Andrew Macdonald: Turbo-charging K to Grade 12 IT education in classrooms

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Eighteen months ago, Frank McKenna established the McKenna Institute at University of New Brunswick, and so far $50 million has been raised for it. McKenna is a former New Brunswick premier and once an ambassador in Washington, D.C.

The purpose of the institute is to change the “economic trajectory” of New Brunswick, writes McKenna in promotion material.

The institute, said McKenna, is designed to turbo-charge “New Brunswick’s vibrant tech economy.”

One aim of the McKenna Institute was to create a school curriculum to enhance digital literacy for Kindergarten to Grade 12 students.

Dr. Tiffany Bastin, who is an assistant deputy minister with the province’s anglophone school system, says the program with UNB rolled out last fall.

“In 2022, the McKenna Institute was one of our first partners and have been absolutely instrumental in helping us to build computer technology, knowledge and skills.”

Today, there are 95 teachers in the anglo school board unit’s digital learning network, who go back to various schools and coach other teachers to embrace technology as an education tool in respective classrooms.

The school board is also sponsoring digital innovation community events, in partnership with the McKenna Institute.

“How do we engage community including families and citizens? We targeted rural areas, for people who just want to learn a little more about technology, and leverage the children in our schools to build some excitement and maybe get some more people willing to come out,” she said.

There have been two community events, including a recent IT event at Fundy High School, held in recent weeks.

“It’s open to anyone in the community, so you do not necessarily have to have a student in the school. It’s more about broadening our reach to infuse interest in technology and look at it as a community model.”

There are about 70,000-plus students in the anglophone school board. Since the pandemic, the board has provided laptops to high school students, and earlier grades share devices in the classroom, explained Dr. Bastin.

I asked Dr. Bastin how a Grade 12 history teacher, for instance, will benefit from IT curriculum being developed for students.

“For example, if you were discussing something around the Indigenous outcomes in our curriculum, then you could have, via technology, a speaker, one of the elders who could be brought in through the centre to have a conversation with a classroom” via an online platform, said Dr. Bastin.

Dr. Matt McGuire develops curriculm at UNB

At the education faculty at UNB, Dr. Matt McGuire developed a road map – teaching lessons – for digital literacy programs at the classrooms.

Dr. McGuire is the McKenna Institute’s inaugural fellow in digital education. He developed a digital literacy lesson plan for teachers as part of his PhD to grow digital education for the workforce of the future. The fellowship with Dr. McGuire has been funded by two anonymous donors, each contributing $1 million to the McKenna Institute, to be spent over a 10 year period.

McGuire has developed educational technology courses in UNB’s bachelor of education program and is developing courses for the master of education program for student teachers.

“These courses are enhancing future teachers’ knowledge and skills in educational technologies and ultimately will strengthen all New Brunswick students’ digital literacies and competencies,” said the McKenna Institute.

After he wrote the digital road map for teachers to deploy technology in the classroom, he is now concentrating his efforts “working with individuals in the Department of Education to keep this document upgraded, and, more importantly, at this point is to develop resources, tools and lesson plans and programs that educators can use within schools with their students to help achieve these goals,” he said.

IT entrepreneur Evan Justason says focus on tech a good thing

I caught up to Evan Justason, CEO of Fredericton-based SmartSkin, which bills itself as a digital solution company. The firm uses tech sensors in the packaging containers assembly lines in pharmaceutical (pill bottles) and food and beverage (Moosehead Breweries is a customer), to detect defects in packaging lines.

Justason also is a parent of two school-aged kids, and sees the benefits of the board’s focus on bringing technology to the broader community – open to parents and non-parents. He attended a recent tech event held by the board at Fundy High School, with his two kids.

“When it comes down to it, the digital economy is the great equalizer between the urban-rural divide. It’s the ultimate in freedom if you have the skills to innovate with digital tools. If you can think about it, you can make it, you can do it from pretty much anywhere in the world. I spend my days (in rural N.B.). I run a company that works all over the world from Bocabec (Charlotte County, just outside Saint Andrews. That is where I live and I live here because I want to raise my family, and I also want to grow a big business and make a meaningful impact around the world. And you can do that now, you do not have to live in San Francisco, you can do it right here.”

Justason says the McKenna Institute focus, partly on K to Grade 12 tech education, is something needed “if you want to create a digital economy, foster a digital economy, it does not start with 20-somethings, it does not start at university. You have to foster an interest and love for that at the grade school level, that is where your brain works to learn these things, it is where you learn by not being afraid to try something new with a computer.”

He says his two kids attend Fundy High School, in middle school, and love to work on computers.

“I try to find things to give them to do, help foster that interest in more productive things, and that ranges from things like online chess to doing coding courses through the Canadian Chess and Math Association,” he added.

“But, I do not know what to give them. You might think well, how not? I hire computer programmers and engineers all the time, I should know how to foster this, but I don’t. It’s the education system which is really good at teaching kids at that level these things. I can show them something but they want some structure to it,” added Justason.

What he saw at the Fundy High School tech event hosted by the school board “was helpful for me. There are more tools in the district that I am learning about. It helped me understand the school district has resources to help kids with digital innovation.”

He said the McKenna Institute’s focus on educational needs is all about “exposing kids to technology and giving them some tools if they want to pursue it.”

He learned at the event the New Brunswick community college system has a partnership with global IT giant, Cisco.

“You can go online and there is a course you can do about home networking and security. And my son was like ‘Can I do that, dad?’ I did not know about that, it is not in the school curriculum, but I have never heard him come home saying ‘Can I do another book report?’. This is something you can do on computers,” added Justason. “It was really good from that perspective.”

Andrew Macdonald is a Halifax-based business and political journalist with an online publication called The Macdonald Notebook. He writes a biweekly column focused on Maritime business issues for Brunswick News.