Kelly Road secondary school will soon be the home of a project-centred, technology-driven personal learning choice school program that will encourage students to use smart phones, tablet computers and laptops for all of their subjects.
The Northern Learning Centre choice program for students in Grades 8 and 9 received unanimous approval from school board trustees at Tuesday night's school board meeting, one of the final decisions of the current board following Saturday's municipal election.
The Ministry of Education, in its 21st century learning initiatives document, wants schools to promote technology and innovation to increase the learning ability of students and keep them focused as they apply that knowledge to problem-solving, information analysis, numeracy, literacy and decision-making. Kelly Road principal Lee Karpenko believes the proposed Kelly Road project, the first of its kind in School District 57, would be right in line with the ministry's objectives.
"You're going to change the way education is delivered to kids, in a good way, using technology," said Karpenko. "Hopefully it's the model of the future for School District 57.
"It's scary and it's exciting because we don't want to force this on people. We want parents, kids and teachers to have a choice because it's a different way of delivering education."
The integrated approach will allow overlap between subjects as students work on cross-curriculum projects they find relevant, while still meeting the prescribed learning outcomes. Instead of the current 72-minute blocks schools allot to each subject, the only limit on class time would be the length of the whole school day. Students would have more opportunities to collaborate with other students on their projects to learn leadership, self-motivational methods and practical skills geared to the workplace.
"A lot of kids are disengaged, they're not interested in school and don't want to be part of it," Karpenko said. "So if we can make it meaningful to them, what parent doesn't want that?"
The ultimate goal is to help students develop skills that would prepare them for types of job that, because of the rapid pace of technological advances, might not yet exist.
"Why would we want to stifle innovation?" asked trustee Roxanne Ricard. "By not saying yes to this we would stifle innovation. It gives parents a choice."
Teachers would be hired specifically for the program. All students would require a digital device like a laptop of smart phone. No additional finances would be required.
Cindy Heitman, the district principal of curriculum and instruction, told the board a method of tracking student progress will have to be devised, .
Kelly Road and district staff visited a similar program two weeks ago in Fort St. John for Grade 10 students at North Peace secondary school. The Energetic Learning Campus program operates out of an office at the indoor speed skating oval in Fort St. John.
"The kids there are motivated, they're excited to be there, I think we'll have lot of eager students come September," Karpenko said.
He is confident he will get support from his staff and said he'll have "no problem" signing up between 50 and 100 students in the first year. Information sessions for students and parents will take place in January and staff are to be hired in April.
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