TECHNOLOGY

OVERVIEW

Technology at First Program supports and enhances the way that all subjects are taught and learned. Working with educational technologists from the school’s New Lab for Teaching and Learning, teachers provide students with an array of digital tools. These tools are integrated into assignments in a differentiated, interdisciplinary, and constructivist way throughout the curriculum to facilitate scholarship and intellectual inquiry. Using iPads, laptops, and interactive smartboards, students document their thinking processes, problem-solving, express themselves in multiple ways, collaborate with their peers, and work independently to master concepts. Examples of technology use include Zooming with experts and cultural institutions worldwide, photographing and annotating objects and museum artifacts on field trips, composing musical scores in the style of various musical genres, creating interactive digital books for creative writing and research, and animated programming stories.

In addition, teachers and educational technologists introduce students in all grades to the importance of becoming responsible digital citizens. The goals of the digital citizenship curriculum are threefold: to develop lessons with teachers that enrich and support their curricula, provide students with guidelines for using Internet resources safelthreefold: to develop lessons with teachers that enrich and support their curricula, to provide students with guidelines for using Internet resources safely and responsibly, and to promote the positive benefits of using these online resources for learning.