PENTICTON – For French immersion students like seventh grader Kaleb Stewart, typing up essays and paragraphs is a challenge.
“You have to press the ‘alt’ button and then the numbers on the number pad and it’s quite the hassle.”
Stewart is referring to the issue of using an English keyboard to generate french accents. It’s a hassle he and his fellow French immersion students at KVR Middle School in Penticton are saying goodbye to thanks to the donation of more than 50 brand new French keyboards.
“It will definitely change the way we work because we won’t have to go press the little commands and put in all these different numbers and codes that we don’t really need to,” says grade seven student Kat Picton.
The donation comes from local business International Bar Coding (IBC).
“We get English and French keyboards and most of our local customers are using the English keyboards so we had a lot of French keyboards taking up space,” says Matthew Pedersen, Business Development Manager at IBC. “Rather than recycling it, we wanted it to go to people who could utilize it, we thought the school system would probably be the best use for that.”
Principal Steve Devito says Pedersen was right.
“With shrinking budgets and trying to make do with what we have when we get news like that, about a donation like that, it’s very exciting because it’s something that we probably wouldn’t have gone out on our own and purchased,” says Devito.
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Grade seven teacher Julie Cornett-Ching says the keyboards will be put to good use.
“They’re using computers a lot more than they ever have before,” says Cornett-Ching. “Kids are very motivated by the technology and so this is just another piece for them to use.”
The original intent was to donate all of the keyboards to the French immersion classes at KVR Middle School. However, once the principal learnt just how many kayboards there are, he quickly realized that more students could benefit from the donation than just this one.
“When we were told that it’s more than 50 keyboards, I was like ‘wow that’s tremendous,’” says Devito. “It’s way more than what we can make use of here so we are looking forward to being able to share with some of our other immersion schools in the district.”
Students like Stewart are filled with gratitude for the donation.
“I think that’s really helpful of them, that is really generous,” says Stewart.
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