As class begins each day at Pine Crest, you will see a Lower School classroom in their morning meeting connecting through song or engaged in activities like mindfulness stretching.

Summer is right around the corner, and it is the perfect time for teachers’ reflection, professional growth, and the chance to dive into a good book. Inspired by Pine Crest School’s 2019-24 Strategic Plan, “The Future is Here,” this year’s faculty summer reading supports themes that are reflected in the overarching, guiding question:

By Spencer Davimos ’22

Pine Crest School received three Anatomage Tables recently.

Anatomage Tables are virtual dissecting tables that are generally used by medical schools such as the Mayo Clinic to allow medical students the opportunity to perform virtual autopsies. One Table is located in an Upper School Huizenga Family Science Building classroom. The additional Tables are located in the Middle School life science classrooms — one on the Boca Raton campus and one on the Fort Lauderdale campus.

By Danielle Weisfisch ’20

Middle School at Pine Crest is home to new virtual reality (VR) equipment, which Pine Crest Computer Science and Technology faculty are using to teach students how to create their own virtual experiences and to influence others’ perspective.

“More content is being released and is increasingly available and accessible, and VR and augmented reality (AR) devices are becoming more effective,” said Mr. Sean Tibor, Pine Crest Computer Science and Technology Specialist. “By the time our Middle School students go to college, they will need to know how to use this equipment and feel comfortable using it.”

The terms “VR” and “AR” are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same.

“The difference is that AR takes information around you and fuses the world you are in with additional data or information  — think Pokemon Go,” said Mr. Tibor. “VR is about immersion and perspective. It overlays virtual items or instances on top of the real world. The benefit of VR technology is that it can change our perspective from a few different axes: distance, time, scale, and the forthcoming, human perspective."

Delving into these axes, Mr. Tibor shared how using VR technology is not limited to one course or subject.  

Pine Crest formed the School’s first-ever Lower and Middle School FIRSTⓇ LEGO LeagueⓇ (FLL) competitive teams four years ago, and since then, the Panthers have formed eight teams who have made their mark on the South Florida region.