September+2014

September, 2014.
Thousands of cars drive by [|Dakota Collegiate] every day. From the outside, I'm sure that this September looked pretty much like every September before. Hundreds of young people make their way to school, follow their schedules, find their lockers, meet up with old friends and make a few new ones along the way. From the outside, September 2014 looked pretty typical, but from the inside, there has never been a September like this one at Dakota, or any other Public High School in Manitoba. We might even be the only Public High School in Canada who had a September like this. So, what's so historic about this September? Everybody who comes to Dakota, all one thousand, one hundred and thirty plus students bring their own laptops to school.

For those who've followed the development of the Bring your Own Device (BYOD) One to One (referring to the ratio of one computer to one student) initiative at Dakota Collegiate you'll know that the Louis Riel School Division started this as a pilot project in 2010. It started out small, a few teachers (myself included) would try teaching one to one using a cart full of netbooks supplied by the LRSD. Based on the success of that experiment, a pilot was proposed that would require all grade nine students (about 300 of them) to bring thier own machines to school, beginning in September of 2011. There was vocal support and opposition to the plan, there was some media coverage, and in the end, the school board approved the pilot. This year, that pioneer group of Grade nines from 2011 are entering school as the graduating class of 2015, and yes, they are still bringing their own computers to school every day. Following them are the 11's, 10's, and 9's, and they all bring their computers as well.

Like most pioneering efforts you might imagine, having 1100 plus teens bringing computers to class every day has led to a variety of problems, challenges and hurdles. Some of the technical issues (wifi and bandwidth) were resolved quickly by installing and maintaining robust infrastructure. The social issues of the haves and have-nots led to equity issues that are being addressed with short-term and long-term computer loan programs that are administered out of the Dakota Library. And really, seeing computers at school is as normal as seeing desks at school for Dakota. Theft and vandalism have been minimal over the four year run of this initiative.

The more challenging issues have been linked to dealing with the traditions of schooling. It is tough to be the only ones out there doing school this way. Dakota looks pretty typical if you drive past the school, but the teaching and learning in the building are being positively changed by having a tech-rich and student-owned learning environment. Having new information tools at our fingertips means that it makes sense to conduct classes in different ways, and the learning changes. More challenging for the adults in the building, the teaching changes as well. Shakespeare and Calculus are not only housed in text books and the minds of teachers anymore. In an information age, teachers and books are not the content masters or content containers that they used to be. Teachers need to be experts, but for new reasons: in an information age, students need to learn how to navigate a world of information, and teachers serve as essential way-finders through Google searches that provide millions of bits of information in under a second.

An information age has come to us, to all of us who look at screens whether for work, or for play, or for any other reason you'd care to name. Trying to keep students from bringing their own tools to school so they can learn seem pretty backwards. Well, it makes sense if you care more about the traditions of schooling than having children learn. In September we had the pleasure of hearing [|Ron Canuel] address the combined staff of Dakota Collegiate and the Louis Riel Arts and Technology Centre. Ron's experience as a Canadian pioneer of deeply tech-infused Public education was a good reminder to us that what is going on at Dakota is rare, is important, and needs to be adopted by others as well. Pioneering is tough work; not all pioneers make a go of it, in fact, many fail.

Every month people ask to tour Dakota, and many of them are from the Professional Education community. They want to see what's going on, how its working, what the students think, and they wonder how they might be able to do something like this in their own jurisdictions. I've started to forget just how different we've become, and I'm reminded when I begin talking to colleagues in other communities, and in other schools. If you were to walk the halls of Dakota, you'd notice just how much has not changed. Teens are still teens, there are classrooms, teachers, lessons, and learning. Our artistic and athletic programs are thriving. It's a healthy high school, and you'd see that in a tour. What you can't see easily are the new ways of learning, of picking up information, of networking, connecting, sharing, and redistributing knowledge that are all possible because the whole place is wired for learning. No other place in Manitoba is like this place.

So, here's to the Dakota Collegiate Class of 2015. True educational pioneers, but if you ask them, they never think much about using their own computers in classes. After all, that's the only way they have ever known high school, and everybody brings their computers to class, don't they? The students here are as unaware of the changes they're a part of as the motorists who pass the school every day on their morning commutes. Dakota looks pretty typical from the outside, and inside the learning seems typical to the students, but there is very little that is typical about the way they were educated, or the advantages they'll have as they leave this place in June.