PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island—Second-grade teacher Marcella Weinberg starts each school year with walks around the Elmwood neighborhood, where Charles N. Fortes Magnet Academy inspires young learners to be curious. This unusual public school opened in 1997 in a former factory site. It capitalizes on its rich neighborhood history and up-to-date educational technology to promote learning through inquiry.

During a neighborhood stroll, Weinberg's students voiced an interest in the local fire stations. Providence also happens to house a firefighting training center. From the children's questions, a theme emerged: How has firefighting changed over time?

From that starting point, the year-long class investigation was off and running. By the end of the school year, the children were so knowledgeable about everything from fire helmets to fire trucks to famous fires in history, that they built a museum exhibit to showcase what they had learned.

"And by the end of the year, my students had even more questions," Weinberg says, reinforcing a key message that children take away from her classroom. "When you're learning, you ask questions. And you're never done."

Weinberg teaches a bilingual class of about 20 students, all native Spanish speakers. Families come from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, and elsewhere. Her students use Spanish for reading and writing while building English vocabulary through oral language.

Fortes was launched as a technology magnet school, and technology continues to support learning in all kinds of ways. Weinberg's students get comfortable using laptops and an electronic whiteboard for classroom activities. She has developed programs that develop students' literacy skills through visual learning and multimedia effects. Weinberg has been an enthusiastic user of educational technology ever since she took part in professional development offered through the Rhode Island Teachers and Technology Initiative. She later became a trainer for the statewide program.

There is also lots of hands-on learning in this active classroom. During the firefighting project, for instance, students learned about the "bucket brigade" method of firefighting. "We brought a tank of water and conducted our own experiment," Weinberg says. "That was a lot of fun."

She also takes photographs to document student activities. The visual aids serve as prompts for writing activities. The class Web site is filled with a written and visual record of student learning.

In this school that promotes inquiry, students get accustomed to asking questions in the community. Weinberg's students interviewed firefighters and also worked with an artist-in-residence to design their museum exhibit. All the hallways in the building are lined with exhibits created by students, giving the school the feel of a working museum.

A special aspect of the firefighting project was the chance for Weinberg's class to work with computer science students from Brown University, also located in Providence. Benefits of the project extended in two directions. The college students needed real-life experience developing interactive software that would serve users' needs. The elementary students would get the chance to play the role of expert.

"The Brown students came in and talked with my kids. My students had lots of ideas," Weinberg says, "because they all have played video games." The project was intended to have the appeal of a good game while also meeting educational goals. The content of the program focused on firefighting—a topic Weinberg's students knew plenty about. After the prototype was developed, the college students brought it back to Fortes for the second-graders to critique. More revisions followed, based on their suggestions.

"It's good for my students to see the planning involved in something like this," says Weinberg. "Things don't just appear; it takes time and revisions to make a project work." That's a message her students also hear when making their own drawings and revising their writing. "You plan, revise, ask questions, make changes. That's what it's all about."

The interactive program developed by the college students is now loaded onto computers in Weinberg's classroom. Students can choose to use it during learning center times. "It was nice for my kids," she adds, "to find out they are knowledgeable enough to be the experts."