The High-Tech School Lab: Many Chip In : Education: At Anacapa school, a teacher built his own. Now others are inspired to seek novel ways of creating such classrooms.

A few years ago, a Ventura middle school became one of the first in the state to build a high-tech laboratory to introduce younger students to the latest innovations in robotics, electronics and computers.

Although Ventura school officials were pleased with the DeAnza Middle School lab, they didn’t have the money to duplicate the $120,000 high-tech classroom at the district’s three other middle schools.

So a teacher at Anacapa Middle School struck out on his own--and built his own lab.

And now the city’s other two middle schools, Balboa and Cabrillo, are beginning to create their own technology labs.

Anacapa teacher Richard Espinosa built nearly all the furniture in his technology lab by hand, from the television stands to the wood countertops. He wrote his own curriculum on topics ranging from rocketry to bridge building. And he has even assembled many of the lab’s computers with donated spare parts.

Since he began the project three years ago, Espinosa said, he has spent hundreds of dollars out of his own pocket, only some of which the school district has paid back.

And each week he has worked an extra 20 hours outside his regular teaching duties, all for just $1,300 per year on top of his usual salary.

Espinosa is probably the only teacher in the county to have built a technology lab entirely by himself, school officials say.

But he is one of about 150 teachers in California who have developed their own high-tech classrooms, single-handedly moving their schools’ industrial arts departments beyond wood shop and metalworking to engineering and broadcasting.

Espinosa took on the task of building the high-tech classroom because he knew it was the only way it would get done.

But he believes that some other vocational-education teachers who develop their own technology labs have a more urgent motive: saving their jobs.

With schools scrambling to bring their vocational education classes up to date with today’s job market, many industrial arts teachers trained only in shop are threatened by younger teachers who are fully versed in the latest technologies, Espinosa said.

“There’s a lot of hungry teachers out there and they want to ensure their jobs, and that’s how they do it. They think, ‘Hey man, if I don’t update I’m going to get laid off.’ ”

In the Ventura Unified School District, teacher Jim Hughes at DeAnza led the movement to revamp middle-school industrial arts classes to focus on the newest technologies.

Hughes began like Espinosa, writing his own curriculum and raising money piecemeal from school district grants and community donations, but he eventually got lucky: A Kansas-based company donated $45,000 worth of computers and other equipment to DeAnza with the goal of making Hughes’ classroom a showcase for the firm’s products.

Although Ventura school officials point to the DeAnza lab as a model, they say the district lacks the funds to duplicate it.

“The bottom line is money,” said the district’s vocational education coordinator, Tom Stoddart. “It’s the dollars.”

Altogether, the DeAnza lab cost the district roughly $55,000, with the other $65,000 funded through donations.

In contrast, the district has paid only about $11,000 toward Espinosa’s lab at Anacapa, Espinosa said. Organizations such as the Rotary Club and the school’s Parent-Teacher Assn. kicked in another $11,000 in cash and equipment.

Hughes is now working with teachers at Balboa and Cabrillo to build technology labs that will combine purchased and teacher-built workstations, Stoddart said.

But Espinosa openly criticized prefabricated labs such as the one at DeAnza: “It’s just overpriced. It’s unrealistic.”

Although Espinosa’s technology classroom was indeed less expensive to install than DeAnza’s, it has some drawbacks, Stoddart said.

In the technology classrooms at both DeAnza and Anacapa, much of the teaching is computer-driven. Students get their information and their tests on various subjects from their computer screens.

But Anacapa’s computer programs are not up to par in evaluating student performance from their answers to tests and other exercises. Espinosa is working to upgrade the system.

Even without such glitches, perhaps the most serious disadvantage of teacher-built labs is the demands they make on the instructors, Stoddart said.

“It takes a complete teacher commitment,” he said. “You can’t get in there and just halfway do it.”