Our Flagship Program
The nationally-recognized Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences is a series of courses designed around the six critical 21st century skills. It is intended for delivery as a contemporary sequence of courses within an existing high school program of study.
The program facilitates the cross-discipline application of academic knowledge, creativity, design, and innovation skills integrated with digital media and applied to the study of science and technology. All courses feature problem-based learning and comprehensive capstone projects as the foremost instructional activity for all students. The Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences is a dynamic, exemplary, and replicable model for 21st century teaching and learning that prepares students to be knowledgeable participants in our ever-expanding technological society.
The Center for 21st Century Skills provides extensive professional development and support for educators participating in the Academy. The Academy allocates funding annually for technology and student experiential events (including travel costs), and provides stipends for Innovation Expo supplies.
Rationale
Art and science have been connected for centuries, from da Vinci’s artistic study of the human body to Einstein’s use of the literary metaphor to explain his theory of relativity. Art has been used to describe and explain basic elements of the natural world and abstract ideas or discoveries. As science and technology become more interdependent, so, too, does the relationship between art and science.
While students are growing up in a world surrounded by computers, digital media, and the Internet, they are all-too-often stifled and stymied in the use of these technologies in traditional high school courses. As the world continues to rely more heavily on science and technology to solve problems and meet human needs, more students are needed in related fields of study. The establishment of the Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences is intended to address these issues and to create a new interdisciplinary program of study for the 21st century that appeals to all high school students in the updated tradition of the Liberal Arts and Sciences education. The future of education may very well depend on a renaissance in the study of art and science.
The primary mission of the Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences is to motivate, engage, facilitate, and support the development of student artistic and creative skills in the use of digital media with a focus on applying those skills to the study of science and technology.
