Our Technology Curriculum is designed to promote technological and information literacy as well as critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making skills.
The vast technology resources available to students and faculty make both integration of technology across the curricula and targeted weekly instruction possible. Through the integrative process, students are equipped with the necessary tools to generate, obtain, manipulate, and display information. During targeted weekly instruction in the technology lab or in class, students are taught a wide range of lessons from simple keyboarding and word processing to coding, robotics, 3D printing, video production, and architectural design. These and other projects couple technology skills with literacy, the arts, and STEM. In addition, our advanced technology implementation allows the school to use the "flipped classroom" approach to provide distance learning on snow days and during other emergency closings.
Some of the highlights of St. Cassian's Technology Program include:
- A newly updated state-of-the-art Technology Lab
- One to One Chrome Book deployment in the Middle School - every student is given their own device
- One to One deployment of iPads equipped with numerous applications for academic subject integration for our Pre-K and Elementary (Gr. 1-4) students
- A 30 laptop mobile technology lab for full technology integration within the academic classroom
- 3D printers
- A SMART Board or Promethean Board in every classroom
- SMART Table Technology in the Preschool
In preparation for the 2020-2021 school year, St. Cassian's capacity for technological integration has been further expanded and enhanced through the purchase of several new devices to meet the demands of a blended learning model which allows for students attending school both in-person and remotely to receive instruction simultaneously. In particular, all classrooms now have:
- 50" monitors to display students connecting to class remotely and facilitate dialogue between all members of the class, regardless of whether they are attending in person or remotely.
- High quality wireless microphones have been purchased for all teachers to ensure that they can be heard crisply and clearly by all learners connecting from home. While the voices of remote learners are broadcast through the speakers of the interactive whiteboards so that those in-person can hear their contributions.
- Webcams have been purchased for each classroom and teacher laptops have been upgraded to allow for classes to be live-streamed while teachers provide instruction simultaneously.
- Document cameras have also been purchased to allow all print materials and demonstrations to be projected onto the SmartBoard or Promethean Board and be seen easily by all students, those connecting remotely and in-person alike.
In addition to these upgrades, it is important to note that St. Cassian makes use of several digital tools to help students seamlessly transition between in-person and remote learning. Some of these tools include digital textbooks and resources in each core subject, the use of ClassWorks for further differentiating instruction to meet each individual student's academic needs, and the use of the Google Classroom Suite to facilitate the dispensing and collecting of assignments and feedback, especially in the upper grades.
