Teachers and other employees with the Lambton Kent District School Board are meeting the difficult challenge of taking instruction online.
Ben Hazzard, the superintendent of education for Early Years Elementary Program, said primary and junior students are spending five hours a week learning online, students in Grades 7 and 8 are connected about 10 hours a week, while secondary students are expected to work about three hours a week per course.
In an interview on CHOK (103.9 FM, 1070 AM), Hazzard said teachers were excited to reconnect with their students when online learning began this week.
"Last week the elementary teams put together some workshops for how to teach online," said Hazzard. "We had over 1,500 participants per day, we have 900 teachers. That shows you the commitment of folks because that was [educational assistants] and [early child educators] and teachers all rallying around, really trying to figure out how we do this best for our students."
Hazzard said a survey was conducted to determine the need for e-learning devices in households.
"We have well over 2,000 devices we're lending, so that's 1,700 iPads and 500 Chromebooks," he said. "Normally that would take us a whole summer to get ready to deploy and those are being deployed in a matter of days by our IT department. So that kind of gives us a scope and a scale of the online learning teachers are leading and also that work in behind."
Hazzard said with many parents working from home during the pandemic, there's a need for a second device in some households for children. He conceded that Internet availability can also be an issue.
The St. Clair Catholic District School Board has deployed over 1,000 devices to students. Chromebooks and other special education devices were picked up by students and families at 14 schools across the district on Wednesday.
“This deployment ensures that our students who did not previously have access to devices in the home will be able to participate fully in teacher-led distance learning, which began on Monday," said Director of Education Deb Crawford in a news release.
Further information about e-learning is available on the Lambton Kent District School Board website.
The Catholic board is also developing a plan to assist students and families without access to the internet.
-With files from Sue Storr
