Innovation Space
Country School Teachers Lead Technology Innovation Workshop
Fifty educators from around the state gathered at New Canaan Country School for a technology innovation workshop, “Technology Innovation in the Lower School Classroom,” on Jan. 19. Country School teachers presented creative ways that they are using technology in the Kindergarten-Grade 5 classroom at the workshop sponsored by Connecticut Association of Independent Schools (CAIS).
“We encourage and support our teachers as they thoughtfully integrate technology into the classroom,” said Director of Academic Technology Aron Back, who organized the conference. “The workshop was a forum to share best practices.”
Participants included:
Grade 4 Teacher Maria Sette showed how she has integrated Bridges math lessons into worksheets which she created with the ShowMe app.
Lower School Spanish teacher Sean Robb presented how he balances the use of technology and traditional language lesson with the Nearpod App, providing his students with interactive lessons and assessments.
NCCS parent, alumna and app developer Caryn Antonini and Kindergarten Spanish teacher Catherine Mendoza presented an app Early Lingo app created by Caryn. It provides a guided learning experience through which students are able to unlock adventures but only after completing interactive exercises, games and videos. Each lesson builds upon the last and reinforces previous activities.
Kindergarten teacher Darby Webber presented a digital self-portrait lesson where students use the Paper 53 app to explore different art materials using glass technology.
Apprentice teacher Alex Budd presented a third grade Continent Project for which the class used QR codes to bring their final projects to life by linking to student made videos.
Grade 4 teacher Kristin Quisgard showed how her students use Google docs, a document camera and an interactive screen for editing and peer review.
Grade 5 teacher Julie Porter presented the Notability app which allows for note taking, annotating, highlighting, inserting text and audio. She also showed how the students backup and share their notes via Google drive.
New Canaan Country School
New Canaan Country School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin and are afforded all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, age, sex, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry, or disability in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, financial aid policies or any other school-administered programs.
