Intel Gives Ross Cutting Edge

A carved Buddha sits, centered, above an electric eye in a darkened space that resembles a classroom less than an affluent homeowner's well-appointed library. Below the Buddha, a likeness of Michelangelo's "David," nearly as large as life, is projected on a screen.

A group of ninth-graders, many tapping notes on laptop computers, listen, answer, and joke a little as an instructor directs their attention to the statue's large hands, intense mien, and curly hair, then asks them to compare it to Donatello's rendering of the same subject.

This was a recent art history class at the Ross School, though it could well have been an introductory college course.

Intel Inside

The school's spanking-new, multi-story facility off Route 114 in East Hampton, completed in November, houses some of the most cutting-edge learning paraphernalia available, much of it supplied by Intel, the computer-chip manufacturer.

Intel "wanted to see what we could do with it," said the school's founder, Courtney Sale Ross, whose late husband, Steve Ross, headed Time-Warner Inc.

Juxtaposed and contrasting with the electronics is a collection of high-quality reproduction art and some colorful Warner Brothers Studios memorabilia, including an eye-catching frieze of tin lunch boxes from the '40s and '50s.

Six Hundred Outlets

Mrs. Ross is proud of the space-age "learning laboratory" on the roughly five-acre campus, which has separate buildings for its fifth through eighth-graders, all girls. (The ninth grade, the only upper-school grade so far, is coeducational.)

"We could be a model for the country," Mrs. Ross told The Star last week, spelling out her priorities - an "integrated curriculum," "international teaching initiatives," "mining the technology" for maximum usefulness.

Technology is everywhere at Ross. Some 600 outlets for both desktop and notebook computers, accommodating both Macintoshes and I.B.M. clones, peek discreetly from below built-in wooden desks, behind seating, in the walls. Touch a table and a keyboard leaps out from underneath.

Teleconferencing

In a spherical, domed room reminiscent of Disney World's Epcot Center, students and teachers sit in the round, gazing upon multiple images: works of art, charts, symbols captured with digital cameras, math equations, outlines - working documents of all kinds, including E-mail - all projected and controlled from a computer.

Students can manipulate or adjust what they see via their own computers, plugged in under their seats. Every Ross School ninth-grader receives a Toshiba laptop to take notes on during the day and do homework on at night, and all the students' machines are networked with all the teachers'.

Inside this room, the sky seems the technological limit. In fact, it is a teleconferencing center, able to access students and teachers not only nearby but in Japan, Latin America, and Paris, where the school's founder has developed relationships with similarly equipped schools.

Global Village

Communication on a subject of common interest takes place in real time, an example of what Mrs. Ross calls the "global village" in action.

"It is a world vastly different," she said, from the one she grew up in. It remains, though, a world where English is emerging as the dominant language, according to those working with the technology in academic settings.

"It's about dissolving boundaries," said the school's founder.

Partnership

In recent weeks, Mrs. Ross has begun planning to bring all South Fork students and their teachers, in both private and public schools, into Ross's technology adventure.

In what school officials call a private-public partnership - something the New York State Education Department now encourages - Ross has established a working relationship with the Peconic Teachers Center, a teacher-training group supported by 12 East End public school districts and 11 private and parochial schools.

The goal is to bring the various faculties together, exchange ideas on the use of technology in learning and teaching, and teach teachers how to make the best use of available equipment. Grant money for such public-private efforts is becoming increasingly available, said Mrs. Ross.

Technology

Both public and private schools here have allocated substantial funds in recent years to beef up their technology capacity. The East Hampton School District, for instance, has spent $1.1 million wiring, networking, and outfitting its three buildings in the past three years.

While many teachers have gone for computer training on their own, and some districts provide it to a degree, much, apparently, remains to be learned.

To find out how much, the Peconic Teachers Center conducted a detailed survey of its members. All of them responded, according to Larrilee Capps-Jamiola, the director, who said South Fork schools were "ahead of the national average."

Wired Schools

Among the survey results:

86 percent of South Fork schools have Internet access.

50 percent have an E-mail system.

41 percent have a Web site.

61 percent run a Windows program.

Most teachers are self-taught, though 55 percent say they have received training in how to use computers and 36 percent have been taught how to integrate technology into the curriculum.

Half the teachers have consulted a professional computer trainer within the past three years.

Webliography

Ms. Capps-Jamiola said the new partnership has its own Web site (www.ross.org/peconic), which among other things will make it a snap for members to talk to each other, one-on-one or in conference chat sessions.

A "design team" is being formed, she said, from various schools, to determine overall needs.

Among the team's projects, said Ms. Capps-Jamiola, might be a "webliography" - a library of Web sites, by subject, for teachers.

Anywhere, Any Time

Meanwhile, at the Ross School, ninth-graders practice their foreign-language pronunciation on the audio components of their laptops, and their teachers listen. They complete homework assignments on computer, and teachers check it. No more dogs eating the homework, says the faculty.

And, if the students take a family vacation to Florida, or China, or just down the road, they can share the experience by transmitting images from their digital cameras back to the school.

The point of it all, according to Linda Brown, head of media studies and the former director of educational television for the Discovery Channel, is that "learning can happen anywhere, at any time."