Mt. Diablo High School
Digital Safari Multimedia Academy
“Our lab is a place where you might see a special-ed student showing a National Merit Scholar how to do something on a computer with history homework.”
Ted Maddock
Academy Director
Products used
Find more items that match:
Browse by Product:
The Digital Safari Multimedia Academy at MDHS is a three year program beginning in the10th grade. The goal of the Academy is the integration of multimedia with the core curriculum through integrated, project based learning.
Challenge
To establish and sustain a learning community at a California high school that bridges the digital divide between the at-risk, special-ed, and academically-gifted students.
Solution
Macromedia Studio MX 2004
Benefits
• Dramatically increased class attendance and lowered the dropout rate
• Trained students for work while still in school, and aided school-to-workplace transition
• Leveled the playing field so that special-ed through honors students interacted and learned to work together
Project Details
At the Digital Safari Multimedia Academy, students who wouldn’t dream of taking technology classes, let alone expect to have technology careers, are working successfully on complex multimedia projects.
The two-year career academy is a small learning community, which supports a full range of learners, at Mt. Diablo High School in Concord, California.
“We are all about teaching core academics in a technology rich, collaborative environment,” said Ted Maddock, the academy’s lead teacher and director. “Our lab is a place where you might see a special-ed student showing a National Merit Scholar how to do something on a computer with history homework.”
Mt. Diablo High School is an under-performing high school, yet the Digital Safari Academy is a successful model program teaching the same population of students in a new way. And it has profound effects. The Mt. Diablo dropout rate for the last 5 years has been 14-19% while the Digital Safari dropout rate is less than 1%. Attendance statistics at the Academy are significantly better than the rest of the school.
“The academy definitely changes people’s lives. We learned how to do things other people didn’t know how to do,” said Kamela Jones, a graduate of the academy, now attending the University of California Santa Cruz and majoring in computer science. As a college freshman, Kamela is working part time as a web designer for several college departments. Another student, Thuy Phan was the team leader for the make-over of the City of Concord’s website last year. Now, he is working as a webmaster for the city two days per week while attending Diablo Valley College.
All the students have earned honors for their work. In the last five years, the academy has won 18 awards at the California Student Media and Multimedia Festival, a statewide event open to all K-12 public and private schools in the state.
Do you have a story you would like to share? Join the Adobe Customer Reference Program.
