This is the first year that all Grade 9 students will be taking the Digital Literacy course at Heritage Woods Secondary School in Port Moody, BC.  All incoming students have been asked to show up on the first day of school with their own digital device.  Students can bring any device that they prefer – laptops, tablet computers, iPads, Microsoft Surface, Chromebooks, etc.

The decision to enrol all students in Digital Literacy came from two places.  First, Riverside Secondary in Coquitlam started a similar program several years ago, and it’s been a great success.  Second, the Ministry of Education recently released a new curriculum for all students, which features a detailed section on Digital Literacy, which each school is expected to deliver to all students.  Having a mandatory Digital Literacy class ensures that all students will meet the mandated learning outcomes for Digital Literacy.

Two teachers were selected to lead and teach the new course, Mr. Paul Aitken and me.  We have been working since the end of last semester to prepare the content for the course, and now we’re just a few days away from the launch date – Tuesday, September 5th, 2017.  It’s all quite exciting, and we’re looking forward to seeing how it changes the school culture.  Our goal is to nurture a school culture where students use technology every day to research, present information, collaborate, communicate, support both critical and creative thinking, and innovate.

The other big goal of Digital Literacy at HWSS is to empower teachers to integrate technology into their teaching practice.  By teaching collaboratively with our fellow teachers, we can demonstrate how technology can be used to make lessons more dynamic and fun.  We introduce teachers to tools such as Office 365, OneDrive, video editing, creating blogs and websites, using new apps, online collaboration tools, digital classroom tools such as OneNote Class, and discussion forums.

Stay tuned to my blog to find out more about how Digital Literacy is unfolding at Heritage Woods!