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At St. Patrick’s, technology is a tool for learning rather than an end in itself. St. Patrick’s students have technological tools available to them as they research, organize, write and present. Technology instruction occurs in a number of settings:
- the Technology Lab, which offers workstations for an entire class;
- the Elementary School library, where students pursue research projects with increasing skill and sophistication across grade levels; and
- history, language arts, math, and science classrooms, where a variety of activities engage students and teachers alike in the use of computers (often laptops) and other technology.
From her history classroom, an Upper School student might access the wireless network on a laptop computer to consult an on-line data source. In Grade 2, the first year of formal computer instruction, a student begins exploring a “tool kit” of applications that initially includes graphing, drawing and painting, and textual organizing programs and later grows to include Microsoft Office. Students in the Lower School also learn the power of technology when their hand-written pieces are transformed into published books within the parent-led Publishing Center.
In a Grade 4 science class, a student might use PowerPoint and an LCD projector to present to a class his research on a deep-sea creature. A Grade 5 student might choose to revise an essay on a laptop or on a desktop computer right outside his language arts classroom, while Grades 7 and 8 students work on laptops issued by the school for their use at school throughout the year.
Across time at St. Patrick’s, technology in a range of applications deepens a student’s skills in retrieving, analyzing, presenting, and reinforcing information in diverse ways.