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IC Features
I
t’s here, there, everywhere (as Dr Seuss may be aware).
Only in this case those “funny things” are none other than
the computer network spread in almost every aspect of the
school. Ever so silently it has made its way into the classrooms,
in the library, in teacher workshops, on the website, in the cur-
riculum, in the career guidance office, “just everywhere,” said
Mahmud Shihab, the head of IT for academic Development
and Web Master.
Shihab’s office is a small room, barely 2.5m × 3m, with stacks
of computer books and software on either side of the room. This
is the hub of the computer world at IC. From here, Shihab and
his team of seven computer teachers develop, monitor and apply
applications to the curriculum and throughout the campus.
The overall curriculum is mostly based on the National Edu-
cational Technology Standards set by ISTE
(International Society of Technology and
Education), the Lebanese curriculum, the
IB curriculum, and the French Baccalau-
reate curriculum.
But simply applying the standards across
the school is easier said than done. The IC
curriculum is a complicated one. Four study
tracks in the secondary school alone require different stan-
dards. Shihab’s job is to keep abreast of all standards and mix
and match programs in a way that students in all four tracks
are familiar with all the software – whether it is required by
their curriculum or not. The French Baccalaureate students, for
example, are required to know several software applications as
part of their French curriculum. And so Shihab installed all the
applications and made it available to all students and teachers
in all four tracks.
“There is nothing that we have not implemented in our cur-
riculum and in our school,” said Shihab.
And this is but a small part of the educational technology at
IC. There’s more. Much more. Students across the school, of
course, take weekly computer lessons. But again, lessons have
to satisfy both the Lebanese requirements and other programs
running at IC. PYP’s (Primary Years Program), for one, entails
that computer lessons integrate with the current class theme
(which changes every few weeks).
Shihab and his team comply.
To make matters even more complicated, every year sees a
new generation of students much more computer savvy than the
previous ones. The IT team finds itself again tailoring the curric-
IC goes Tech