WOW Wednesday – DRCSS
On Wednesdays, I highlight some of our amazing MVSD staff on our social media pages. Every day our staff are using tech in new and exciting ways, are learning new skills, and are sharing ways in which ed tech is assisting them in their practice.
This week I would like to highlight Dauphin Regional Comprehensive Secondary School (DRCSS). They committed to providing formal training to all of their Grade 9 students in the use of Office 365. This training is specifically on how to use these tools to enhance their learning and includes:
- platform overview and navigation of tools such as Teams, OneDrive, and the traditional MS Suite (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)
- data security & privacy
- collaboration
- assistive learning tools including Dictate and Immersive Reader
This was not an easy feat as this is the largest school in our division and we had 6 cohorts of students to connect with at this grade level. For many of our staff, and the community, there can be an assumption that students have the necessary understanding of these programs; with a common statement surrounding the fact that, “they would have used these during remote learning”. However, this cohort would have been in elementary during the Covid-19 suspension of classes, which meant that their experience was not on these tools, and we should never assume that this skill set is present.
Given the prevalence of these tools, by all teachers in the building, setting up our students with these foundational skills at the beginning of their high school experience can hopefully provide an easy transition that allows them to focus on content and accessibility rather than fighting with the tool itself.
A big thank you goes out to the whole DRCSS team who always is so welcoming to me and is committed to ensuring their students have the understanding required to use these tools effectively in their learning journey.