District School Board Ontario North East,
Ontario, Canada

Spanning nearly 400 square miles in rural northern Ontario, District School Board Ontario North East (DSB1) has one key mission: to empower all 7,300 students across its 33 schools to achieve personal excellence. The school district has a widely varied and diverse student population. One third of students have special needs, and another third self-identifies as Indigenous — with nearly no overlap between the two groups. As a result, unlocking the potential of each student in the district is no small task.

In 2014, a few teachers began a grassroots effort to bring iPad into their classrooms because of its accessibility features and learning tools, as well as its potential to facilitate creative, personal learning. iPad enabled students to record and edit their own content, build presentations, and compose essays — all while protecting their information and preserving their privacy. These capabilities gave students opportunities to demonstrate their thinking and knowledge in unique, meaningful ways.

In the spring of 2015, a group of students presented to DSB1’s board of trustees to solidify support for iPad as the tool of choice within the district. They demonstrated iPad’s flexibility, ease-of-use and creative capabilities, and the trustees were inspired by the students’ passion and the range of ways they could show their learning.

Seeing the potential impact of iPad, the board readily committed to the financial investment necessary to launch DSB1’s iPad programme. In the autumn of 2015, 1:1 iPad deployment began for students years 5 to 13, and in 2021, the programme expanded to include years 1 to 4 — providing all learners in the district with equitable access to technology and expanding what was possible in every classroom.

Apple technology is the foundation for innova­tive learning practices across the district. At Bertha Shaw Public School, an elementary school, teachers use iPad to help students build their literacy and oral communication skills in French. Students listen to prompts in French on iPad, record their spoken responses into Seesaw, and then listen back to check their pronunciation. They also use iPad to record short films and stop-motion animations that they narrate in French. This variety of learning methods goes beyond traditional writing exercises and allows students to engage in activities that cater to their strengths and make their learning more visible to teachers.

Middle school students at New Liskeard Public School explore critical historical subjects in novel and innova­tive ways. For example, for their projects about immigration, students create a podcast, a movie or a presentation using GarageBand, iMovie or Keynote that highlights the push factors that contributed to people leaving their countries as well as the pull factors that brought them to Canada. As a diverse district, it’s an especially relevant and personal topic, and iPad allows for unlimited creative expression, which deepens learning.

DSB1 has found that there’s a significant demand amongst high school students for more authentic experiences, so teachers at Timiskaming District Secondary School (TDSS) take a modern approach to classic literature. In English class, students use Keynote to contextualise Shakespeare by creating iMessage-inspired chat timelines, illustrating how characters written hundreds of years ago would interact today. While reading, they use Apple Pencil to draw, annotate and break down complex texts, and then add narration to explain their thought processes. This type of analysis prepares them for university-level coursework.

Students at TDSS also have the unique opportunity to learn to become first responders. In their healthcare programme, iPad is used in tandem with sophisticated training mannequins to create lifelike scenarios and students are challenged to think quickly to make the right decision. These authentic experiences give students the transferrable skills for jobs in healthcare or other industries that they might not otherwise have exposure to.

Since the start of DSB1’s iPad programme, student engagement in the classroom has improved significantly — as evidenced by a nearly 10% increase in graduation rate. With iPad, students develop important technology skills, nurture their curiosity and express themselves in truly creative and unique ways, from primary to secondary school and beyond.