Education innovation

This week, I wrote a story about the St. Thomas Aquinas Roman (STAR) Catholic School Division, which has undertaken some neat initiatives to make learning more interactive for their junior high and high school students in Leduc, Ponoka and Drayton Valley.

On May 1, I attended STAR's celebration of the first six months of their "Building I.T. Together" project and left feeling really excited about the opportunities that are available for students nowadays.

When I think back to elementary school and learning how to use a "word processor," I'm amazed that students today are using Skype to chat face to face with experts and other students all around the world.

I really feel that there's no better education than the one you receive by experiencing the world, especially through travel and interface with people who live differently than you do, but for many kids, that's not economically feasible. So the fact that they can learn about other countries from the people who live there without having to fork out thousands of dollars for a plane ticket is incredible — and for many of them, it will likely pique their curiosity enough that when they do have the financial means to travel, they will.

You can read more about the BIT project in the May 8 Rep, but I wanted to share the video above, which Brad Clarke from Alberta Education showed to demonstrate why radical change is needed in the way we teach our students in this ever-shrinking world.