Heather Latter
Students at Mine Centre School soon are going to be learning in a very unique way.
The school recently was chosen to be a part of a program called “Connected North,” which was launched last year by Cisco Canada at Aqsarniit Ilinniarvik School in Iqaluit, Nunavut.
This past spring, Cisco Canada determined it would expand the program to Deh Gah School in Fort Providence, N.W.T, John Arnalukjuak High School in Arviat, Nunavut, and Mine Centre School here in Rainy River District.
“The ‘Connected North’ program delivers immersive and interactive education and health-care services to remote and northern aboriginal and Inuit communities through high-definition, two-way video communication and collaboration technology,” noted a press release from Cisco.
Mine Centre School principal Barb Dennis is thrilled they were chosen to be part of the project.
“For a number of years, we’ve really been working on student engagement and trying to get kids to be more participatory in lessons,” she noted.
“A lot of our children may be a little scared to take risks and put themselves out there with answers, and get involved in what’s going on with the lessons,” Dennis explained.
“And we thought this would be a really great opportunity to have interactive lessons that should pique their interest and help with the engagement piece.
“As well, being such an isolated community, a lot of our students have never even been to a city like Winnipeg,” Dennis added.
“So their exposure to experts in the fields is pretty limited.”
The “Connected North” program uses collaboration
technology like Cisco TelePresence to link people in the north to essential educational.
“The TelePresence unit is a really cool high-definition video unit that brings a life-like experience into the classroom,” said Allison Dunlap, consultant of Corporate Affairs for Cisco.
“So the students will be able to be connected to experts in various subjects, mainly science, technology, engineering, and math but also arts experts, and teacher professional development can be delivered over this,” she noted.
“So instead of having to worry about travel, it brings people directly into the classroom like they are there, through high-definition video.”
Dunlap added Cisco also works with a group called the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (CILC) in the U.S.
“They do cool things like museum tours for the students, so it just brings a lot of neat resources to students that otherwise might not be able to travel to some of these places,” she reasoned.
Dennis stressed this will be a great opportunity for students at Mine Centre School.
“When teaching reading skills, one of the key things we’re always trying to do is get the kids to make connections to the wider world,” she noted.
That means, for instance, asking students questions such as, “What does the author’s message have to do with what’s going on in the world?” or “What kinds of lessons can we learn from this?”
“If you haven’t had exposure to perhaps as many experts in the field that others students have, it makes it really hard to make those connections,” Dennis reasoned.
“So this is just giving them an opportunity to sort of bring the world to our students, instead of bringing our students to the world.
“The number of experts and the depth of the experts is just amazing,” she added.
Dennis said another benefit offered through the program are the “Connected Classroom” sessions, which bring students together for a cross-cultural exchange to create mutual awareness and understanding.
“It’s like an exchange program between classes,” she explained. “So the students in our Grade 6-8 class would be paired up with an urban class.
“I believe they have schools right now from Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary involved so far.”
Dennis indicated Cisco is getting to know the Mine Centre staff and students and their needs so that when they do the pairing with one of the urban schools, they set it up so it is a really positive experience they can benefit from.
“It’s been really successful,” Dunlap said of the “Connected North” program.
“York University did an evaluation of last year’s pilot program in Iqaluit and we had some great responses,” she noted.
“Over 80 percent of the kids [said] they thought the video experience was more fun than the regular teaching experience and that they learned more in science classes.”
“We believe that ‘Connected North’ is an extraordinary opportunity for students across Canada to not only learn together, but learn from and about each other over video,” echoed Willa Black, Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, Cisco Canada.
“The wonderful staff at the Mine Centre School truly have the dynamic spirit needed to make the most of this breakthrough programming and bring this unique experience to their students,” she added.
The TelePresence unit is in the process of being shipped to the school, where it then will be installed and staff trained on the technology.
Dunlap said they hope the program will be up and running there sometime next month.
“It is very exciting,” enthused Dennis.
“It’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these kids and for our school.”
