The Connected Classrooms Projects - Schools District 74

Part Four: Connected Classrooms Projects - School District 74, BC

Background:

This school district is geographically isolated and also the schools have very small numbers, both the high schools and the elementary. Obviously this makes class sizes small and each cohort year group is very small and most students could conceivably go right through school with the same children in their class. Socially this is very isolating. At high school level with few specialist teachers subject content could be limited.

The school district is situated in the Rocky Mountains area about 4 hours east of Vancouver, BC. Each school is around an hour apart.

The school district has 60% First Nation people and this comes with historic social issues in families with many parents struggling with parenting skills. This is due to  a lack of role modelling parenting skills through generations -  an outcome of the institutionalising of generations in the Indian Residential schools.  Attendance was not an issue as school was the most consistent thing in their lives. The behaviour of the students was generally good as the students respected the institution of the school and the teachers built relationships with the children and so explicitly understood their needs.

Along with the social and geographical isolation, the teachers felt real professional isolation as they hardly saw another teacher throughout the year apart from the small number in their school. 

Along with the social and geographical isolation, the teachers felt real professional isolation as they hardly saw another teacher throughout the year apart from the small number in their school. 

Connected Class at Cayoosh Elementary

The Connected Classroom Project:

With the challenges described above a group of teachers and administrators from the school district got together to come up with a way of making cohort groups bigger and addressing the social isolation students felt. They developed the Connected Classrooms Projects with Lytton, Cayoosh, Cache Creek and Ashcroft Elementary Schools. 

This project brought a Grade 6-8 class together from each school every day via video conferencing. 

Each class had cameras, sound equipment, and interactive whiteboards installed and teachers would collaborate together planning their units of study. One teacher would take the lead for a unit. When the classes got together the lead teacher would review what they had done or a student would do this. All four classes are visible on the large screen in the classrooms. Collaborative work is seen on the SMART boards of all classes and in the classes I visited students seemed to manage the SMART board. A sound system allowed students from each school to share their thoughts and where they were at in their integrated unit. They also could ask questions and students from other schools could suggest answers.

I was impressed with how student-led their learning was with the lead teacher role being just to manage the link-up. Students I observed had been working on projects for a while and were excited about how they were going to present their project and were sharing ideas across schools on how best they could share with their audience on the presentation night. There was a real buzz about this.

Lytton Connected Class heads off on a field trip with a class from Lillooet 

Another innovative aspect to this project is when a class goes on a field trip it generally includes one or more of the classes in the Connected Classroom group. The day I was there the students from Lytton were heading off on a field trip to a Farm and were picking up a Connected Class from Lillooet on the way.

The teachers commented that the video conference connections are great but the opportunity to get together on a field trip was rich socially and was an important part of the project.

I had the chance to visit Kumsheen High School in Lytton and while there the visual media class linked up with students at Ashcroft High School. The visual media specialist teacher was in Ashcroft and the teacher at Kumsheen took a facilitators role during the lesson.

12th Grade Kumsheen High School students connected to Visual Media teacher and her class Ashcroft High School. 

The students were reviewing a recent photography field trip all the Year 12 visual media students had been on to Victoria, the state capital. The students I spoke to were very excited about the trip both because they loved the work they did with a professional photographer in Victoria and because of the social interaction with other 12th grade students. On its own Kumsheen could not have afforded to employ the services of a professional photographer but as a collective of schools it was possible.

All the teachers I spoke to said for them as professionals the Connected Classrooms was a wonderful tool for allowing them to connect with colleagues and they felt they were better teachers because of it. They commented that they learnt a lot from each other and they had to be on top of their game when they were the lead teacher in particular, so this meant they really had to reflect more on their practice. Despite their geographical isolation they said they felt very connected to the community of teachers within their school district.

One of the spin offs of the connected classrooms has been the breaking down of the competition between students of the various towns. Historically, there had been huge competition between the four towns - Lytton, Lillooet, Cache Creek and Ashcroft to the point that when they got together for sports, games would often turn to violence. The students had no connection with each other and only knew students from the other towns as historic rivals. The connected classroom projects, now five years old, has brought these students together and they have got to know them as fellow students and even friends - a face, a name, an individual.

Lytton Elementary School

This was the first school in this district I visited. With 90% First Nation People there were many challenging social issues in the community - alcoholism, domestic violence, and unemployment. However, despite this, immediately you could see the school was a warm and caring environment. With a roll of 70 and four teachers the Principal said they "rattled around" in the large building they had as it used to be the District High School.

Main St Lytton, BC 

When I arrived the students were all sitting around having breakfast, something that happens every morning. The Principal, Denise O'Connor was busy finding some lunch for some students heading away on a field trip. There was no doubt there were some challenges teaching in this school but the atmosphere was about learning and the students were keen to get stuck into their day. Denise had lived in the community all her life and clearly had a real passion for the community.

Maggie with Denise, Principal of Lytton Elementary.

Chris Lewis, the class teacher, of the Connected Class was a very positive teacher who clearly had an excellent relationship with the class. I spoke with him briefly before he headed off on his class field. He said the Connected Class Project is vitally important to his little class (15 students) as it socially and academically expands the student’s world. However, he said the issue for them was connectivity. Their network was poor and connection was unreliable. Across the town the problem was the same and although there has been talk from both government and business level, the solution is a distance away. The problem was not so bad in other towns, which were larger.

Lytton Successful Learners Traits

Kumsheen High School

We briefly visited Kumsheen High School with Denise. This school has 45 students and Principal, Chris, explained the challenges and limitations of so few students.

