Elanor Bukach
Student intern
This coming year the North Island Distance Education School is bringing forth three new programs.
Performance Athlete Custom Education (PACE) is a provincial program to support high-end athletes and performers.
“This is for the kind of individual that going to school every day, five days a week for five hours, just doesn’t work for them because of demanding training and competition,” said principal Jeff Stewart.
“Or maybe the curriculum just doesn’t reflect their passions and in an age of personalization there is really no excuse not to be bending curriculum to support student’s passion.”
PACE has courses both personally tailored to individual athletes and independent self-directed studies. Although PACE has been in action for the past five months, it is only now being formally launched.
iMaker, which is being hosted at Highland Secondary as well as online, is a program designed to integrate and expand students’ interest in technology, design and digital arts in an independently paced environment in a choice of four pathways: coding, mechatronics, digital design, and science and technology.
“This is really about getting students 21st century jobs after high school,” said Stewart.
Thinkspace is being hosted at Vanier and is a totally different approach to learning. It consists of three days of face-to-face class time, starting at 10 a.m., in which students take all of their core academic. Then students go into the community or online researching and learning before attending a “Big Idea Seminar.”
Independent studies and community-based studies are used in order to look at real world issues and environmental stewardship.
For more information on these programs access the Navigate NIDES website or attend the Thinkspace information meeting held at 7 p.m. at G.P. Vanier on Tuesday, April 12.
