3 minute read
A Look Back
By Visual Arts Department Chair, Teacher and School Archivist Mark Macrides
In September 1983, the Board of Trustees approved a Planning and Policy report that included the following recommendation: “That the school continue to support the efforts of the Faculty Computer Committee, as it examines and implements the use of the computer in the curriculum.” This statement was the first widespread formal acknowledgment that the computer had a permanent role to play in the future of Country School’s program. Indeed, it had! Thirty-seven years later, as we join the rest of the country in pioneering extended distance-learning programs for our students, it is on that visionary foundation that we firmly stand.
As early as 1982, Head of School Nick Thacher was discussing in his Annual Address “The proper integration of computers into the process of educating children…” and believing it to be “…the single most important aspect of educational stewardship in the foreseeable future.” This foresight had already helped to create support for technical visionaries such as Ed Mills and Reinhold Wappler, whose implementation of innovative educational opportunities around the use of the computer were already gaining ground on campus. Ed Mills, former Head of the Middle School, had by the early 1980’s become Head of the Science Department and is credited for setting up the first computer on campus. The large cumbersome “appliance” initially became a circus-like attraction to students. However, under Ed’s knowledge and creative guidance, Country School created its first computer course, and by 1985 computer classes were an established component of the NCCS curriculum from LOGO in the Lower School to broader applications of study in the upper grades.
Reinhold Wappler, Lower School mathematics teacher, pioneered the LOGO program not long after Mills set up his first computer in the Middle School science lab. Described in simple terms as a “tool to think math with,” LOGO evolved in 1970 at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The work at MIT was strongly influenced by combining computer theory with the concepts of educational psychologist Jean Piaget. By 1980, NCCS was one of the first schools to bring the results of this important research into the classroom. Two years later, children in Grades 2 through 5 were spending time on computers with
Mr. Wappler, learning the language of LOGO in support of their mathematics curriculum. The LOGO program and computer lab that was designed to support it became a model for the development of computer labs in other divisions, particularly in the lower level of the Stevens Building, where older students began to learn the benefits of the computer as a tool for research and word processing. In typical Country School fashion, as the presence of computers expanded on campus, so did conversation about the challenge of balancing reality with the new virtual world of technology.
These past weeks, if we can be grateful for anything, it is the computer and accompanying technology that are enabling us to remain connected and continue to deliver an innovative version of the valuable Country School program to children and families. The school’s success over the years in striking the appropriate balance between the physical and virtual worlds highlights the need for an eventual return to campus and all of the physical connections, activities and “hands-on” learning that distinguish NCCS. In the meantime, we are grateful for the solid foundation in computer science provided by our forerunners, as well as our ability to use those resources to continue to support our students through such an unprecedented time in history.
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Congratulations
to the Class of 2020!
For coverage of our end-of year-activities, including Closing Exercises, please see our next issue or look online: www.countryschool.net
