Elsie Roy iPad Project

The Elsie Roy iPad Project is part of a larger effort at Elsie Roy Elementary to adopt technology across the school and into the classroom as a means to provide a more personalized learning environment for our school’s community. Although personalized learning often focuses on the student, we are cognizant that it also needs to include our teachers, staff, administrators and parents because as technology continues to grow and develop, we all can benefit from its exposure and education.   



What is personalized learning?

The focus of personalized learning is to provide each individual a pathway to explore areas of learning that are based on personal passions. It means providing a more personalized learning experience centred on each person’s engagement, self-direction and self-management. At Elsie Roy Elementary, it means we all have the responsibility to understand and work with our community to allow each to learn what they can, the best way they can, and at the pace that is appropriate.

Personalized Learning in Action

The Elsie Roy iPad Project is not merely a demonstration of what new technology can mean in the classroom; it also demonstrates the achievable when we can empower, in this case – our very own students. Albert and Samson are not only graduates from the King George Technology Immersion Program, but these two Grade 11 students are now its Teaching Assistants. Along with achieving high academics and actively participating in school activities, they have also found the time to volunteer almost 2,500 hours to build Elsie Roy’s current technology biosphere as well as lead Elsie Roy’s Junior Technology Program.

The Elsie Roy Junior Technology Program is perhaps the greatest example of student empowerment, student mentoring and the future of technology in education. The program including its curriculum, lesson plans and learning outcomes was designed by the two for Elsie Roy’s grade 6 and 7 students who also share a keen interest in technology.

Allowing students with a passion in technology to be part of the equation has not only led to our current success – but also the long term sustainability. As our two leaders and our elementary students graduate and move on, we believe such a program will address the success of our work in the future.  Our hope is their passion becomes others and together they build a legacy which outgrows us all.

Elsie Roy iPad Project – PHASE TWO

Our excitement grows each day as we begin to implement the Elsie Roy iPad Project in our school and classrooms. We are eager to see the potential we can achieve as we continue in this new direction. However, we also know that our work is really just beginning. For some, the hard part may be getting off the ground; we believe our challenges lie in meeting demand in particular as more classrooms begin to adopt this technology and user demand increases.

The second phase of the Elsie Roy iPad Project focuses on meeting this demand before it can grow to become unmanageable.

●      Already we are seeing our Resource Team beginning to explore ways to support our Special Needs, Speech and Language as well our as ESL needs.