, and on Sunday Diane Tavenner, Summit Public Schools founder and CEO, will be interviewed about what our future schools will be like. Audience members can design their own idea of a school and share them on video.

“The challenge is for creative educators to build a school from scratch,” said Bruce Brege, Chief Operating Officer of Summit Public Schools. “How do we design learning spaces for the generation that uses social networking as their way of connecting? How do you physically design a school and how will teachers teach effectively?”

According to Brege, since students use the social component in communication, this can be utilized for the classroom. “We can imagine a school having a Facebook-type site, and teachers and students communicating through it. In the classroom, a teacher can encourage students regarding a lesson, provide video curriculum and students can comment on posts or ask questions. Learning spaces can be smaller as the net expands the ways we teach and learn.”

This takes a reliable and powerful network, and that is where Bryant Wong comes in. He is Director of Technology at the Summit Public Schools, and has worked with the ACE network since the 2010 school year.

“We need to be thoughtful about how to use the network and repurpose it if necessary,” he said. “If we need a lot of bandwidth for a particular event, lab session or lesson, we’ll use the ACE network, or have it supplement our commercial network.”

The great wonder about the Internet is that it expands everything. As we learn new opportunities to touch people with this connection, we must be open and creative regarding channeling the power of its omnipresence. Summit Public Schools is one of our thought leaders.