A team of Wolf Creek Public Schools (WCPS) administrators and teachers are travelling to China later in November to present the concept of Inspiring Education to China’s schools.
“The Minister of Education picked five school boards in the province they felt were doing a really good job in moving Inspiring Education forward,” said superintendant Larry Jacobs.
From WCPS, Jacobs will attend the trip along with two teachers and Amber Hester, assistant superintendant of Inclusive Learning Services.
“And that’s one of the areas China is interested in, how to meet the needs of all children,” said Jacobs, referring to Hester’s area of expertise.
Because it is a provincially assigned trip, Alberta Education is covering all expenses for the school boards.
Each division will make a presentation with a different focus and WCPS will speak to the execution of the concept. “My focus is how a school is actually implementing Inspiring Education.”
In early fall, WCPS also sent employees to attend a Google Summit in San Diego.
The division used the conference as a learning tool for the number of Google applications used in schools.
“The division now uses Google gmail and it’s critical that those people leading the jurisdiction are aware of its capabilities,” explained Jacobs as an example.
Other programs such as Google forum survey or Google docs allow for more accessibility among all WCPS staff. Jacobs explained that having staff fully trained in the program would allow more than one person to comfortably work on a document at the same time as well as allow access from anywhere in the world.
“These are the kinds of things we’re working on,” said Jacobs.
“You can kind of see all the powers than exist now, it’s highly interactive and highly collaborative,” he added.
The school division chose to attend the summit in the United States because airfare was cheaper than flying to the second choice location in Ottawa.
“These are not presented very often,” said Jacobs.