SPECIAL REPORT: High-Tech Classrooms

Eastlake High School Professional Communications teacher Corina Carmona belts out instructions to her class, using her interactive white board to show her students which toolbars and menus they need to click on their computers to access the assignment.

Meanwhile, her freshmen students stare at their screens, pull out their iPod Touches and smartphones, and push earphones into their ears. It looks as if they’re not paying attention.

But actually, they’re doing exactly what their teacher wants.

“They prefer the technology,” said Carmona. “They prefer the images. They prefer being on a computer rather than writing.”

At Eastlake, one of Socorro Independent School District’s newest schools, the district has invested a grand total of $1.18 million of local and federal funds in infrastructure, computers and software. District officials say the cost is higher because the school needed to be wired and all the equipment needed to be purchased, so the cost of the technology will be lower in following years.

Carmona, an 11-year veteran of the classroom, thinks it’s a necessary and inevitable investment.

“Going back to that old filing cabinet and pulling out those lesson plans doesn’t work anymore. Because every year, the technology changes, the expectations of the students change, and what they expect from their classes — they expect to be active.”

Eastlake is also one of the first campuses in the Socorro School District to allow the use of personal electronic devices in the classroom to do class work. It’s part of a pilot program that could be expanded to all campuses in the district.

Students are responding with enthusiasm.

“We have more liberty,” said Justin Gonzalez, 15. “I mostly use technology to help me go through my day.”

Gonzalez and his classmate, Sofia Montaez, 15, are enjoying their first year of high school. They immerse themselves in their work where they feel comfortable – in front of a computer.

“I usually like to write, but I prefer the computer because I can save it and I know it’ll be saved on the computer and I won’t have to lose it,” Montaez said.

And for both, exposure to technology continues at home.

Montaez’s exposure is much more limited. The family computer is in her parents’ bedroom. Her time on the computer is supervised. Her father told ABC-7 he is on Facebook, where he can monitor her online usage and her interactions. The teen doesn’t seem to mind.

“They prefer me not to be too reliable on technology,” she said, adding, “You never know what can happen with the new technology.”

Montaez said she actually enjoys reading much more than playing on computers.

While Gonzalez has a case filled with books, the teen said he enjoys playing golf and practicing drumming. But he does enjoy his technology, hunching over the desk in his room, staring intently at his computer screen as he plays a golf game.

His parents, too, said they monitor his Internet usage, setting a 9 p.m. deadline for him to “unplug” himself and prepare for the following day. Gonzalez says it’s a rule he doesn’t bend.

“It’s a privilege,” the teen told ABC-7. “I got it as a privilege to help me and abusing that privilege takes it away.”

Is this seemingly 24/7 indulgence in high-tech gadgets driving these teens to distraction? A professor of science and technology education at UTEP doesn’t think so.

“Society has rewired people’s brains throughout history,” said Dr. Brian Giza. “Look at reading. Reading used to be something no one ever did.”

Giza thinks exposure to technology in the classroom is inevitable — and, if used wisely, a benefit.

“It’s how you use the tool, not so much when you use the tool as long as the ‘when’ fits in with their developmental stage,” the professor explained. He was hesitant to give exact ages at which is appropriate to expose kids to advanced technology, saying, “It depends.”

Back at Eastlake, the students continue to whiz through their assignment while Carmona, a former history teacher, monitors them carefully, sometimes wistful for the way of learning that’s becoming part of the past.

“I liked color pencils, you know, making the art of the subject. and I kind of miss that,” she said, smiling sadly. “Sometimes I wish they would be OK with, ‘Let me see you create something on paper.'”