By Avery Maier, ’13, Contributor
CCDS, the first school in the country to implement a one-to-one laptop program, held its most recent Tablet Conference during the week of Oct. 19. At Tablet Conferences, people from all over the world come to see the school’s creative uses of technology, especially tablet PCs, in action.
“I have attended schools all over the world, and none have had a technology program that could even compare to Country Day’s visionary use of technology in the classroom,” Caroline Gentile, ’13, said of the technology program at CCDS.
These Tablet Conferences are very popular, “in high demand” according to Dr. Greg Martin, Academic Dean. “The number of requests grew to such a great amount that we had to schedule three days, three times a year, for visitors to come in,” Martin added. Since CCDS started holding conferences, there have been a total of 18. Martin and Mr. Robert Baker, Director of Technology, chair CCDS’s Tablet Conferences.
On average, 30 people attend the conferences, but only 25 participated in the most recent conference. The chairs attribute the slight decline in participation to economic setbacks that make people less inclined to pay to attend. In previous conferences, people from all over the world attended, but at the October conference, the participants were limited geographically to North America. Of the attendees, two were from Toronto, Canada, and the rest came from across the United States. The U.S. visitors came from eight different states, as far away as California and as close as Cincinnati. Attendees have represented mainly private schools, but some have come from other types of schools.
Two kinds of presentations are given during Tablet Conferences: class visits and “Dart ‘N’ Dashes.” Dart ‘N’ Dashes are demonstrations given by faculty at Broadwell House. The presentations range from Dr. Jeremiah McCall’s demonstrations of the use of game simulations in his ninth-grade Humanities classes to a Dart ‘N’ Dash to Laura Rue’s Pre-K classroom. Different options allow visitors to see the different ways CCDS uses technology.
“A lot of the faculty open up their classrooms to show demonstrations with the students, or they perform live demonstrations at the Broadwell House,” Martin said of faculty participation in the Tablet Conferences.
Photo courtesy of CCDS.