Technology at Almaden Country School features a wireless campus including a Macintosh learning lab, a 1:1 laptop program (individual MacBooks for every middle school student), computer probeware in our science lab, iPad 2s in learning activity centers and Promethean ActivBoards in many elementary and middle school classrooms.

At ACS, our full-time director of technology is dedicated to helping teachers integrate technology into their daily lessons. Consequently, our students come to view digital media as a tool to achieve academic objectives.

Following this philosophy, our students apply technology in the same manner it is used in business, industry and academia: to research questions, build knowledge and present information.

Technology is integrated across the grade levels at ACS, from our youngest Elementary School students, who explore Web sites designed in-house to reinforce their literature studies (“Captain Pinkney’s Journey”) and science units (“The Age of the Dinosaurs”), to our eighth graders who created their own Web pages examining America’s success at fulfilling the promise of the Declaration of Independence. Technology extends learning, engages students and adds depth to our teachers’ instructional repertoires.

In addition, numerous Middle School electives enrich our core technology curriculum, including:

• Digital video and photography
• Podcasting
• AppleScript
• Web page design
• Filmmaking
• MOUSE Squad (teaching students to complete basic computer repairs on campus).

Our aim in providing a sophisticated, well-resourced technology program is to teach ACS students to be thoughtful digital citizens and savvy, critical, ethical consumers of media information, nurturing responsiveness to the needs of our community and those of the wider world.