School board earns national award for no-tech learning feature at pandemic onset

Administrator | Apr 29, 2022 | Comments 0

Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board has received national recognition with a BRAVO! Award from the Canadian Association of Communicators in Education for its no-tech learning weekly newspaper advertisements.

In mid-March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit Ontario hard and fast. Within one day, it caused schools and businesses to close throughout the province. Going to school, as people knew it at the time, was on hold until at least the end of April 2020.

The challenge—or opportunity—was to come up with a way to keep students engaged in learning without having to use technology, such as computers or devices, or by using the internet.

The HPEDSB created No-Tech Learning Weekly newspaper advertisements: full-page, colour ads in eight weekly newspapers for 14 weeks to keep students and families connected to learning. The ads were fun, engaging, colourful and appealed to the young and old alike. Each week offered new, fun and engaging activities for Primary (JK-Grade 3), Junior/Intermediate (Grades 4-8); and Senior (Grades 9-12).

Congratulations was extended to Kerry Donnell, Communications and Privacy Manager, for demonstrating excellence in communications practices. She worked with a team of educators who created weekly ad content.

The BRAVO! Awards recognize and honour exemplary work in all aspects of school public relations, communications, marketing and engagement. Submissions are judged on the demonstration of the RPIE process (research, planning, implementation and evaluation). Judging is done by a panel of public relations/communications practitioners outside the field of education, with each entry judged individually against the contest criteria, not against other entries. Entries that obtain a score of 90 points and higher receive an Award of Excellence; 80 to 89 points receive an Award of Distinction; and 75 to 79 points receive an Award of Merit.