New Media Technology Charter School was founded in 2004 by a team of dedicated educators and talented professionals from various walks of life who wanted to create new educational options for urban high school children in Philadelphia .
New Media's founding coalition consisted of Lotus Academy founder and board chairman Hugh C. Clark, Esq., State Representative Dwight Evans, organizers and strategists from BAEO, (the Black Alliance for Educational Options), and administrators and teachers from The Lotus Academy.
New Media is one of several schools that were made possible in part by a seed grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation by way of EdVisions, a Minnesota based project based learning institution. In late 2003, Dr. Howard Fuller, founder of National BAEO, was instrumental in helping to bring together an educational planning team from the Lotus Academy with the EdVisions/ Gates small schools project. Keisha Hegamin, president of Philadelphia BAEO, in turn worked with Hugh Clark and the Lotus Academy planning team to vigorously nail down all of the details necessary to make it possible for New Media to open in the fall of 2004.
After a successful first year of operation, the school district of Philadelphia sanctioned the opening of New Media Technology Middle School, which is now located on the upper level of 340 E. Haines Street in Philadelphia. Administrative and instructional staff from New Media High school spend time working with the middle school students to ensure that the curriculum and focus in the middle school will help children to prepare for their upcoming high school careers.
As we strive forward , we continue to build a new model of education based on excellence in the areas of digital multimedia and project based learning. Please check this web site periodically for updates.
| Educational Model |
New Media Tech has forged a ground-breaking educational model based Project Based Learning, academic excellence, and commitment to the use of technology as a presentation tool.
Project Based Learning is not a new concept. Most adults, including most people in the professional world, gain more tangible, quantifiable knowledge from their real-world professional experiences than they did learning theoretical knowledge in secondary and post-secondary educational careers. New Media's educational model is based on some elements of traditional education , mixed with a project based learning approach, which encourages the development of interactive, in-depth, hands-on, interdisciplinary studies. In project-learning, priority is placed on the following concepts: Students should understand how what they are learning connects to their lives, and the larger world. Theoretical knowledge is not gained for it's own sake, rather, students are encouraged to build their knowledge of the world from the inside out, rather than from the outside in.
3. To every extent possible, we focus on PRIMARY SOURCES for student projects. Again, moving away from a purely “theoretical” model, we believe that good researchers always work with primary sources whenever possible. When students get to college, their ability to identify and utilize primary sources will set that apart from their competition. Additionally, it just makes good research sense. Projects are more enjoyable and will go much more in depth when students seek out the actual people involved with the topics that they are researching. • Intense staff development work in the summer (during the months of June and August). • Travel opportunities to other project based learning schools across the country (trips to schools like THE HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE RECORDING ARTS in Minneapolis, MN, and THE MET in Providence, RI ). • In house workshops provided by consultants from other schools across the country who visit our local campuses.
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Our goal is for all of our students to become COLLEGE READY AUTONOMOUS LEARNERS. (C.R.A.L.). This means that it is not enough to memorize all of the facts in a textbook in order to pass a test. We demand that our students learn how to think critically, analyze information and the validity of informational sources, tie in several disciplines when conducting research on a topic, and present their projects using modern technology. Many students come to us without the skills to become autonomous, independent learners. Because of this, our program is structured to provide certain basic skills to students to help them transition into autonomous, self-directed researchers. Some of the major things we focus on in the development of basic skills are as follows:
5. We promote in
