Most people would think that the state run high school system in America is under-funded and over-crowded – pretty much like how our prisons are, and this situation is even more obvious in large urban cities such as Philadelphia. Microsoft aims to do something about this situation by announcing its intention to team up with the city school district, offering the entirety of its resources and software know-how in order to improve the situation. A high school in West Philadelphia has reaped the benefits of such a partnership, where it now boasts digital writing boards, integrated audio systems, and auditoriums that swivel into position among others.

For instance, even the school gym comes equipped with cameras that enable the school board to capture kids’ games, enabling kids to analyze their games the next day in order to improve upon their weaknesses the next time around. What’s more, such cameras will be able to preserve memories of their best shot and pass which will definitely go a long way in building portfolios of individual kids when they graduate from high school and are trying to make a dash for a place in public universities.

What’s more, each student is blessed with a laptop while homework is emailed to them, leaving books as an ancient relic in their eyes. This is pretty neat, but I do question the reliance on technology at a learning institution. With homework emailed to kids, does this mean they no longer need to pay attention in class on what kinds of assignments they have for the day? Instead, it allows them to play hooky and yet get their homework done as the questions will be sitting in their inbox. What about raising a generation that can type speedily and yet fail to have decent handwriting? I still prefer the desk, pen, and paper schools, thank you very much. Call me a dinosaur, but having some level of interaction between students and teachers on the human level is by far more potent in delivering a point across compared to point-and-click measures.

Source: BBC