SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - With the rapid advance of technology many classroom chalkboards and encyclopedias seem to be going the way of the dodo.

"When I went to school the book was seen as the gospel ... now you have the World Wide Web, you have access to all of this information at your finger tips," said Larry Connolly, the co-ordinator at the Kimberlite Career and Technical Centre as well as the information and communication technologies co-ordinator for Yellowknife Catholic Schools. "There's no need for you to go to a library, your library is there on your desk."

Connolly is no stranger to the digital age, earlier this school year he helped Weledeh Catholic School put in a successful grant application to receive more than 220 laptops from the One Laptop Per Child pilot program organized by the Belinda Stronach Foundation.

"It's the age in which kids are growing up, they're quite conversed in the digital age," said Larry Connolly. "It's a new world."

Other schools in Yellowknife are bridging the digital divide, as well. Last school year K'alemi Dene School in Ndilo received Smart Boards for each of its six classrooms.

The boards are an interactive form of a chalkboard projected in the front of the classroom. It allows teachers to move windows with their hands, draw and erase items on the screen, magnify objects and save lessons. The board also allows teachers to project websites.

"The computers are almost acting like another educator in the classroom," said Kevin Laframboise, technology instructor at the school. "It doesn't replace them though, but it is a great tool."

In addition to the boards, the school received 24 Smart Response controllers - wireless remote devices that allow students to submit answers electronically from questions posted on the board where they will be automatically marked by the computer.

"The learning experience is so much more rich with computers, the information is more instant than it used to be," said Laframboise.

"When I went to school we were reading encyclopedias that were 20 years old, now you can upload a newscast from five to 10 minutes ago."

The digital revolution also has some environmentally positive aspects to it, according to the teachers.

"We are getting more and more paperless and I think that's a good thing for the environment" said Sebastiaan Siebring, a chemistry and math teacher at St. Patrick High School.

"I use my own moodle website and I have digital drop box there as well, kids hand their assignments and lab reports and stuff like that online."

A moodle is a digital website where students log in to their accounts where they can find course documents and assignments.

Despite the advancements in technology being brought into schools, Siebring doesn't see the pencil and the work book becoming obsolete in the near future.

"(Information technology) is a means, it's not a goal in itself," said Siebring. "Some kids will learn better because they like working with a computer."

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