Meet the Teacher: Stephanie Kramer
Stephanie is an energetic, highly skilled online teacher who was recently a recipient of the 2020 Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence. Stephanie is thrilled to join Ignite Centre for eLearning where she will continue to apply her passion in ensuring that students feel a sense of belonging to our learning community.
What if…high school encouraged your passions and was personalized to YOU?
The staff at Ignite Centre for eLearning believe that each student brings their own unique strengths and aspirations to their learning journey, which is why we tailor every student’s program to meet their individual needs and goals.
Build Your Future with Ignite Centre for eLearning
At Ignite, we honour the many different ways that students might achieve high school completion in preparation for the future. This ranges from students needing a few credits to achieve a High School Diploma, to preparing to enter a trade, or planning for post-secondary education; many paths are possible to realizing individual success in high school.
As part of our commitment to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action, we endeavour to ensure that all students at Ignite Centre for eLearning benefit from deepening their understanding of Indigenous ways of knowing and being. This will be reflected in instructional approaches and course content across grades and subjects.
- Learner-Centred – Students are actively engaged in bringing their own knowledge, experiences, and passion to their learning journey.
- Flexibility and Structure – Students have flexibility in determining how best to create their learning pathway, with structures in place to ensure success.
- Targeted Supports – Students in need of supports such as counseling, accommodations, academic guidance, are provided these as part of their individual program.
- Focus on Success – We believe that success is defined differently for each student; students play a pivotal role in defining what success means to them as well as how to achieve it.
Program Details
The High School program at Ignite Centre for eLearning is well prepared to meet the needs of a variety of students, including students who:
- for whatever reason, cannot attend a physical building
- cannot fit a course into their timetable
- require accommodations to address physical or mental health needs
- prefer a flexible schedule due to work, sports, travel, etc.
- have unique circumstances that require a flexible and accommodating approach
- feel that they learn best through online learning
- are mature students or adults who want to upgrade
- want to feel a sense of connection to a learning community.
Online Learning
The online learning program at Ignite Centre for eLearning provides students with an opportunity to experience high quality learning through both synchronous (live, online), scheduled instruction sessions, balanced with asynchronous (offline) learning time. The teachers at Ignite bring many years of teaching excellence in online environments and are passionate about supporting student success in this context. In addition to well designed, high quality online courses, students will have the opportunity to participate in field trips, land-based learning opportunities, work experience, as well as meeting with staff in local communities when it is safe to do so.
All new students will earn five credits for completion of our Getting Ignited Online orientation course, which can be done in a short time period in conjunction with our teacher, Stephanie Krammer, and sets students up for success in our online learning environment.
Reminder: Semester 2 commences February 1, 2023
We welcome both primary student registrations (majority of student programming at Ignite) as well as non-primary/concurrent student registrations for students registered at other Alberta High Schools. See here for a list of course offerings.
Students are expected to complete coursework within each semester: September 1st to January 31st and February 1st to June 28th. Students may request a course extension by working with their teacher to establish a completion plan and submitting this form.
We offer live synchronous classes each week; full-time students are expected attend these sessions as research has proven that this increases student success rates significantly. Part-time students may work with their teachers to establish an individual program plan to help ensure success. We also offer a live daily study hall every morning from 10 am to noon with a teacher available to assist students as needed.
Course load expectations
Primary Students:
- Students in grades 10-12 and in their first 3 years of high school should register for and plan to complete 35 credits each school year.
- Students in their 4th year of high school can register for 20 credits; fees apply if additional credits requested ($135/credit).
- Students in their 5th year of high school can register for 10 credits; fees apply if additional credits requested ($135/credit).
Non-primary/concurrent Students:
- Can register in a maximum of 10 credits per school year (5 credits per semester); additional fees apply if additional credits requested ($135/credit).
Please visit our registration page to register for Ignite’s High School On Demand Program.
Forensics 25: Sneak Peek
Course Offerings
If a student’s goal is to achieve an Alberta High School Diploma, it will be important to ensure that they check myPass for progress towards the diploma requirements. If you don’t know your Alberta School Number (ASN), you can look it up here. High school graduation requirements can be found at Alberta Education’s website here.
All students new to the Ignite Centre for eLearning are required to complete our orientation course that will prepare them to be a successful online learner and contributing member of our learning community.
The following courses will be available to students to register in for the 2022/2023 school year:
English Language Arts: 10-1, 10-2, 20-1, 20-2, 30-1, 30-2
Math: 15 Prep, 10C, 10-3, 20-1, 20-2, 20-3, 30-1, 30-2, 30-3, 31
Social Studies: 10-1, 10-2, 20-1, 20-2, 30-1, 30-2
Science: 10, 14, 20, 24, 30
Biology 20, 30
Chemistry 20, 30
Physics 20, 30
CALM 20 (5 credit bundle)
Phys. Ed. 10, 20, 30
Options:
- Art 10, 20, 30
- Food Studies
- Communications Tech.
