innovate arkansas

Twenty years ago, the idea of a group of 13-year-olds designing a tornado warning system for their town might have seemed like Disney Channel fantasy. Yet that's exactly what happened, and it's just one example of EAST Initiative projects happening every year at almost 200 Arkansas schools.

EAST, which stands for Environmental & Spatial Technology, kicked off in Greenbrier in 1995.

"When we started, nobody believed high school kids could do what we're doing," said Matt Dozier, president and CEO of the nonprofit. Since it began, Dozier said, the program has injected $15 million into the state economy, averaging $85,000 per community in which it has launched projects.

Dozier spent 10 years as a speech and English teacher before heading up one of the first EAST programs in the Little Rock area.

"We firmly believe we need curricular classes like science, math, etc., but you also need a place where you are in service to others, with a real-world context, where you're able to do things with your own skills beyond rote information," Dozier said.

Since its inception the EAST Initiative has focused on delivering professional-grade technology into the hands of elementary, middle and high school students, then giving the students free rein over the gadgets to better their communities.

"We learned that if kids are given access to technology, it's very engaging to them," Dozier said. "Use of those technologies is not nearly as foreign to our students as they might be to you and me. It can be very successful. Students develop very powerful skills that can be used beyond high school and into college."

EAST programs are used in 199 Arkansas schools and a handful out of state. Many programs are available in tiny rural districts. Most schools need about $150,000 in funding to appropriate 60-or-so different technologies, and Dozier said that's usually obtained through a state grant.

For the grant, schools need to match at least $25,000, and EAST is able to supply the rest through agreements with various technology companies.

"That's because those companies want to make sure that pipeline is full," Dozier said, meaning that future jobs in the companies could be filled by present-day EAST students.

Participation Learning

Lectures have no place in EAST classes. EAST teachers aren't even referred to as such. They're called "facilitators," and they serve mainly in the role of supporters. They help students come up with ideas, then urge them toward their goals.

EAST facilitators tend to be exuberant about their classes. Take Jeanne Roepcke in Batesville, whose high school class is digitally mapping the local cemetery - about 10,000 graves - using GPS.

"The technology is just a vehicle," she said. "It's there to aid in the project they end up being a part of. But some of the technology we have in EAST is far more advanced than what these kids would ever see in a workplace, and certainly in a high school-type technology environment."

In Star City, Linda Kay Thompson's middle school class is filming a video documentary about Cane Creek State Park, where eminent domain resulted in demolition of many local properties.

"At EAST, they select community issues, state issues that need solutions. That way they use all the skills they're learning in other classes and are doing it in a real-world setting," Thompson said.

EAST persevered through the economic downturn - though it lost about 50 programs in California - and now it's being joined by an ally: Common Core, which focuses on participation learning in every subject.

"When they get to high school, doing Common Core in a couple of years, they'll already be used to project-based learning," said Tracie Ashley, EAST facilitator at Prairie Grove Middle School.

"If you read it, it is us," Dozier said. "We're already doing those things."