One-to-one laptop learning initiative
We are expanding our one-to-one Apple laptop program to include the entire Postoak campus beginning with the 2013-14 school year. After a successful pilot program in 2011-12 with the fifth grade, we expanded to all of the Intermediate School (grades four through six) this past year. Now, beginning with the upcoming academic year, grades seven through twelve will be included as well.
This fee-based, one-to-one laptop initiative flows directly from the school's mission and current strategic plan, as it supports innovative, student-centered learning. Students will each have a professional tool to explore the curriculum in new ways. This piece of academic technology will open new avenues of learning for our students and facilitate 21
st century skills such as collaboration, global awareness and connectivity.
Driven by our mission
The program will allow
more self-paced and individualized learning, both at home and at school. With
age-appropriate digital resources at their fingertips under the guidance of
their teachers, students will have new, dynamic opportunities to understand,
collaborate on, and share what they are learning across the curriculum. Technology can enhance our students’
ability to set appropriate learning goals, evaluate their progress, and stay
engaged with digital, multimedia materials.
Expanded learning opportunities
Students and faculty at
St. Andrew’s use technology as a powerful, personal tool to broaden and deepen
learning whenever and wherever it takes place, across all disciplines. As one
of the many tools at hand, technology must be ubiquitous yet invisible. It enables students to break through
barriers of space and time, propelling their learning through classroom walls,
course schedules, and geographical and cultural constraints.
- Provide
connectivity: sharing, global and local, in real-world collaboration
- Enhance
problem-solving
- Creativity,
excitement, individualized – new workspaces, and work times
- Independence
and inter-dependence: new roles between teacher and student
- Capture
the ‘teachable moment’ (technology use not ‘a scheduled event’)
- Individualization
with targeted learning goals
- Communication
enhancement with new methods of
feedback
- Efficiency
of resources, materials and time: cost and labor saving
Experienced and
innovative leadership
Led in this initiative by teachers experienced in the one-to-one
classroom through our current fifth grade pilot, Intermediate School teachers
will work as an interdisciplinary team to share innovative teaching practices
and select resources that make the best use of the laptops to enhance learning.
St. Andrew's faculty believes strongly that the laptop is only one tool to
broaden and deepen learning.
Pencil and paper will still be most effective for certain kinds of work;
whenever possible, students will be taught to use technology to improve
organization and study habits.
Solid Foundation
The
experience and expertise of our faculty forms the foundation of our successful
technology program. Since 2000,
each faculty member has been issued an Apple laptop and with extensive
professional development opportunities, has been empowered to explore and
develop new methods of teaching and learning with these powerful tools. Both of
our campuses have wireless Internet access, and classrooms are equipped with an
interactive SmartBoard and projector.
Additional tools such as iPads, scientific probes, iPods, digital
document cameras, video cameras, portable scanners, and full-scale poster
printer are available. Online subscriptions to powerful learning databases,
course management and discipline-specific software complete the digital infrastructure for teaching and
learning.