Page 12 - 2017/2018 Salesanium Annual Report

Academics & College Placement
Salesianum is often lauded for the breadth of its programs and offerings outside of the classroom. And while this may indeed be a strength, day-to- day instruction continues to be the most important element of our operation and, as such, the primary focus of most school leaders.
As part of this commitment, the Information Technology Department became the Office of Educational Technology (OET) to more clearly signal the priorities of the group in
its efforts to facilitate teaching and learning in the building. Accordingly, the OET develops content weekly
for teachers to aid in the use of technology in the classroom and is coordinating the school’s gradual transition to Apple devices as our preferred products for instruction and learning after years of multiplatform hardware implementation. As part
of this transition, Salesianum is in the process of becoming an Apple Distinguished School.
While instruction remains the focus of the OET, they spent much of the 2017-18 school year dealing with
hardware and software concerns across the building, including a schoolwide network outage in September 2017. This outage hastened several planned network architecture upgrades and forced the office to address several “homemade” patches and fixes, which were legacy issues, often slowing the process. While any outage is difficult, particularly one that renders everything — from phones to doors — useless, it is a reminder of the importance of our investment in technology and the huge responsibility to maintain a healthy network, which the team, led by Michael Reichert, EdD, Director of Technology and Instruction,
and Christopher Matarese ’02, Network Administrator, have very ably strengthened and made more reliable.
Summer 2017 also saw the advent of summer EDGE, an academic initiative aimed at tying together current summer offerings and enhancing them with a rigorous class schedule and then marketing them under a single brand: EDGE. Current EDGE programming includes summer sports camps, SAT/ACT prep classes, STEP technology orientation for incoming students, Brisson
10 SALESIANUM SCHOOL ANNUAL REPORT | 2017-18