Software Tools Help Students, Teachers and Parents

August 5, 2014

At Hillcrest’s Anna B. Lawther Academy, which serves both day students and boarding school students, software and technology is extremely important in the education and communication process. A new software program called BrainWare Safari is being utilized in our classrooms this year. BrainWare Safari helps develop children’s cognitive skills – the basic skills that help them learn – skills like memory, attention, thinking and auditory and visual processing. As those basic learning skills improve, so does a child’s ability to learn subject matter as well as to comprehend, retain and apply, and to problem-solve.  BrainWare Safari assists educators with developing these cognitive skills for their pupils, and is presented in a fun and entertaining video game format.

We’re also using a software called IXL which was specifically developed for math skills for students from Pre-K through high school. IXL assesses a students’ understanding of mathematics, and it generates detailed performance reports to provide insight about our their abilities. With IXL we can identify a student’s strengths and pinpoint problem areas, view improvement over time, and measure progress based on length of study time. We can even view the actual problems a student missed and the answers they submitted.

Also, parents of Anna B. Lawther students have the ability to log into our secure education portal and view their child’s grades, report cards, missed homework assignments and other valuable information at any time.