EAST Gaining Steam At Bentonville High School

BENTONVILLE -- Bentonville High School sophomore McKay Clark hopes to preserve the past by making digital copies of old yearbooks. Digital copies would also be more accessible to the community.

"It's cool to see the history of the school, how it's both changed and stayed the same at the same time," Clark said.

Clark, 16, is one of about 120 students enrolled in the school's Environmental and Spatial Technology program.

EAST is a self-directed class in which students use state-of-the-art technology to solve real-world problems and perform a service to the community.

The program started 18 years ago in Greenbrier. Since then it has spread to more than 200 schools, most of them in Arkansas. Bentonville High is one of the latest schools to join that list; it received a grant for EAST in 2013 and began its program last fall.

Students may take EAST throughout their high school years if they wish. Ben Manatt, EAST facilitator at Bentonville High, graduated from Brinkley High School in 2004. He was an EAST student all four years there.

EAST students have access to a wide range of computer programs they use to accomplish their projects. Manatt provides guidance, but the students learn mostly on their own or from each other how to use the programs they need.

"As far as teaching them how to use the software, that's not my role," Manatt said. "It's a hands-on type learning."

The projects they take on might take a few weeks or a whole semester. Some might take more than a year.

The yearbook project, for example, started last fall, led by Sam Hoisington, a 2014 Bentonville High graduate. The lack of a single source for access to these yearbooks spurred the idea.

Collecting the yearbooks from the past 100 years has proven to be a challenge. The yearbooks students have collected were spread out across libraries and School District buildings. They still are hunting for dozens more.

Scanning such old books in the traditional way can destroy them. So students photograph each yearbook page, then run the photos through Booksorber, software specifically designed for book digitization.

Eventually, the digital versions will be available online at the Alumni Association's website, AlumniBentonville.org, which EAST students also are revamping.

It's an important project, said Don Barnett, association president.

"We look at it as a very positive thing that will attract more alumni to come together and share the past with fellow alumni," Barnett said.

Clark, one of the students who inherited the yearbook project, said EAST has taught him to guide himself and stay on task, as well as collaborate with other students and outside groups.

"I like the community involvement. You're really working on something that's applied and used," Clark said.

Another student project involved creating a video game in the style of the popular "Call of Duty" franchise, except this one is based on the 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge. The game employs three-dimensional movement and objects, and has all the features of the actual battleground. It was created as an educational tool primarily for the middle school level.

Elsewhere in the classroom, freshmen Jackie Hays and Landon Tedder were creating an interactive map of missing people in the state, using the program ArcGIS and information from online sources. Clicking on pins on the map that correspond with where each missing person was last seen provides basic information about each case.

Jackie is one of the few girls enrolled in Bentonville High's EAST class. There are only 17 girls of about 120 students enrolled in six sections.

"That's something we're trying to change," Manatt said.

Jackie said she's talked to other girls about EAST to get them interested. She signed up for EAST on the advice of a teacher, but admitted she didn't really know exactly what it was about at the time.

"I've always liked technology. And in a weird way, it relaxes me," she said.

Students may work by themselves, but they often work in groups. Sometimes group projects involve students from different sections of the class. It all depends on who has developed what skills, and who has interest in the different projects being done.

Manatt, a former English teacher, said the EAST program had a successful first year. Bentonville High was one of 71 schools to achieve a "superior" rating at the annual national EAST conference in March.

Manatt wants to see growth in his students.

"I want to first see them grow, whether that's socially or with their skill set or, in some instances, their own knowledge of themselves," he said.