TechBoston Academy

Integrated Core Courses (year-long) unite academic subjects with industry and career pathways. Students apply academic concepts to real-world challenges. Example: Physics & Engineering, where students apply principles of physics and engineering to an iterative cycle of product design. Course culminates with competition-ready, semi-autonomous devices presented as marketable products designed to serve a specific purpose in the students’ local community.

Crash Courses (6-12 weeks long) introduce a variety of short courses that give students the knowledge and skills needed to explore exciting fields/topics, including bioengineering, design, software, genetics, energy, internet of things, bio-inspired robotics, data science, architecture, and making wearables.

Action Learning Labs (3+ hours, every other day). Students participate in three labs, where they apply classroom learnings and engage in real-life projects: deep dives into current topics that provoke imagination, ignite passion, and improve their lives and the lives of others – in their communities and across the world.

How do Action Learning Labs work? We start with a question, an idea, or a technology. And to make the experience as rich as possible, we aim for big questions, stimulating ideas, and unexplored technologies that can lead students in many productive directions – within and across labs.

• The Engineering Lab, where students leverage science and technology to engineer solutions that lead to better lives for our citizens and society
• The Computing/New Technologies Lab where students engage with technologies that will shape their world (e.g. data science, machine learning, data science, internet of things, virtual reality, cybersecurity, blockchain)
• The Life Sciences Lab, where students tackle exciting projects at the forefront of science, including digital health, synthetic biology, new media medicine, computational biology, bio-design, and genetics

Students tackle projects that explore the convergence of scientific and artistic creativity. They are also encouraged to collaborate across disciplines. Action Learning Labs help students grow as creators, critical thinkers, and entrepreneurs – and prepare them to excel in higher education and careers in high-growth fields.

Our learning approach is modeled after MIT's "Mens et Manus" (Mind and Hand) approach to learning. Key themes:

Expose students to as many concepts and fields of study as possible. Our goal is to open students' eyes to a world of possibilities and interests - and help them learn something about a large number of fields so they can make well-informed career decisions and lead richer lives. Our academic programs:

• Show students how to apply subject-matter knowledge in different fields of study while providing a glimpse of different professions (apply English to the Digital Arts, apply Math to Architecture, apply Biology to Engineering)
• Teach students practical skills they can use throughout their academic and personal lives
• Enable students to try out different fields of study to discover which ones they like and might want to pursue in the future

Help students put ideas into practice. "Practice" is a term borrowed from the professional world. Doctors have a practice. Lawyers have a practice. Architects and designers have a practice. In these fields, and in Design Colleges around the country, "practice" means taking what someone has learned in the classroom and applying it to Creation and Problem Solution. It is a way to make learning concrete and put it to practical ends.

• In the Engineering Lab, students might build a mechanical device, such as a rescue drone, using the knowledge they pick up in the lab itself and from their other courses
• In the Life Sciences Lab, students would culture living organisms to, for example, grow algae that can be turned into biofuel.
• In the Computing / New Technologies Lab, students might make wearable electronic textiles that are programmed to light-up and serve a specific purpose.

None of the labs are devoted purely to one enterprise. A rescue drone requires an understanding of electricity and mechanics, but also programming. Converting algae to biofuel requires biology, but also math and mechanics. Robotic development requires programming, but also mechanics, electronics, math, and even some biology and physics.

Create a teacher community, where teaching is a team sport. Teachers collaborate daily, and engage in weekly workshops to discuss ways to refine/advance the curriculum, ensure continuity between courses and action learning labs, and discuss new ideas, and teaching methods. Teachers also have access to an online Teacher's Forum, where they can post classroom/project successes and learnings – in written, photo, and video formats. These artifacts are shared with colleagues, so everyone can learn from any one teacher's approaches and experiences.

Teachers frequently engage in outside activities, including lectures and seminars at area universities, monthly round-table discussions with engineers, scientists, and technologies at partner companies, and visits to other schools - to observe their approaches and learn from their best practices.

Creativity and Discovery as Teachable Processes. Students will be introduced to various types of creative expression and imaginative thinking. Students will gain an understanding of their own mental processes that lead to innovation, and experience and practice creative thinking. Students will examine methods of supporting, nurturing, and cultivating creativity such as the design school process, startup incubators, and artists and writers studios.

On-Demand Learning System fosters personalized learning and provides a place where content, resources, and lectures from staff and outside experts are available 24x7. Students can draw from it to learn whenever and wherever they like, contribute to projects, or add to it to build their portfolios.

The Studio Environment is designed to facilitate collaboration between students and is where Action Learning Labs happen. Students work with teachers, other students, technology, and with industry experts in a design studio and lab environment. Studios are places of cross-fertilization where idea-sharing between students with different learning styles and different approaches to the creative process can lead to new ideas, new ways of perceiving the world, new artistic creations, and scientific discoveries.

Arts are integral in our learning environment. Classes and workshops are year-round, with a focus on instrumental instruction and performance, and electronic and computer-based composition

How do we plan to give students the knowledge and skills to work in or create jobs that don’t exist yet?

We have three approaches: a forward-thinking curriculum, a focus on broadly applicable skills, and close ties to academic centers and industry.

1. Be pro-active in teaching new topics and technologies enables the teaching team to keep an eye on trends so we can anticipate the jobs of the future. At the moment, drones and virtual reality/augmented reality are popular because they're new, and we'll have courses in both. But there are other fields that are farther out, and we plan to have courses that treat these subjects as well.

Some examples:

• Quantum Dots are useful in so many fields that they are worth teaching as a concept and using in a Studio. (Think of the cells in the retina as test tubes of liquid, capturing light coming in at all angles. The same principle can be used in building video screens and photovoltaics).
• Carbon nanotube transistors can make light-emitting film that has a bright future. Place the transparent film on a window and light comes in during the day, but the film also captures photons and builds up a charge that allows it to emit light like a giant LED all night long. Daytime windows become nighttime lights for free.
• We plan to wire part of the school with Li-Fi to allow our students to study Li-Fi. (LED bulbs flicker at a rate faster than the human eye can perceive. With Li-Fi they do this to deliver the internet through visible light instead of cables or microwaves. The speeds are so fast that this may be the best way to provide our students in a Studio with fast broadband.)

2. Instead of trying to anticipate future technologies, we’ll provide students with fundamental concepts, skills, and practices that can be transferred to a lot of different future fields.

3. We want our students to feel at home creating - not just consuming the world around them. We want them to not just plan for but to create their own futures. So, we focus, in all courses, on the creative process - a way of looking at the world and a set of practical approaches that will prepare students to excel in higher education or at jobs in the innovation economy.