- Cosmetology
- Indigenous (Aboriginal) Studies
- HCS3000
- General Psychology 20, Personal Psychology 20, Abnormal Psychology 35
- Forensics 25, 35
- Marketing/Entrepreneurship
- Legal Studies
- Design Studies
- Tourism
- Introduction to Coding
- Special Projects 10, 20, 30
Off Campus:
- Work Experience 15, 25, 35
- RAP
- Green Certificate
Additional Credit Opportunities
In addition to the for-credit course offerings at Ignite, students may be eligible to earn high school credits in other ways.
- External Learning Opportunities
Have you completed certification as a ski instructor, lifeguard, or other certification? Click here to see a list of credits you may be eligible for! Please let us know if this applies to you.
2. If you have completed other external coursework or certification, many of these are recognized by Alberta Education and you may be eligible for additional credits! Click here to see the list of cts_pathways_credentials_2021.
Additional Fees
There are tuition fees for students who are not registered directly with Ignite Centre for eLearning prior to September, for adults, as well as other applicable fees.
Tuition (After Sept. 28th, Adults): $135 per credit
Course challenge: $10 per credit
Out-of-province credit evaluations: $100
Late registration fee: $100
For more information about high school fees, please see here.
Assessment
The Ignite Centre for eLearning is committed to ensuring all students are successful. Fair, consistent, and reliable assessment of student learning is an important part of this commitment. The purpose of our Assessment Guide is to share information about assessment with students, parents/caregivers, and stakeholders in an effort to improve both learning and instruction. Assessments provide teachers information to understand what students know and do not know in relation to course outcomes. This information is then used to guide instruction and provide support for students to achieve their goals.
Our Assessment Guide will help you understand:
- responsibilities of staff, students and parents/caregivers;
- how we will tell you about your progress and learning;
- how we assign grades/marks;
- how you will be assessed; and
- the steps we take if your work is plagiarized, missing, or not finished.
We welcome your feedback regarding our Assessment Guide.
Diploma Exams
Diploma exams are administered five times per year, in January, April, June, August, and November. Check the up-to-date exam schedule at Alberta Education’s website.
2022-2023 Instructions for students
Ensure you are 50% of the way through the course and register by these dates:
- November diplomas by October 3
- January diplomas by November 1
- April diplomas by Feb 17
- June diplomas by April 6
Refer to this slide of instructions in your Moodle courses and on the Moodle Dashboard.
2022 -2023 – course and diploma weightings
Your final course mark is based on 70% course work (teacher-assigned mark), 30% from the diploma exam. Your diploma exam results will appear on myPass approximately three weeks after writing your exam(s).
There are guides and exemplars for diploma exams available on Alberta Education’s “Writing Diploma Exams” website.
High School Exam Resources:
Your teachers at Ignite Centre for eLearning will provide live diploma preparation sessions and materials to help ensure you are well prepared for your exams.
Success Tips
Alberta Education has published an Online Guide for Students and Families, which has some excellent considerations for online learners. At Ignite, we believe that learners will be successful if they have the necessary supports in place. High school students and their families play an important role in ensuring that we have identified and provided those supports for success!
A few tips we know, from our experience and the research, will help you be successful:
- Be your amazing self and connect with your teacher. Knowing them well (and them knowing you) will go a long way to helping you on your road to success.
- Plan your time, for both school and other activities you enjoy doing.
- Ask for help whenever you need it. Ask questions. Your teachers really do want to hear from you!
- Attend live sessions when you can, watch recorded sessions when you can’t.
Michigan Virtual has created an excellent, research-based, free orientation resource called Strategies for Online Success to help students prepare to be successful in online learning: https://michiganvirtual.org/resources/sos/
General Information about Safety and Security online @ Ignite
During the school day, our secure learning environment requires students to log in with a chrome browser, create a chrome profile and enable the synching of the browser. We push out extensions to the browser to support learning (like a Read Write Literacy app) and to ensure the integrity of the student digital footprint. Teachers will instruct students in our orientations how to do this.
We have installed a mandatory browser extension, Student Aware, that will notify administration if students are accessing worrisome websites or engaged in dangerous online activity. Our school will then notify parents. This service is only available if students are using the Ignite email on a synched chrome profile. We will be providing some parent information this year to help parents learn more about setting up computers so children are safe online. More information will come on this topic.
We do ensure that our students understand the importance of not sharing personal information online as well as other important aspects related to digital citizenship/literacy. For more information about keeping your children safe online, see our blog here.
