THE EIFFEL PROJECT

NETWORKS FOR LEARNING RENEWAL
THE CENTER FOR COLLABORATIVE EDUCATION

and

INSTITUTE FOR LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK

The Eiffel Project
New York City's Small Schools Partnership
Technology Learning Challenge

Version 1.2
September 1996

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Institute for Learning Technologies Teachers College · Columbia University November 1999

Contents

Part One
1) The Challenge: Offer a Creative New Vision for Technology in Education

Part Two
2) The Response: A Digital Pedagogy for New Learning Communities
2a) The School and the Child
2a1) Use Digital Libraries to Enhance Learning
2a2) Interact with Mentors and Experts at a Distance
2a3) Synthesize Knowledge through Project-Based Problem Solving
2a4) Integrate Educational Experience through Portfolios

Part Two (cont.)
2b) The School and Society
2b1) The School and the Home
2b2) Engage in the Civic Concerns of Public Life
2b3) Achieve Productive Potential in the Workplace
2b4) Create Cultural Relevance within Community Experience

Part Three
3) Implementation: A Research University Serving the Reformed School
3a) Develop Good Technical Infrastructure
3b) Create Content: Potent Curricular Resources and Intellectual Tools
3c) Provide Students, Teachers, and Communities Enabling Support

Part Four
4) Money, Management, and Evaluation

Part Five
5) Resources for Scaling the Project Up

Appendices
Appendix 1: Eiffel Project Consortium Members
Appendix 2: Eiffel Project Partner Schools
Appendix 3: Project Directors

Project Abstract

A consortium - led by the Center for Collaborative Education (CCE) and the Institute for Learning Technologies (ILT) at Columbia University - joins through the New York City Board of Education to demonstrate how children contending with poverty, discrimination, and urban crowding can achieve world-class education standards when liberated by fundamental efforts at school reform, empowered by the full use of advanced digital information.

In its fifth year, the Eiffel Project will directly benefit at least 67 schools, engaging 30,000 students, most from African-American, Latino, immigrant, and economically disadvantaged families, with 1,350 teachers. The project will further serve numerous parents and community members accessing it through 10 community-based organizations in areas where the need for technology is acute.

1. Vision for Improved Education: As the Eiffel Tower showed the world a century ago how architects could use new materials to break existing architectural constraints, now digital technologies loosen long-lasting constraints on education, constraints which have shackled many with limiting opportunities. Digital technologies are for education what iron and steel, reinforced concrete, plate glass, elevators, and air conditioning were for architecture. The Eiffel Project will show how the small schools reform movement, empowered with advanced media, can break the constraints of the traditional school, thereby enabling all children to achieve unprecedented levels of excellence.

2. Convergence with the Small Schools Reform Effort. New York's school reform movement has support from the Annenberg Foundation; the Mayor, City Council, and Board of Education; the State Board of Regents; the teachers' unions; key universities; and major civic and corporate partners. All recognize that large schools have too often been alienating institutions, mediocre as places of education and most effective in keeping kids off the streets. The small schools reform movement is transforming big, impersonal schools into smaller, autonomous learning communities, scaled to nurture the child, to provide face-to-face meaning for both students and teachers. The Center for Collaborative Education has been a leader of this movement since its inception, in New York City and in the nation at large.

3. Uses of Technology. Digital libraries, multimedia educational programs, and wide-area networking make advanced media a powerful engine for equity. The digital library and digital museum bring an unprecedented wealth of resources to the desktop in school and home. Educational experiences, activated by multimedia simulations, appeal to many learning styles, engrossing students of all backgrounds in cooperative, inquiry-based study. Wide-area networking ends classroom isolation through desktop video conferencing and group work in a content-rich context. All these media make digital portfolios effective educational tools. For the past decade, the Institute for Learning Technologies has prototyped progressive uses of these technologies in urban schools.

4. Evidence of Effectiveness. School reform and technology strategies for the Eiffel Project have been developed and tested by CCE, ILT, and their collaborators through prior projects. CCE has pioneered use of portfolios and exhibitions of student work as a means of assessment and a key graduation requirement for students. Through the Dalton Technology Plan, the Living Schoolbook Project, and the Harlem Environmental Access Project, ILT has introduced advanced media in diverse urban schools.

5. Consortium Membership and Contributions. In addition to the conveners, CCE and ILT, over twenty organizations participate in the consortium. Key corporations (Kodak, NYNEX, Time-Warner) will provide resources to develop technology-based portfolios, high-bandwidth networks, advanced media centers, and digital libraries. Centers and Institutes from diverse components of Columbia University and other organizations such as Junior Achievement will provide mentoring, expertise, and intellectual content to enhance this effort; specialists from NCREST, NYU, and Teachers College will evaluate it. Large community development projects such as the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone and smaller ones such as the Harlem Parents Tutorial Project will help link school reform to homes and communities.

The Challenge Grant for Technology in Education provides funding of $7 million over five years, with $11 million required from consortium partners in order to meet the project challenge. The consortium seeks to double those goals through additional fund-raising, and to extend the project at least five years further into the 21st Century, in order to have transformative effects on educational achievement in New York City and the region.

The Eiffel Project
New York City's Small Schools Partnership
Technology Learning Challenge

In the 1889 Paris World's Fair, the Eiffel Tower rose far above the scale of any existing building, demonstrating to the world how engineering design, working with new materials and techniques, could break prior constraints on architecture. Digital information technologies are for education what iron and steel girders, reinforced concrete, plate glass, elevators, central heating and air conditioning have been for architecture. Digital technologies break significant, long-lasting constraints on educational activity, constraints that have suited too few and shackled many with limiting opportunities.

The objective of the Eiffel Project is to meet progressive expectations with a high profile, large scale project that will demonstrate that the small schools reform movement, empowered with advanced media, can break the constraints of the traditional school, thereby enabling all children to achieve unprecedented levels of excellence.

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