A wonderful learning opportunity that will indirectly influence future Bellair SAGE classes occurred for Ms. Castiglione this spring break. She spent time with family visiting a niece in Italy. Laura is attending university classes in Florence, studying art in one of the most amazing cities in the world. College students from all over the US take advantage similar programs which means the city is alive with young people attending classes, studying, shopping, country-hopping on weekends and eating (lots of gelato and pizza-what else?)

Traveling out of the USA is always enlightening, but wandering through the same piazza that Michaelangelo and Leonardo DaVinci once crossed is nothing less than astounding.  Additional trips to Pisa and Venice filled the short visit to the brim with amazing and delicious learning experiences.

This week, students in 3rd, 4th & 5th grade tested, dusted and set up a cache of bondi blue iMacs and delivered them to Bellair kindergarten, first & second grade classrooms. The “rescued” macs were part of the DV district’s summer  of 2006 upgrade. School’s were only allowed to keep 10% of the hardware that was taken offline, but Bellair was determined to take advantage of the older iMacs to provide classroom teachers with yet another tool to individualize instruction during the school day.