Geography matters.
I am not referring to the study of our physical earth and atmosphere, things we learn about from a high school geography class. While learning about the world around us is important, I mention the importance of geography because where we live matters.
Choosing to live and work in Manitoba’s Parkland has enormous benefits. It is beautiful place to live and raise a family. I did not grow up here, but have chosen to live and work here for decades. It is where my children grew up and went to school. It has become home.
However, in the midst of our current climate, where we live does make a difference. This pandemic not only is altering our day to day living, it is exposing one of the challenges of living in rural Manitoba.
Connectivity.
This has long been one of the difficulties of rural life. As more and more of our society shifts to the digital age, being able to access the many platforms increases in importance. Yet, the greatest struggle of this trend is having high speed, high quality, reliable access to the internet.
Canada is a massive country – land wise – with a relatively small population. While urbanization is certainly occurring, there are significant portions of our populations that live in rural or remote places. This provides those supplying internet services with a real test to their capacity to make it possible for Canadians to have equitable if not equal access to service at reasonable costs.
For years, governments, education organizations, providers, and software creators have looked to set standards of what all Canadian students should have as minimum capacity in terms of connectivity. This intended to create a set of standards that decision makers could use as a reference point to ensure a 21st century education was within reach for all students.
Yet, setting these minimums and achieving the minimums for students are two different things. With the varying scope of responsibility and capacity for governments, business, and education providers, there exists a patchwork of responses across our country attempting to meet this challenge.
With our current environment this obstacle is even more exposed. Access to digital learning is not centralized in schools, but exists in individual student’s homes.
On a provincial basis the Manitoba School Boards Association is working with providers across this province to highlight the necessity of access and find the gaps in service. Providers are stepping up with creative ways to fill those gaps where the need may be due to financial capacity or access to devices. However, the needs are very diverse across the province.
This highlights once again where local decision makers make a difference.
Mountain View School Division has long worked on providing access for our students in schools. It invested significant local resources to make sure our schools would be able to have access to reliable service. With the current need to adapt schooling to an on-line medium, this access to reliable service is even more necessary for our communities.
Our teaching staff is doing an amazing job. They have stepped up to this challenge providing their students with opportunities to learn outside of the classroom. On the Division website you can find the tools that are in place to help students and parents navigate this new environment. This includes training for parents.
This however, while helping those with access, does not assist those who do not have connectivity at home or access to a device. With so many working from home, the devices a family has may be used for work instead of schooling.
The Division worked with schools to determine the needs of students and families. These results indicate that most have some access, although there are gaps in access and reliability across the division.
Initially teachers prepared packets of information to assist students who did not have either a device or access to their school material on-line. As this environment continues the Division is looking at other ways to help students in the short term.
The Division is looking at lending options of providing devices to those who need them.
The Division is also providing WiFi connectivity for high school students through a “hot spot” at the DRCSS. This is a pilot and may be used at other high schools as well throughout the Division to assist students who need faster, more reliable service.
Mountain View School Division is committed to helping our students through this unprecedented environment. It is one of the benefits of having local decision makers in our communities.