TOLEDO—Toledo Central Catholic High School has been collaborating with Hicksville High School in Hicksville, Ohio, for several months, specifically in the area of technology.

The collaboration began when several teachers from Hicksville attended the Creativity and Technology Integration in Innovative Education (CATIIE) Conference in June at Central Catholic.

The CATIIE Conference specifically focused on demonstrating curricular best practices in creativity and technology integration. The sessions presented real-world educational objectives and standards and showed how these are being delivered to students using lessons that incorporate 21st century skills and exceptional creativity.

Both Central Catholic and Hicksville High School have one-to-one programs that provide laptop computers to all incoming students to use throughout their four years of high school. Administrators from both schools believed it would be beneficial to get together and share ideas about technology integration.

Twelve Central Catholic teachers and Marie Arter, director of curriculum, visited Hicksville High School Sept. 17 to learn about its laptop program and to spend time in classrooms to see how teachers used technology.

Ten teachers and administrators from Hicksville visited Central Catholic Dec. 8 with a similar purpose.

The teachers from Hicksville also visited the Kranz SPACE Room at CCHS, watched the Irish News Network (INN) streaming daily announcements via the Internet and made plans to bring students back to Central Catholic for the CCHS Reads author visit next April.

“Two of the 21st century skills being stressed at Central Catholic High School are collaboration and creativity,” says Marie Arter. “A perfect way for our teachers to practice these skills is by putting them into action with another innovative school. Central Catholic is committed to providing all that the world of technology has to offer to its students and teachers, and this collaboration effort demonstrates our commitment to 21st century learning.”