As our first week wrapped up, I couldn’t help thinking about just how fortunate I am to be able to work with such an incredible community. I think we sometimes take for granted that our girls are consistently excited and enthusiastic about coming to school each day. Even our new girls, while nervous, appeared happy to join our SCS family.
This sense of excitement does not surprise me. When our staff was working together the week before, I was reminded of just what an incredible group of people we have at St. Clement’s and what quality work they contribute to both our programs and services. We spent time talking about the importance of thinking about our school as a whole. While we each represent different departments or have particular services we offer, we all have vital roles that come together to make St. Clement’s School the place of excellence it is.
I would like, over the year, to be able to talk about particular programs or services within our school to assist all of us in understanding how we co-exist and how we are truly interconnected.
At our staff meeting last week, we heard from Kelsey Edmunds, our Director of Information Technology, who presented our St. Clement’s School Technology Vision. When we think of IT, we often focus on the tools; the necessary hardware and the newest gadgets. The focus of this presentation was to look at the Educational Technology (E.T.). This is how technology is used to enhance teaching and learning and its importance as we prepare our girls for the 21st Century.
There is an incredible amount of research that delves into how different the 21st century will be for our students when they enter the work force. New skills are needed for our ever changing, complex and connected world and this reality must inform our decisions regarding teaching and learning. Kelsey worked with a group of nineteen volunteer committee members, representing faculty from all three schools as well as staff, to shape St. Clement’s School’s vision for learning with technology. Framing a “technology vision statement” involves much thinking and discussion about what role technology should play in teaching and learning. The group identified a Technology Vision for St. Clement’s School that will assist in driving our program, its development, our technology purchases, and our approach for the future. The team research emphasized that technology will assist our girls in consolidating skills for the future, growing to be critical thinkers, ethical, globally minded, open minded and responsible. Coupled with that was the identification of four key areas where they saw technology affording tremendous opportunities: collaboration, communication, creativity and learning.
Our vision has been established as the following:
In order to meet the demands brought on by our rapidly changing world and remain true to our mission, philosophy and values, we believe that technology plays an important role in the education and life of our students and our broader community of learners. Technology provides rich and powerful opportunities to learn, create, collaborate and communicate. These opportunities are strengthened when technology is integrated through our core curriculum. It is our goal to support learning with technology and information in a way that is authentic and relevant to our lives as 21st century learners.
We look forward to continuing the dialogue and to having this vision as one of our resources to assist in informing both curricular and school wide decisions for the future.
