The Saskatchewan Teacher's Federation is hearing from membership about the difficulties with education technology delivery in the wake of schools closing because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Federation president Patrick Maze said that some teachers are having this problem.
Maze noted that the responsibility lies with the government in their role as funders of school divisions to help address this.
“I think it is incumbent on government through the school divisions to identify where those gaps are and where we need to provide a little better for students in order to allow them to continue learning,” he said.
“It is the school divisions that are best placed to know where those gaps are since they are the ones that work directly with the families and the students. But at the same point they also require some funding and support from government to be able to do that. It is a partnership and everybody needs to do their part,” Maze said.
In a news conference on April 21, opposition NDP Education Critic Carla Beck discussed these concerns. Beck addressed gaps that might exist either due to socioeconomic or urban and rural issues around technology. Students may not have access to internet in rural and remote communities or have access to devices. Beck would like to know the numbers of students affected.
Locally, the North East School Division has determined in a survey that 112 students out of the 4,343 students that responded have no internet access, while 316 have to use a data plan to do their course work. The Horizon School Division is lending out 700 Chromebooks and is preparing to roll out cellphones to provide hotspots for internet access for those without access to those resources.
Maze explained that there are also situations where teachers are coming into cities or other major centres.
“[It is] because they are out in the country and they have difficulty accessing WiFi as well and have to call their rural internet provider and try to get up to speed quickly so they could continue providing for students,” Maze added.
Addressing these challenges is responsibility of the school divisions.
The ministry is aware that some divisions have entered into partnership agreements in order to be able to provide devices to students in order to supplement online learning. They added that individual divisions will determine what supplemental learning opportunities may be used to meet the needs of students in their division.
According to the Ministry of Education, the Response Planning Team continues to be in regular communication with school divisions in order to support divisions as they provide learning opportunities to their students.
In a separate interview Maze noted that the work of the Response Planning Team has been beneficial in building relationships between government and the Federation.
It was put in place to ensure students continue to have supplementary learning through distance opportunities and take-home resource kits; as well as logistics to ensure backroom functions such as staff assignments and payroll.
-with files from Peter Lozinski, Prince Albert Daily Herald; Jessica R. Durling and Devan C. Tasa, Humboldt Journal
