High school students in the Seven Oaks School Division are getting a post-secondary experience, pre-graduation.
West Kildonan, Garden City and Maples Collegiate students are participating in two programs at Red River College's Applied Computer Education (ACE) Project Space.
The first, Pathways in Technology Early College High Schools (or PTECH) is the latest partnership between Seven Oaks and RRC. In the PTECH program, Grade 10 students from West Kildonan and Garden City go to ACE Project Space, where they learn how to code.
"Every morning from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. we're teaching them Intro Programming," says Steve Lawrence, ACE Project Space coordinator.
"They'll get a high school credit, and if they decide they want to move into the field and come to the College, they'll get a college credit for that course. The second course we're going to get to is Web Development."
"They're getting exposed to the university/college environment. When they come here, they'll be ready for it. And it's a benefit for us, because it promotes the College, as well."
Niki Taylor, teacher advisor for PTECH, says her students are excelling at learning to code with Java.
"The coolest thing is they're all doing well, which you don't necessarily anticipate when 15-year-olds take a college course. They're all keeping up with it," Taylor says.
In addition to learning programming language, Taylor is incorporating small assignments that find her students reflecting on their learning at ACE Project Space.
"We're bridging that gap to post-secondary, (so as) to not have it be such an intimidating reality," Taylor says. "We're saying Hey, you can do this now, so imagine what you can do in three years.' Now, the college environment won't be intimidating and neither will the content."
The second partnership between Seven Oaks and ACE Project Space is Met Innovation Centre for Entrepreneurship, or MICE. Launched last year, the program sees students from Maples Met School spending two days a week at ACE Project Space, where they work on real apps for real clients.
"We go through the complete product development life cycle," says Lawrence. "First, the kids do a pitch for an app they want developed, then we decide which ones we're going to do, and then they work in teams on developing that project throughout the year."
"They go right from pitch, to acceptance of the product, to requirements gathering, to doing screen mock-ups and wireframes, to creating a project charter, to actually creating the product. They're learning the coding language and they're actually meeting with the client and getting the product accepted to production."
Lawrence says MICE students are using agile methodology, an approach to software that involves breaking the project up into several stages and emphasizes continuous collaboration with the client.
"Every two weeks they meet with the client and they go through what they've done the past two weeks," Lawrence says. "They either get their work accepted or if the client says No, I want these changes,' they do those first and then decide what to do the next two weeks."
"The beauty of it is they don't meet the client only at the beginning and then four months later wind up with something the client doesn't want. If they meet every two weeks, when there is a problem, they can deal with it right away."
In April, the MICE program won the 2019 Ken Spencer Award, a $7,000 prize from the EdCan Network for innovation in teaching and learning.
Taylor says it's been her experience that Seven Oaks School Division is very open to new methods of teaching and learning.
"I was a student teacher with Seven Oaks, I volunteered there, now I'm working there, and it's always been apparent to me that they're open to any teacher, administrator or student's opinion of how we do things differently and how we ca be innovative in education," Taylor says.
"This (the PTECH program) is one of many examples of how Seven Oaks is trying to reach out and how open Red River College is to being part of that change. It's a natural, cohesive connection between the two the division and the College, and I think it'll continue to be a really good partnership."
Profile by Jared Story (Creative Communications, 2005)
