The Quebec government has promised that every school in the province will have some sort of smart technology in classrooms within five years.
On Monday, Education Minister Line Beauchamp went to Dorset Elementary in Baie D'Urfé to see the technology in action.
"To see the kids learning like this is very interesting," Beauchamp told reporters in French.
Through fundraising and years of planning by teachers and parents, Dorset Elementary became the province's first school to use the so-called smart technology, using interactive, touch-screen boards and tables that makes learning more engaging for students growing up in the Internet Age.
"It's a matter engaging kids," said Marcus Tabachnick, the Lester B. Pearson School Board's chairman of the board. "It's a matter of moving the kids from passive to making the kids part of the learning and teaching process."
Every class at Dorset, from kindergarten right up to Grade 6, has access to the smart technology, and all the students who spoke to CTV Montreal's Caroline Van Vlaardingen on Monday gave the teaching tools a passing grade.
"In your brain you're thinking, ‘I'm having fun.' But outside you're learning and doing the things properly," one student said.
And for special needs students, the technology appears to be particularly useful.
"They're using the technology to integrate and it's definitely supporting their learning," said special needs teacher Rhiannon Szollosy.
For Tabachnick, the fact it is an English school that is on the cutting edge of technology like this will hopefully not be lost on the education minister.
"I think that it's important that the minister see that the English schools are not just part of her network," he said, "but that there's a lot of innovation and new things happening in schools."
