Compass to 2020: Charting The Course, the school division’s five-year strategic framework, aims to provide students with personalized learning opportunities that incorporate the use of digital resources to prepare them for employment or post-secondary educational opportunities in a globally-competitive environment.
To support this goal, Teaching and Learning staff studied national trends and best practices to identify basic tenants of digital learning for implementation and further development through the division’s Digital Learning Schools initiative.
The goals of the initiative are:
- To develop a cadre of schools to serve as model digital learning schools within the division and
- To study specifics in the field with respect to pedagogy and device implementation.
Through an application process, the following 11 schools were selected to serve as Digital Learning Anchor Schools for the 2015-2016 school year:
- Bayside High School
- Corporate Landing Middle School
- Great Neck Middle School
- Green Run High School
- Kempsville High School
- Kingston Elementary School
- Newtown Elementary School
- Rosemont Elementary School
- Strawbridge Elementary School
- Tallwood Elementary School
- Thoroughgood Elementary School
In addition to division-level support, each Anchor School has a Digital Learning Leadership Team consisting of teachers and the school principal. Leadership teams from all schools met together this summer for various work sessions and will continue meet on a regular basis to support each other in this digital learning endeavor.
Though the goals of the program are directly tied to student learning, a variety of digital devices provided by the school division also will be used and studied during the school year. Students will have the opportunity to use these devices in school and, in some cases, at home.
Digital devices being evaluated by Anchor Schools include the following brands and models:
- HP 14” laptop, ProBook 640 G1
- HP 11” laptop, ProBook 11E
- HP 11” convertible laptop, ProBook X360-310
- Dell 11” laptop, Latitude 3150
- Asus tablet, Transformer T100TA
- Apple iPads, Various models
- HP Chromebook, Chromebook 11 3G
Teaching and Learning will share information about the progress of the Digital Learning Anchor Schools initiative throughout the year, and the public can find more information on vbschools.com.
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What a great idea!
Are smartphones going to be considered is this process?
These digital devices are inexpensive, they have a great battery life, with large screens, have the most apps, and these digital devices are embedded in our students daily lives. Most importantly, they have multiple function’s which can assist in numerous class room lessons.