Giving Compass' Take:

• Wendy McMahon at EdSurge highlights Cat Campos's personal story of how she became an advocate and driving force of education technology. 

• The future of education and its success will not be entirely based on technology, but on how educators can utilize tech to their advantage in the classroom. What support might teachers need to do this effectively?

• Read more about how tech implementation starts with teachers. 


In 2011, Cat Campos was a senior at Immaculata-La Salle High School, struggling to see how the iPod touch devices they were testing in her AP Literature class could support learning. Today, she’s the school’s Dean of Technology and a driving force behind an impressive technology program that has students and teachers rocketing toward new levels of learning.

...you can’t issue technology devices without understanding that these can be a productivity tool or a distraction.

“It’s gone full circle,” laughs Campos. “They sent me off to college, I did my degree, I learned all the things, I came back, and now I’m teaching them as much as I can to make their classes even better.”

Since those early days of testing iPods, the small, private, Catholic school earned a long-standing designation as an Apple Distinguished School. They were also the first Catholic school in the country accredited as a STEM school by AdvancED.

The school’s one-to-one iPad program gives every student a sixth-generation iPad and every teacher a MacBook Air laptop and iPad Pro device. Students use iMacs in three digital arts labs to do sound engineering, digital animation, television production, yearbook and photography. They use video conferences to understand how to help people in Uganda with AIDS awareness. Digital arts students create designs for the drama club’s school production while engineering students help with the robotic aspect of props for the production.

Read the full article about driving tech integration by Wendy McMahon at EdSurge.