High Tech High-Los Angeles (HTH-LA), a new charter school that boasts some of the most advanced technologies ever used in the classroom, is up and running within the Los Angles Unified School District (LAUSD).

For Roberta Weintraub, the former LAUSD school board president and education activist, it was a dream four years in the making. Stocked with every type of educational technology imaginable, from interactive whiteboards to robotics labs and wireless laptop computers, HTH-LA was designed to provide students with a glimpse into their future, Weintraub said--a sort of "sneak peek" into what it's like to live and work in a technology-infused society.

The school is the latest of several cropping up around country designed to reflect the need for technology in the classroom while helping to prepare today's students for success in tomorrow's technology-driven workplace.

At High Tech High-Los Angeles, technology is seen as a means--not an end--to get kids engaged in what they're learning. (Photo courtesy of High Tech High-LA)

Thanks to the proliferation of technology in their homes and elsewhere, Weintraub said, today's students expect some place to plug in when they get to school.

That's part of the vision at HTH-LA, which seeks to actively engage students by surrounding them with the kinds of technologies and communication devices they've grown up with, she said. The goal was to build a school where technology is so ubiquitous that students might be inclined to reach for their computers just as quickly as they would for a pencil or a piece of notebook paper.

Housed on a slice of land it shares with neighboring Birmingham High School, the intimate $13 million campus--which was bankrolled with a combination of state grant money and donations from the Lowell Milken Family Foundation--currently enrolls 200 students, with enrollments expected to cap at 325 by the beginning of next year. Though the school actually opened in 2002, construction of the building itself wasn't completed until November. Before that, students conducted their learning in portable classrooms and across the lawn at the Birmingham building.

Inside, technology is everywhere. Among the many benefits students have access to are desktop and wireless laptop computers, video-editing software, robotics equipment, personal eMail accounts, digital projectors for every room, VCRs, DVD players, and interactive whiteboards. The building even is equipped with cutting-edge "smart" technologies used to regulate heating and air conditioning and automatically adjust lighting in rooms, as well as zoom-capable security cameras that let administrators keep an eye on the hallways and school parking lots, among other potential trouble spots.