COMPUTING IN A COLD CLIMATE

Thinly populated but huge in area, northern Canada has embraced educational computing to meet its unique cultural and linguistic needs. Through desktop publishing and specialized character chips, school authorities and their teachers have a new capability for producing instructional materials in the native languages. Electronic mail speeds administrative communications, stimulated inter-school exchanges, and enhanced possibilities for distance education courses. Most of the literature in educational computing reflects the concerns of the urban and industrialized regions of the world which have the human and financial resources to invest in educational innovation. What about the lesser regions? This paper describes how a vast, remote, thinly populated region in Canada, whose people predominantly belong to the native culture, have managed to incorporate computers into the school curriculum. © 1990.