Brandon School Division and policies

Today we had Kelli Boklaschuk from the Brandon School Division come and do a presentation for our class. She is the Communications and IT person for the division, and had a lot to tell us about technology in the division.

She was challenged with the task of bringing the Brandon School Division to a 1:1 computing state, and discussed with us the challenges that come with that. The budget is obviously the most challenging aspect, as it takes a lot of money to purchase computing devices for students, and it also takes training of the teachers. There is no point in having devices for all students if the teachers don't know how to use them in the classroom. Teachers need to be trained on how to use devices, how to incorporate technology into their lessons, and what is appropriate digital citizenship.

She showed us a site called Popplet were we created an online bulletin board with connected points about digital citizenship vs. general citizenship. We talked about modelling good digital citizenship and being respectful, both online and offline. Popplet itself seems like a great program to use, and it has great educational value.

She also told us about the policies in the Brandon School Division regarding showing student work, photographing students, having students participate in digital activities, and other policies. Social media is a big one, since most teachers are on some kind of social media, or store their files in the cloud. It is important for any teacher working in the division to understand the policies that are in place.

All in all, it was very informative and helped me as I will be heading to the BSD in 4 weeks!