WATERLOO - A Waterloo high school is about to do something unthinkable five years ago: Send all its students home for three days and teach them online.

Teachers and students at Sir John A. Macdonald Secondary School will use web-enabled laptops, educational software, smartphones and devices to deliver lectures and projects, conduct research, hold class discussions and complete homework.

"It definitely is a really cool experience to get to go all online for three days," said Sorcha McNally, 16.

"We're always on our phones and our computers. So it's kind of a way to get to use those skills for something more than just sitting in a classroom."

"I don't think the students see it as much of a difference," said Arden White, 17. "Everything is already online. Not much is going to change. They're just not going to be going to a physical place every day."

Teachers may face the biggest learning curve. They've been preparing since the spring to become a virtual school.

"I think we're taking a lesson from our startup community," teacher Anne Doelman said. "We're prototyping a lot of different things and we're failing forward, we're failing fast, what's going to work, what's not going to work, and what can we learn from that?"

There's a reason students will be at home. Sir John A. Macdonald is hosting a national student leadership conference Sept. 26-30 that will take over its classrooms, displacing almost 1,500 students. The conference theme, ignite your innovative spirit, is partly a tribute to this region.

Local students will stay home Sept. 27-29 during the conference. A school wing will stay open to provide tech and learning support.

Transforming into a virtual school would have been unlikely when web-enabled technology was new and the school didn't have a full wireless network. "I think five years ago this would be very difficult," Doelman said.

Since then Sir John A. Macdonald helped pioneer the introduction of Google-driven Chromebook computers that are being rolled out to every high school student across the Waterloo Region District School Board.

Teachers will deliver three classes a day online. For example, a food and nutrition teacher may create a lesson that asks students to research a Canadian chef, answer questions, and create a slide show of research to present when classes resume.

Students are expected to log in daily to their classes. Some students may find this a challenge, freed from the school bell and classroom attendance.

"I think they're going to learn probably how to manage their own time," White said.

The school expects to record what works and doesn't in its temporary virtual life. "We're trying to really learn from this as a school and staff and pull some lessons from this experience," teacher Sandy Millar said.

Online learning is nothing new to student leaders. Jake Choi, 17, has found that some classmates who rarely speak up in classrooms are more vocal online, participating in group chats about school work.

"You start to notice that those kind of people feel a lot safer behind the screen. They're not as nervous to be themselves," he said.

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He figures virtual high school will be good preparation for university, where students are held more responsible for study habits and managing time.

Arden White goes online at some point for all her classes. She likes to complete work alone on her laptop. She likes being able to access all her school information through her smartphone. Yet she also enjoys learning face-to-face in a classroom, the old-school way. "I honestly like a mix of both," she said.

- Chromebooks put students on equal footing