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On a warm day in summer 2008, hundreds of multi-coloured balloons dotted the clear blue sky above the northern Ontario Ojibway community of Saugeen, far outnumbering the town’s population of 120 residents. A feast of roasted chicken and wild berry pies marked an historic occasion: four high school graduates had just received their diplomas.
“Before this, they’d never had a graduation in Saugeen,” recalled Darrin Potter, 43, the students’ principal who travelled from his home in Balmertown, 450 km northwest of Saugeen, to honour the achievement. “The whole town celebrated.”
The community’s four graduates attended Keewaytinook Internet High School (KiHS), an online secondary school that educates an increasing number of First Nations students in a dozen remote First Nations communities across Northern Ontario.
KiHS’s success, and that of other e-learning initiatives for Aboriginal students, is profiled in the Canadian Council on Learning’s 2009 report, State of E-learning in Canada. The report examines the current state of e-learning throughout Canadian society and internationally.
High school dropout rates are significantly higher among Aboriginal youth than among young people in the rest of the population. “The biggest challenge we have is getting students to realize the importance of continuing their education [past elementary school],” said Potter, who is of Micmac descent and KiHS’s principal for the last eight years.
Most First Nations communities lack on-site secondary schools. Students have had to move far away to attend high school or commute long distances, which isn’t possible from many remote areas. Leaving home is a daunting challenge for 13- or 14-year-olds, especially those with little or no family history of academic success and sparse financial resources. Immersed in a very different society, missing the support of their family and friends, and sometimes without close supervision by host families, these students often drop out of high school.
“It’s a real culture shock,” Potter remarked. “A lot of students come to us after bad experiences.”
E-learning—mostly in the form of virtual high schools accessed over the internet—has begun to successfully address this dilemma. KiHS’s 12 participating First Nations communities faced graduation rates as low as 15% when the school was cyber-founded in 2000. According to Potter, KiHS graduation rates have risen steadily to 55%—and almost 70% of students registering for a particular class complete it.
“One of the school’s founding principles is to enable students to continue their education in their communities,” Potter said. “Our goal is to give these students a quality education.”
KiHS students take courses daily in community classrooms, with the help of a trained mentor. Online classes, video conferencing, debating with other students online, quizzes and assemblies are common segments of a KiHS school day.
“Our students also have the opportunity to become well versed in technology,” the principal added. “The digital skills our students are collecting are second to none.”
Potter also pointed out that First Nations culture hasn’t been forgotten in the transition to an e-learning facilitated curriculum. In Bearskin Lake, for example, students learn beadwork from elders after school; in Sachigo Lake, elders teach how to smoke fish and handle a canoe.
In Fort William, students can stay after regular class for lessons on how to make a traditional papoose. Last year, a group of elders brought in a deer they had just killed hunting and taught students how to skin the animal and carve up the meat. The elders then treated students to a traditional feast.
“I never did that as a kid,” stated Potter. “By giving students the choice to learn in their communities, they’re also able to have a relationship with their elders and build a social network.”
Other First Nations communities are participating in founding virtual schools:
In its blended program, students attend real-time, instructor-supported classes, involving e-learning technologies such as WebCT and Elluminate Live that facilitate, for example, interactive tutorials and class discussions. An on-site student mentor, typically from the local community, provides supportive electronic resources, assists with technical issues, helps students remain on track with assignments and acts as a community liaison and academic coach.
As the CCL report highlights, the Conference Board of Canada concluded in a 2005 report: “In the context of current financial realities, the Sunchild E-learning Community presents a unique, First Nations-oriented, learner-centric and reasonable cost education service that delivers positive educational results.” On-reserve high-school graduation rates have increased dramatically from 20% to 80%. The Conference Board attributed this success to “the e-learning model that brings teachers and curricula into diverse classroom sites through the use of collaborative technologies.”
Research shows that the quality of teaching is a prime factor influencing student outcomes. Since distance forms of e-learning eliminate geographic barriers between students and highly qualified teachers, Potter foresees virtual schools as having “great potential to help provide the educational solution for First Nations communities.”