How one school division is helping ensure students are learning from home

The Chromebook and Chromebox computers, made by Samsung in Atlanta, which run on Google's Chrome operating system. (AP Photo/ Ron Harris)

WINNIPEG — The Winnipeg School Division (WSD) announced on Tuesday that it will be distributing thousands of laptops and iPads to help students in the division learn from home.

The division will be providing 2,166 Chromebooks and iPads, as well as 600 cellulari-enabled iPads to families.

The majority of the devices come from the school division’s inventory, and, through a partnership with Apple and Rogers, the school division purchased the 600 LTE cellular-enabled Apple iPads pre-equipped with Rogers LTE wireless data. Rogers is providing this plan at no cost until June 30, 2020.

The school division said its technical department will be providing technical support to the families, and that online activity will be filtered and monitored.

“All the families that requested, all 2,700 families that requested a device will have a device made available to them,” said Tony Marchione, acting director of technology for WSD.

The division’s Indigenous education and newcomer services team helped with prioritizing the distribution of the devices.

Rob Riel, director if Indigenous education, said in a news release they are focused on getting technology to those who need it most.

“That means we have prioritized distribution in order of graduating students, high school students working on credit attainment and junior high students working on credit attainment, followed by Grades 1 to 3 and then Grades 4 to 8.” Riel said.

“We are ensuring special accommodations are made for student populations that are low-income, Indigenous, newcomer or require additional support in literacy and/or numeracy.”

The schools will begin to distribute the devices over the next few days.