Curley Notre Dame Prep launches One to One iPad Learning Program

By Lisa Morales - Archbishop Curley Notre Dame HS

Photographer: COURTESY PHOTO | Tom Salyer Photography

The One to One Learning Program allows students more time to use classroom time to work in small groups or interact one on one with a teacher. Jennifer Lamy (left) and Daniel Briz (right) discuss their experience with the new program in the informational video.

MIAMI |Archbishop Curley Notre Dame Prep has launched the One to One iPad Learning program and adapted the Fontan Relational Education (FRE) model to suit the iPad and "flipped classroom" approach to learning.

The program's goal is to enable students to move from curriculum "receivers" to "actors" of their learning experience. 

"We've come to realize that the standard teacher-lecturing and students-working-out-their-lessons-at-home model is not working in the 21st century classroom with technology savvy kids," said Douglas Romanik, ACND principal. "The purpose of iPads is not just a way to replace textbooks. We are allowing our students to fully utilize it as a navigation tool that leads them to each learning milestone. The One to One Learning model allows our students more time to interact with their teachers and each other. Students have more control over their learning pace and more choices on how they would like to be evaluated."

The One to One Learning program applies six core principles:

• Respect and honoring of differences - Actively acknowledge that all students learn differently and at different paces and enable them to develop and work with their own unique learning rhythm;
• Development of autonomy - Through the One to One program, educators guide students towards total autonomy, allowing them to learn and grasp the world using their own skills;
• Educators are catalysts - Educators assist students in the process of becoming autonomous learners who rely less and less on their educators to learn;
• Student excellence - Although time is variable, the quality of a student's learning process is expected to improve consistently so that he/she can reach excellence in every unit of study;
• Goal-oriented - Each student develops a Student Learning Plan (SLP) which sets daily, weekly and monthly goals. Students learn to develop strategies to reach goals, understand their strengths and how to augment them, as well as their weaknesses and how to overcome them;
• Relational education - Students move to the next topic in all subject areas only when they are able to relate everything they have learned to their daily lives. The relational method increases knowledge retention and chances for academic success.

The Fontan Relational Education (FRE) program was established in Colombia by Julio Fontan, founder and director of the Colegio Fontan (a K-12 school in Colombia.) According to the Colombian Institute for the Promotion of Superior Education (ICFES), the FRE program has achieved outstanding results in both affluent private schools and poor rural schools in Colombia. Currently, 5,000 students in Colombia are learning by using this program. It has also been implemented in schools in Finland and South Africa.

Nancy Sullivan, ACND's vice principal for academics and college advanced placement advisor, visited Colombia to learn more about the FRE program. "Students were engaged in their work," she said.  "They were able to give me insight as to how this model has given them new focus on learning as an individual approach. Almost every student I spoke with was positive about the program and those who were older compared the differences to traditional educational experiences with this progressive approach and preferred the FRE model overall."