Stepinac's Video Details How Personalized Blended Learning Environment Prepares Students for Success

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - June 29, 2015 - PRLog -- Stepinac High School, ranked as one of the country’s top 50 Catholic High Schools, has released a video about how its innovative, personalized blended learning environment is preparing students for post secondary success.

The six-minute presentation— https://youtu.be/PKiIk6OSUQQ is by Frank Portanova, Vice Principal for Academics and Curriculum as well as a Stepinac alum (Class of ’93), who played a key role in developing and implementing the school’s first-of-its-kind all digital textbook library in partnership with Pearson Education.

Portanova  explains how Stepinac’s technologically advanced academic platform, a project that began five years ago, was created with two goals in mind for all of its students: 1) to inspire life-long learning and make intellectual curiosity a mainstay and permanent part of their lives and 2) to give them a strong academic foundation to succeed at college.

To achieve those goals, Portanova noted the four tenets comprising Stepinac’s approach to learning which he describes as a “conscientious integration of technology.”  The first is that all classes are “flipped” whereby students do their homework by taking advantage of the sophisticated tools of the digital library including watching videos and lectures that are pertinent to the topic and either reading the assigned text or, alternatively, having it read to them. Portanova noted the convenience that all the information is housed in a single location. “The student does not have to wander in cyberspace to study and do the homework.”

The second is that all the courses at Stepinac are “blended,” whereby the students are responsible for completing online, under the guidance of highly trained faculty, a comprehensive array of assessments and activities associated with the courses.  Portanova notes: “Using a tablet and taking notes in a classroom, often described as 1-to l instruction, is not blended learning and will not prepare students for success at college where the courses are often blended.”

The third tenet in Stepinac’s model to help prepare students be accepted by the college of their choice is emphasizing the importance of research. Portanova notes that the library not only consists of more than 61 titles that can be used for primary and secondary research but offers a wide array of resources as well including essays and lectures.

Portanovo describes Stepinac’s fourth tenet as giving students a ‘great academic profile’ consisting of 19 Advanced Placement Courses starting in the freshman year as well as college electives offered by Mercy College and Marist College and a wide choice of other electives designed to meet the student’s individual needs and interests.

As a result of Stepinac’s success as a pioneer in developing and implementing an advanced technological platform, Portanova said that the school has become a “standard bearer for curriculum innovation,” citing the visits of educators from the region, nation and overseas. “They have marveled at how well we have trained our faculty to use the new technology, the amount of money we have and are investing in the infrastructure and the time we spent in developing and testing the digital library before we launched it.”

The video can be accessed on Stepinac’s website, www.stepinac.org, and on the school’s social media platforms including YouTube:https://youtu.be/PKiIk6OSUQQ



About Archbishop Stepinac High School

The mission of Archbishop Stepinac High School is to offer young men of the Archdiocese of New York a highly competitive academic and extracurricular program that will prepare them for college and leadership roles. The faculty and staff accomplish these objectives by pursuing excellence and creating a supportive, disciplined atmosphere with a strong sense of camaraderie and Christian values that is unique to the Stepinac experience. For more information, visit www.Stepinac.org.