Teaching staff get prepared for the public school board's virtual school, the Hub, at Southview School Tuesday afternoon. (CHAT News photo)

By Alex McCuaig

Hub learning

Virtual school set to come online next week

Aug 25, 2020 | 4:53 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – The Medicine Hat Public School Division’s Learning Hub will be offering a full-day virtual classroom for students not taking participating in in-person instruction, but that doesn’t mean setting up the program won’t need some very real infrastructure.

Southview Community School was a beehive of activity Tuesday as IT and maintenance staff from the public school board set up the classrooms which will serve the more than 400 students who will be learning from home this year.

“It’s like building a new school,” said superintendent Mark Davidson as staff rushed around the hallways of the modular addition to Southview which formerly housed the Parent Link program.

“Our facilities team and our maintenance team have been running power, running cable to make sure they are wired for the devices they are going to run to teach their students,” said Davidson.

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But in many ways, that’ll be the easy part.

Developing a whole new teaching methodology in the span of weeks rather than years is something entirely different.

However, it’s something dozens of teaching staff were doing as well at the school, fine-tuning a new online learning curriculum with the first day of classes less than a week away.

And it will be a full program of studies, said the Hub’s co-administrator, with a full roster of teachers providing classes from the early learning program up to Grade 9.

“We’re hoping to provide the entire program of studies with full academic rigour for families that are reluctant to send their students to school whether it’s because of individual risk management, health issues or strictly comfort level,” said Warren Buckler.

One of the reasons the school was able to develop from concept to nearly fully executed is because of the school board’s staff, said the Hub’s other co-administrator Trisha Unreiner.

“We are really lucky because we have a group of like-minded teachers that saw the potential in the emergency learning and saw that they just wanted to grab on to the new technologies and the new way of communicating and saw that good things could come from it,” she said.

It’s anticipated more students will join the Hub as the year goes on due to illness at home which will see kids isolated due to everything from the common cold to COVID-19 itself.

New students will be welcomed as the year goes on but will be required to provide at least two weeks’ notice on their intention to resume in-person classes prior to the end of the school quarter.

The Hub will run for the full school year, and possibly the next as well, said Unreiner.

She added there may be a permanent place in the future for the program.

“We could be starting a brand new wave of education that our families are wanting.”

Davidson said the school board has secured its supply of thousands of Chromebooks required by students both at the Hub and other schools.

Parents will be able to either buy or borrow them from the school board.