Saint Ann's School Curriculum - An Overview

COMPuteR
In this rapidly evolving field our teachers and students work together as
explorers and artists. Teachers demonstrate ideas and tools and turn the students
loose to create. “Try it, see what happens! Can you figure out how to make it do
more?” We love seeing excellence, creativity, and rigor. We place students into
courses based upon their experience and abilities, direct them in an individualized
manner, and encourage them to move as rapidly, intensely, and broadly as they
can. Our students are active learners. We provide them with the opportunity to
learn by doing work that is sophisticated and challenging. We want our students
to be engaged, inspired, and responsible while exploring, experimenting, expanding
and pushing boundaries in classes that involve problem solving, information
processing, project-based learning and communication skills. We want students
to explore the imaginative and creative uses of technology, and to have a broad
understanding about what is possible in order to empower them.
The world around us includes dramatic technologies that are rapidly evolving
because fast computers are being used to design even faster computers in turn.
New machines and networks bring us more artificial intelligence, nano-technology,
mobile devices (phones and tablets), social networks, wireless service, portable cameras
everywhere, GPS tracking, digital maps, and touch screens. Vastly improved
software toolkits almost make “child’s play” of what once was difficult, such as
building computer games or online databases. Because the machines around us
are daily growing more powerful, convenient, useful, interesting, and commonplace,
our students can create and organize information (including ideas, art,
biographies, poems, and algorithms) and even make their projects accessible to
people with limited vision or hearing. With computers our students can share and
find ideas more readily than ever before, and can write programs to direct other
machines (not just printers but also music synthesizers, robots, remote sensors,
cameras, and 3D printers). The teachers of this department are also students of
this new world of technology, and we strive to be informed guides for our students
across their range of ages and skills.
The Computer Department serves students from grades 3 to 12, offering fullyear
classes in a wide range of topics including animation, circuitry, programming,
web design with databases, programming for smart phones, and introductory
courses that include creation and manipulation of graphics, spreadsheets, program
code, and databases. Based upon art studios (imagine the students as artists
at their easels), our classes consist mostly of hands-on computer time, with the
teacher (or teachers) circulating, ready to help.
In the Lower School, the computer is a tool for writing and drawing. Third
grade students come to the Computer Center once a week for classes with computer
teachers. They spend time learning to type, and composing stories with pictures
and animation using multi-media toolkits that combine sound, art, animation,
and some basic programming. The class sessions usually include a brief review, a
demonstration of new material, and a work period where students practice and
try out the new skills introduced. While planning, building, and rearranging their
projects, students learn how to navigate in the computer environment— creating,
saving, revising, and building assets for their projects.
In the Middle School, the computing courses (Computing 1, 2, and 3) use the
computer as a tool for multiple disciplines. Programs for graphics, music, writing,
video, and web-page design ask the students to work with a broad variety of tools
and languages. We give an introduction to object-oriented programming in all
of the classes, and for students with a deeper interest in logic, computer control,
and symbol manipulation, we also offer Programming 1, 2, and 3, iPhone programming
and physical computing. For students interested in visual narratives, we
provide separate courses in both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional animation.
The high school Computing, Animation, and Digital Graphics courses show
students how to use computers to support their academic and artistic work, which
may include laboratory analysis, graphing and statistics, music composition, databases,
computer graphics, and web page design. Writing is an essential part of
academic life, and students learn more advanced procedures for using the computer
as a research, analysis, presentation, and communication tool. We also offer
a web programming course, as well as Animation and Digital Graphics courses
that focus entirely on graphic design, drawing, and layout.
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