Winnipeg teacher embraces technology in the classroom

A Winnipeg school has traded in the chalk and blackboards and turned to less primitive technology to help teach kids.

In teacher Matt Reimer's class room at OakenwaldElementarySchool, a SmartBoard is used to help students learn math.

While the students are the direct benefactors of such technology, parents are getting a leg up, too.

Reimer started using the Remind App last year. It lets him send parents important reminders through direct text messages.

I know everyone has their phone in their pocket and it is immediate, said Reimer. Instead of me sending a message home with the kids and then them relaying it to their parents, it's immediate they get right it away.

Classroom 2.0

Reimer's tech savvy doesn't end there. He also runs a classroom blog and uses Google Drive to share reading list materials

Say the kid forgot the homework at home or at school and they forgot to bring areading page home for the weekend," said Reimer. "They can easily go onto my blog, download the list and print it at home and bring it back to school on Monday.

In other words, the dog ate my homework wont fly in Reimers class, and his blog is a huge hit with parents.

To go and see what's new, what the updates are, what the kids are doing, what he's looking forward to doing with them, I think it is just another great venue of being able to communicate and learn more, said Theresa Cruz, the mother of a child in Reimers class.

And we thought it was really exciting in that it doesn't replace the communication with the paper agenda and the school newsletter, but it's just another way to get information out quickly and safely to parents.

Like Reimer, principal Tanis Thiessen is a big fan of using technology in the classroom.

How can we make learning exciting? How can we make it practical and how can we give our students every opportunity to become a true global citizen, said Thiessen.

Another practical value of having technologically-infused classrooms: digital permissions slips.

A little message to go off and realize, oh, there's a permission slip for a field trip, instead of having things lost in the back pack, said Thiessen.

While Reimers method of teaching would seem alien to past generations of students, the basics of learning are still at the core of his classroom.