Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
-Steve Jobs
The technology tools for teaching and learning that teachers and students use on a daily basis have been chosen by our staff based on the Four C's of 21st century learning: Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration and Creativity
Critical Thinking
Students are provided with multiple opportunities each day to sharpen their higher order critical thinking skills. They are encouraged to analyze, synthesize and evaluate possible outcomes while making decisions about their own learning. In our 1:1 model, technology is used to foster critical thinking skills by allowing each student the opportunity to interact with the academic content. Students may be evaluating sources for research, critiquing reading passages and citing evidence, or reflecting on their own learning in a digital journal.
Communication
Technology is used to enhance the academic goals of communication. Whether publishing a blog, creating a video, or sharing a cloud-based presentation with a live audience, technology is simply the tool that allows for meaningful human communication - speaking, reading, writing, listening. Students are also encouraged to join our broadcasting team to experience what goes into producing
ATLAS Today, our monthly news variety show.
Collaboration
ATLAS students and staff have fully embraced Google Apps for Education (GAFE), the suite of cloud-based applications for everything from word-processing and designing engaging presentations to collecting, sorting and analyzing data. GAFE allows students and teachers to quickly and securely share documents and files with each other as they collaborate and synergize to accomplish more together than they could ever do on their own.
Creativity
ATLAS believe that technology and creativity go hand in hand, with technology providing the tools that unleash student creativity. In fact, the Greek root techne which forms the heart of our English word technology actually means art, skill or craft. Our students have access to a state-of-the-art computer lab, a Makerspace equipped with a 3D printer, and dozens of supplemental devices such as laptops, Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, Makey Makeys, Snap Circuits kits, and more! Each tool is carefully selected with the educational goal in mind, keeping academic achievement as a priority, but also recognizing the fundamentally human need to create, tinker and play.