Starting in the fall, students will no longer be able to access social media sites while at school.
That’s one of the changes being made, including banning cellphones in class.
Director of Education of the Keewatin-Patricia District School Board Christy Radbourne says they did a trial run earlier this month.
“We did a test pilot earlier this month for a week and discovered quite a drop in the bandwidth usage, a significant drop, especially in social media/gaming,” reports Radbourne.
“It went from 136 gigabytes down to 11.”
Radbourne adds they will be making some changes to ensure students can’t access social media sites.
“There will be a social media blackout on bandwidth for students. So, when students connect to our internet, they have their own VPN and that will no longer support any social media.”
Nicole Kurtz is the Director of Education at the Kenora Catholic District School Board and says vaping will also no longer be allowed on school grounds.
“That includes, not only students, but we have contactors and different user groups that visit out schools and will be outside and on our fields. So, it’s anyone on our properties.”
Students in kindergarten to Grade 6 will be required to keep phones on silent and out of sight for the entire school day, unless explicitly permitted by a teacher.
For students in Grades 7 to 12, cellphones will not be permitted during class time unless explicitly directed by their teacher.
