At Ridge Middle School in Mentor, a class of seventh-grade English students gears up for a quiz.  They’ve been studying 'Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,' the short story from Rudyard Kipling’s 'The Jungle Book,' and their teacher, Stephanie Dwyer, wants to get a read on their comprehension of the text.

It takes a few minutes to set it up. The students have to put their names into the digital roster for their answers to register.

“You have 30 seconds,” she warns over the din of conversation.

This quiz is unlike the quiz of just a few short years ago.  It has the feel of a game show.

“OK, let’s get started.  Why did Rikki-Tikki-Tavi leave his home with his family?”

A slightly suspenseful strain of music projects from the smart board that also displays her question and the possible answers:

• A.  The flood washed him away;
• B.  His dad kicked him out of the house;
• C.  His family left him; or
• D.  He ran away.

As the music plays on for about 15 seconds, the kids click on their answers on their iPads.  The answers are automatically registered and tallied up on the smart board.

The game is called Kahoot.

“Kahoot is a game that they really enjoy,” Dwyer explains. “It’s interactive with their iPads. And it’s a competition, so they’re able to click in, it’s timed. They think they’re having fun, but I can get a gauge at how well they comprehended it.”

A toolbox of apps
The Kahoot app is just one item in Dwyer’s digital teaching toolbox, and she says it helps her connect with the entire class in a way she couldn’t by just asking students to raise their hands with the answers, or taking a written quiz.

“You can do that too, but this is much more engaging,” she says. “And that’s good, because now it’s not one person dominating the conversation.  Even my most reluctant learners, they’re very into their Kahoot game.”

“And the feedback is immediate,” she adds.

Not too many years ago only the most progressive school districts were introducing technology into the k-12 classroom.  For the rest it was either unaffordable, impractical or not even on the radar. Today it’s a different story.  So-called “blended learning,” a mix of traditional classroom and online instruction, is beginning to be regarded as imperative and inevitable in today’s technology driven culture.

Looking for advice
Mentor is taking the lead in pushing the trend forward.

Jeremy Shorr, director of innovation and iechnology for Mentor schools, explains that the district’s digital initiative began just a few short years ago with some basic research.

“We started with looking at programs around the state and around the country,” Shorr says.  “We also spoke with military recruiters, our university admissions directors, and with local and national business leaders to kind of get a better idea of the types of skills that students were coming out of K-12 lacking, and that we really could address.”

What they were told, Shorr says, was that most kids coming out of high school were very adept at operating their phones, laptops and tablets — for entertainment and communicating with friends.  But “they don’t have a strong grasp on the ways it can be used collaboratively, the ways it can be used for research, for work, for study, and the essential role that digital citizenship plays in their futures.”

Research and collaboration needed
What is needed, Shore continues, “are employees and students and service members who are able to critically look at a problem, go online, find research on the problem, determine whether that research is accurate, read it, synthesize it and apply it to the task at hand.”

And so the goal is to immerse kids in technology-based learning well before they ever meet with an employer or college admissions officer.

Mentor’s program started with just two seventh-grade classes at Ridge and has now been expanded to all students at Ridge - sixth through eighth grade -- and select classes at the district’s two other middle schools.  Over the coming years it will expand into high school, and eventually all schools.

So what's new?
But with digital technology permeating so much of today’s society, is there anything really new here? Ridge Middle School Principal Megan Kinsey says there is.

“What’s new is that we actually have it,” Kinsey says.  “I think there’s a misconception that a lot of schools have access to the technology that exists in the rest of the world.  And we haven’t.”

In fact, Mentor is one of just a handful of Ohio school districts that have begun to go digital.

The Ohio Department of Education says only 32 districts out of more than 600 have registered with the state as having some kind of blended learning.  The biggest barrier is funding, and lawmakers in Columbus are leaving that bulk of that up to individual districts.