With New Technology High School as its model, Napa Valley Unified School District is preparing for what may be the biggest change in local education since entering the Information Age — a bold move to tap into the technological advances of the times to improve education at Vintage and Napa high schools.

“How is it that in the United States, where we invented the technology that enables the global workforce in the last 30 years, we are still teaching our children based on teaching techniques developed in the industrial era?” asked Barry Schuler of Napa, former chairman and CEO of America Online.

“It is a national embarrassment,” he said. Technology is “basic literacy in the 21st century.”

That new vision of basic literacy will soon become a core component in Napa schools.

Thursday night at a special school board meeting, NVUSD Superintendent John Glaser unveiled the district’s plans to keep up with the ever-changing needs of the 21st century student, thanks in large part to a grant from the Schuler Foundation. The program is called Student Centered 21st Century Schools and Classrooms, or SC21, and it may be the greatest technological undertaking in the history of NVUSD.

In January, Napa and Vintage high schools will each offer two “pioneer” classrooms as part of SC21, with multiple periods of social studies classes at Napa and science classes at Vintage.

The model, based on that of New Technology High School, provides one computer to each student in the classroom and focuses on project-based learning.

“Students are pulled through the curriculum by a driving question or realistic problem,” explained Glaser. In essence, students learn by doing, not by being told. Teachers serve as guides and resources as students complete any number of projects — from research papers to videos and Web-based presentations — as opposed to a traditional lecture-style setting.

While similar methods are already employed in many Napa classrooms, the SC21 tools are like nothing previous generations of students have seen.

Virtual project briefcases will replace textbooks. Online course calendars will offer links to daily agendas, class updates and individual to-do lists. The grade book, which charts grades and measures 21st century skills, will be posted on the Internet.

Teachers will team-teach, combining curriculum across subjects.

Since the development of the model at New Tech High, 35 new technology schools have cropped up across the United States based on the program. Napa invented the idea, said Glaser, and is in a unique position to experiment with the idea of incorporating these technology-based tools into existing, larger schools.

Said Schuler, “To me, we did this big, bold invention in Napa. We have the right (mind-set). We have more skills at doing it than anyone else because it started here. It’s only natural that we go the next step here.”

New Tech High School will operate both as a school and as a training hub for other schools in the SC21 program. By fall of next year, Glaser expects Napa and Vintage high schools to have four SC21 classrooms each. By 2011, he hopes to see up to 64 SC21 classrooms between the two schools.

Mark Morrison, founding principal at New Tech High and director of leadership development for the New Technology Foundation, said, “We are at a tipping point for creating 21st-century classrooms not just in Napa but across the country.”

Students today need a “21st-century context in addition to basic literacy and numeracy,” said Glaser. “We need to make sure our efforts tomorrow are taking us to the future.”

“This is just the way the world works,” said Schuler, noting that the role of education is to “prepare students to make a living ... and to participate in civilization.”

“We are, as a society, catching up for, in the last 30 years, an abandoned education system,” he said.

Schuler’s grant is a challenge to the community to continue donating to the expansion of the SC21 program. While private donations and funding from the school board serve to get the program started, the district “needs to do some engaged fundraising both locally and nationally,” said Morrison. Particularly in a district where schools like Napa High are already plagued by tech problems, fundraising efforts will be paramount in the expansion of the program.

“We owe this to our kids,” said Schuler. “We could be a generation who is handing off a world that is worse than the one we inherited if we don’t catch up on fronts like this. ... We want to have a vibrant workforce to support the community, and we owe it to our children for them to have 21st-century learning tools.”