Because of these the Connected classrooms were vital. The students can access specialist teachers in subjects at other schools and also have access to experts who can link in the school via the video conferencing. The professional photographer used for the Victoria field trip is a great example. They have the ability to link with the expert before and after the field trip to set up and then review the project. The school was using the Google Apps to collaborate with peers.

Both staff and students were very positive and focused on learning. One 12 grade student commented with pride that he was going to College next year and not going to waste time taking a gap year off.

Cayoosh Elementary School -  Lillooet

This is one of two elementary schools in this town and is the largest in the school district with 180 students. I was welcomed by Patrice Barth, the Principal, who gave me an overview of the school and the area and escorted me to Errin Gregory Connected Classroom. Lillooet is a small town with the main industry being a large plywood factory. The school had around 60% First Nation People.  

Cayoosh Elementary in Lillooet, BC

Errin’s class had 26 8th Grade students. One of the features of the class was Rosie its pet tarantula. Quite a unique pet and the children were excited to demonstrate feeding Rosie.

The class also has 1:2 Workbook laptops in the class, which many students were using when I was in the room.

1:2 Ratio of Workbooks in the class

The students had been working on individual projects at all three schools in the connected conference. Errin was the lead teacher for these projects and was leading the video conference with Cache Creek and Ashcroft.

All three Connected Classrooms working together.

Each school reported on their progress, with students leading all of the discussion. Then Errin collected in ideas for presenting projects from her class and wrote them up in a document on the SMART board.

Children discuss presentation ideas - screen visible to all three classes. 

Each class shared their ideas for presentation by either sharing their documents on the second screen in each class or by one student verbally reporting back. The process was clearly well embedded in the class’s routine and students responded well to their interactions with students from other schools.

Ashcroft High School

We did actually spend a great deal of time in this school but went to lunch with their Visual Media teacher and one of the original Connected Classroom teachers, Brooke Haller who worked at Lytton Elementary School at the initiation of the project. She commented that the School District leaders and Principals were 100% behind the project both in terms of financial costs of setting up, allowing flexibility in the curriculum and by encouragement and interest in the project and it’s progress. They now see it as a vital part of success in teaching and learning in their district. She also mentioned the difference the Connected Classroom project has made to overcoming professional isolation in her region. Teachers from other schools are interacting and sharing with each other on an almost daily basis.

 My Reflections

Innovation in this unique environment has been about overcoming barriers and creating innovative modern learning environments where students can interact with their peers. Class programmes observed model best practice – student led, choice for students.

Clearly, access to a quality network is a barrier they need to overcome but this is achievable and it didn't stop them achieving a level of connectedness. The idea of Connected Classroom doesn’t need to be limited to schools in insolation - it also has applications for all schools as the technology and concept would allow classes to link up across districts, countries or across the globe. Neighbouring small rural schools in New Zealand would really benefit from this model. If they could get over their local rivalry and competition (which this model would help with) their students would really benefit from the greater level of social and academic interactions. As Principal of Tasman, we had around 18 Year 7 /8 students. 9 Year 8s. If genders were 50/50 then that would leave 4 or 5 of each gender. Chances are these children would have gone through the past 7 years with the same students, not an ideal situation. If we were to link with other local schools of similar sizes we could have increased the size of the cohort, increase the opportunities, and reduce the isolation of each school "Island." Tomorrows School has given us many opportunities but it has also made each school an individual island that we tend to protect pretty closely.

Hampden Street is truly lucky with the level of ability and capacity we have in IT and our network connection. We could connect with local schools but as we are relatively large we don't have the same social isolation issues. We could easily link with schools in other parts of the country and collaborate on projects. I think our best opportunity would be to be a global Connected Classroom with a school in Indonesia. This would easily be achievable at HSS. With the staff and student's skills in using Google to collaborate on work and our existing relationship with Indonesia through AsiaNZ, we have a good opportunity to genuinely collaborate in a global connected classroom.

Parallels with the needs of the First Nation people and Maori was interesting. Clearly the needs of Maori and support for their culture within education is well ahead of where the First Nation people are. The generational effect of the residential schools has been a limiting factor. Many aspects of the First Nation Culture has been lost through the affects of the residential schools. Very few First Nation can speak their native language and so even with 90% First Nation students at Lytton, establishing any type of bilingual programme would be difficult.

It’s all about relationships and this was so true in this challenging environment. These teachers were dedicated and knew their students well. The staff cared about their students and knew the community.

Implications for HSS.

Clearly visiting after two school districts I can see the need for student agency at all grades is the way forward in modern education. Students owning their learning and being able to articulate and own their inquiry process is vital. Once again the opportunity for student’s to present their project to an authentic audience was key to the success of the Inquiry Process. Many (even most) schools in NZ, including Hampden Street, tend to have their inquiry as a teacher led model. The teacher may say it is student led but the students are following a model they don't own and see it almost like a 'paint by numbers.' We also tend to run our inquiry separate from the "valuable" literacy and numeracy time" which always happens in the morning. Why!!! Genuinely integrating these subject’s into a student-led inquiry makes them so much more relevant, engaging and authentic for students.

As mentioned in my reflection, the concept of the connected classroom has excellent applications for our school.  It would give us the ability to link up and collaborate with another school either in another part of the country or internationally in Australia or Indonesia. It could be linked with our Google Apps for Education. We would not necessarily need to spend a fortune on expensive audio visual equipment as we could use Google Hangouts or Skype for Free. Using Google docs students would have the opportunity to genuinely collaborate on projects between schools.

A Connected Classroom concept could also be used to link classes with experts and teachers with other teachers to collaborate on projects. Several classes working on the same topic could video conference with an expert as a rich way to share knowledge, without the expense of getting them in and with students and teachers being able to interpret the information together as they listen to the information.