BELLS STILL RING,
But Where Are the Textbooks, Blackboards, and Chalk?
I
n the halls of Bergen Catholic, bells still ring at change of class. Students and teachers move through the hall from classroom to labs, gym, and lunch. But something’s missing—the textbooks and binders that
used to fill backpacks and briefcases. They’ve gone the way of buggy whips and fountain pens. Bergen Catholic has been in the vanguard of ad-
vanced learning technologies for more than a decade. “Thirteen years ago, we gave Lenovo laptops to our stu- dents and some people wondered if it was just a fad,” said Brother Chris Hall, VP of educational technology. “Well, this year, with the integration of MacBook Air, iPads, and smart ID badges, we’re proving that it works and it’s not a fad. We gave our students a ‘toy’ and it’s be- come a tool… a highly effective learning-for-life tool.” The iPad and MacBook Air devices that each student
receives have many interchangeable uses as textbooks, notebooks, research tools, and scheduling devices. Stu- dents can collaborate with each other, complete assign- ments, and submit them for grading. They can also email teachers with questions or messages. Students and teach- ers alike have embraced the tech- nology, which is enhanced by Apple TV in the classroom, displayed on 70-inch monitors. “It was logical for the school to take this next step into educational technology,” said Al Spiegel, laptop coordinator and chair of the Computer Science Department. “Today’s kids are
connected and are learning authentically, not didactically, as they did in the past. As the teacher at the ‘front’ of the room, I need to be a learning coach, ready to adapt my lesson plan rapidly, because I know that students learn best when they learn individually. LAN School lets me see how each student is grasping the material.” LAN School is an in-classroom communication tool
that allows a teacher’s laptop to communicate with students’ laptops. Communication can involve pushing documents to and receiving documents from students; conducting polls to assess student understanding; allowing a back- channel conversation to occur to bolster peer-to-peer conversations about the topic being discussed (with the teacher monitoring the conversation, of course); mon- itoring a students laptop activity to ensure that he is on task; and broadcasting the teacher’s laptop to the students’ laptops for demonstration purposes. Jorge Mascaro, a teacher in the Computer Science
Department, commented on the system: “Increasing communication channels greatly benefit the students be- cause different students have different ways of learning.
FALL/WINTER 2014
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