Our school is one of 4 in our District that has begun the integration of technology in to the classroom. Our school has every student in grade 9 and 10 to bring a personally own device (POD) for use in the classroom. Students can use cell phones, tablets, or laptops to interact with the curriculum and help them learn. It is expected that each student provide their own computing device, while we do have 5 laptops for students that financially cannot afford a computing device, so far every student has provided their own.

Our district uses a web base course organizer called Desire to Learn (D2L) which is similar to Moodle. I teach grade 9-12 Social Studies and my entire course for grade 9 and 10 is up on and available to my students. My course is designed where students must have a personal own device to be able to function and do the activities and assignments. Our school is completely wireless and has IT support available once a week.

There have been many challenges with the implementation of this program; accessing the lessons and activities using a cell phone and tablet has a challenge for students. Some lesson with embed videos don’t work on some mobile devices. Some students had difficulty accessing D2L. I had to create a mirror site on Google drive for some students so they could fully participate. Some students have POD’s that don’t have MS word and we have had to find alternative open sources programs for them. The roll out of this program would have been much more difficult had I not being enrolled in the MET program at Boise State which gave me access and introduction to variety of tools and techniques.

The program is been up and running for two months and most of the kinks have been worked out and students have adapting to the program and expectations. Overall students have enjoyed the opportunity to learn using technology, the flexibility of working at their own pace and having access to the most current information. Our Social Studies curriculum is based upon problem base learning and so access technology is crucial to the success of this type of curriculum. Next year we will add 2 more grades to the roll out as out grade 8 and 11 students will all have POD’s, eventually our 7-12 students will all have POD’s and we will have had 3 years of running this program. Our school is providing feedback to the District on what works and what needs to be changed or adapted. This technology roll out has been fully supported by our District as it is part of the larger roll out in the Province of Alberta where the traditional classroom is and will disappear and students will be empowered to learn any place ant anytime and teachers will become facilitators of learning, not the repositories of what is right and wrong.

I hope some insight from my experience helps