A SMART Connection in Rural Alberta

Throughout its history, the Fort Vermilion School District (FVSD) has had the challenge of providing an equitable education to its six high schools. Not an easy task when you consider that these six schools are spread out over 250,000 square kilometers. FVSD has tried using audio graphics technology to deliver course content in eight academic subjects, but students have always complained about the lack of feedback and isolation from their classmates. Teachers were also unhappy with the setup, saying that they often fell into presentation mode without direct feedback from their students.

The solution was to create one of the most sophisticated videoconference systems ever implemented in a K-12 environment. In September of 2003, a team of researchers, educators and administrators launched the Rural Advanced Community of Learners (RACOL) project to deliver a high-quality curriculum that would rival any centralized high school. The project involved members of the school district, two local universities, the provincial government and a host of supporting businesses and partners.

A three-member team including Dr. Craig Montgomerie, a professor of education technology at the University of Alberta, started to identify possible solutions to this challenge. As luck would have it, the Alberta government announced it would create the Supernet, a high-speed, high-capacity broadband network linking 422 communities across the province. With this infrastructure, it was possible for the RACOL team to begin planning their system in the northwest corner of the province. "Whenever projects like RACOL don't work, the planners are always quick to make excuses about what they could have done if they'd had more money, or if a different technology had been available," says Montgomerie. "We made a
conscious decision at the outset of this project that there were going to be no excuses. It had to work, work well, and we would use the best products available to ensure that."

One of the products they chose was the Rear Projection SMART Board(TM) 3000i interactive whiteboard;


Students can write on tne SMART Board interactive whiteboards in digital ink and have the result broadcast to all the remote locations.

as the display system in the state-of-the-art classrooms, it was the focal point for the students. The SMART Board interactive whiteboards were linked to an innovative feedback system that included two buttons on every student's desk. Students are able to signal that they would like to ask a question, or send an "I'm Lost" message to the instructor via two buttons on each desk. Video cameras around the room use the input from the integrated microphones on every desk to focus on whoever in the class is speaking.

Students can also participate in the lessons by using the SMART Board interactive whiteboards to write in digital ink over multimedia elements and streaming video, all of which are broadcast to all the remote locations. Any portion of a lesson can be recorded, saved or posted to the Internet for review. "All the automatic tools and drawing tools up on the SMART Board interactive whiteboard make my graphics much better than any of the things I usually draw, and having the templates ready is wonderful," says Pam Martin, a teacher from High Level, Alberta. "The visual learners really benefit from this system. They don't have to imagine what something looks like. I can draw a cube and it looks like a cube."

By forging a relationship between the students and teachers, they ensured that the project would have every chance to succeed when applied across distance. That included a face-to-face meeting for everyone involved and some coaching in theater skills for the teachers. The training was focused on projecting an image through video while trying to maintain natural behaviors. The students were also asked to adapt to the system by choosing project partners from different locations rather than those in their physical environment.

After two years of overwhelming success, the RACOL project has become the mainstay for delivering high school courses to the students in the FVSD. Pam Martin, who uses the system every day, delivers the greatest compliment RACOL's designers could have hoped for. "It's really nice to develop a connection with the kids and it makes for a real community in the classroom. There are a lot of days when the system just blends in with my teaching and I don't even know it's there."

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