Students of St. Augustine School will be given the opportunity to strengthen their skills and discover new areas of learning thanks to two substantial grants given by Skills Canada and Alberta Education.
St. A’s received a grant totaling $100,000 in support of the development of their Career and Technology Studies to help better students and equip them with the knowledge in order to be successful in a wide variety of career paths.
The school received another $100,000 for a pilot project to integrate technology into the classroom with a program called Bringing IT Together.
“It’s excellent,” said principal Kevin Prediger. “It’s nice that the province comes up with funds for this. They are listening to Albertans when we talk about what we need and recognize that technology is part of student’s future.”
The CTS grant will allow for the school to add more electives and expand what they offer.
“It will allow us to open up most of the fabrication such as welding and pipefitting,” said Prediger.
As part of the Bringing IT Together pilot project the school is proposing virtual field trips where students will act as a reporter and enter the work world with a video camera and document their experience. The virtual tour will be more convenient than taking a whole class to a place and going through safety procedures, etc. The tour will be linked back to the classroom and students will be able to see what the community is involved with.
“It’s essentially like a reporting type system,” said Prediger. “It’s virtual tours into the community that allows for instant feedback and conversing back and forth.”
The purpose of this is to make learning more accessible to the students and help show them what is out in the world.
“We are trying to provide an avenue of what’s in our local community that they can possibly pursue as a career,” said Prediger.
The two grants will be put into effect in the new school year.