As the world of technology is changing so are the demands placed on the B.C. education system.
From as early as kindergarten, school children in this province are getting introduced to gadgets that their parents, and even older siblings, would not envision seeing in a classroom.
iPads, Facetime and QR codes are no longer a novelty as education tools. But for many teachers, it is still as much a learning experience as it is for their students.
One of these teachers is Shannon Bain.
Bain teaches kindergarten at Baker Drive Elementary in Coquitlam.
She is one of the pioneers of something called ‘pedagogical documentation,’ the idea of letting a child use technology to record what they learn in classroom every day.
Bain hands out iPods, iPads, cameras and recording devices to her students and lets them be the ‘documenters’ of their own learning experience.
“Kindergarten is so hands-on nowadays,” says Bain. “You are not sending parents test results or worksheets, so this is a way to show our learning.”
She says technology has really enriched her classroom.
“It is my hope and wish that this is how we will eventually report to parents. I think they learn way more from this kind of documentation that is happening either daily or weekly…this is the way education is going.”
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Of course, having children walk around with gadgets all day can be as distractive as it can be educational.
But Shelley Wilcox, Director of Technology with Abbotsford School District, says there are ways around it.
“You don’t give an iPad to every kid, you give them to every two or three children, and they are inter-reacting and dialoguing and working on some kind of project together…They get totally focused and don’t have time to go somewhere else.”
Wilcox says they instruct teachers on how to engage children and keep their attention. Often, that involves teachers learning how to use the gadgets themselves.
Audrey Van Alstyne, District Principal of Learning Technologies with Vancouver School Board, says it is exciting to see the majority of teachers wanting to learn.
“I keep hearing these stories of success, and I just get so excited,” says Van Alstyne. “I’ve been in education for a while, and often it is – oh, this equipment is too hard to use – but something like a mobile tablet is really easy to use.”
Both Wilcox and Van Alstyne say most of the gadgets in their schools are district owned.
“A few schools are playing with ‘BYOD,’ which stands for ‘bring your own device’,” says Van Alstyne. “And we are working on policies and protocols around that.”
But with more devices in classrooms, a lot of the schools are running into the issue of bandwidth limitations.
“People these days don’t have just one device: they have two or three,” says Wilcox. “So when a teacher walks through the door, they come in with their personal cell phone and laptop… and then we are bringing kids with their own cell phones. We are going to have hundreds of devices connecting simultaneously. We don’t have the bandwidth for that,” says Wilcox.
“Soon, it won’t be about bringing your own device; it is going to be about bringing your own wireless. The big challenge that we are going to face in the future in the school system is how we are going to deal with 3G connectivity.”
Wilcox says as a school district, they have some control over what kids do when they connect through school networks. But if they are coming in with 3G, it is whole different issue.
“That is going to be a big policy thing… a big privacy issue. We are going to connect with parents and have them under agreements too that if their child comes in with a phone that has Internet access, it is not being filtered. They need to be aware of that.”
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