Allen, Bernadette / Christian, Isabel
President, Future Learning Inc.
June 6, Session 1
Learning Technologies within the University of Prince Edward Island Management Development Program for Women:  The Experiences of Instructors and Learners
The University of Prince Edward Island, Management Development Program for Women is undertaking a research project funded by the Office of Learning Technologies entitled "Enhancing the Readiness of Women in Small and Medium Enterprises to Utilize Technologies for Learning"  Over two cohorts the program is gradually adding a variety of learning technologies to the program and examining the results on the target group.  We are currently at the end of Cohort One.  In this presentation we will present the results of the formative evaluation, which describe the experiences of the instructors and students in the program as they utilize learning technologies.

Barker, Dr. Kathryn Chang
President, FuturEd
June 4, Session 1
Move over, Macleans:  Developing a Consumer's Guide to e-Learning
A national project is under way to create quality guidelines for technology-assisted learning options.  The guidelines are intended to be consumer-oriented, consensus-based, comprehensive, futuristic and distinctively Canadian.  They will form the basis of a consumer's guide with a very different approach to that taken by Macleans!  The project is sponsored by the Canadian Association for Community Education, funded by the Office of Learning Technologies of HRDC and undertaken by Dr. Kathryn Barker of FuturEd.    AMTEC is a project partner.  Learn how you can directly contribute to the national consultations with providers and consumers of e-learning that are underway.  Check out the draft guidelines at FuturEd.com.

Dr. Kathryn Barker is a consulting education futurist with a PhD in Education Administration and Policy Studies from the University of Alberta (1994).  She has been engaged at all levels of Canada’s education and training system, and having started as a teacher and college administrator in Alberta, she has worked across Canada and internationally as a consultant and writer.  She currently serves on the advisory committees of the Office of Learning Technology of Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) and on the board of the Canadian Education Association.

As founder and president of FuturEd, Dr. Barker has provided research and development in the education industry since 1995.  Clients include HRDC in Ottawa as well as various provincial ministries and training institutions.  Dr. Barker has expertise in the fields of workforce development and lifelong learning; education reform in the context of global change; accountability and quality assurance in learning systems; international education and national standards development; adult and workplace literacy; learning technologies and distance education; prior learning assessment and various other fields related to changing learning systems in the future for the future.

Dr. Barker has become a “consumer’s advocate” in the field of education and training.  She is concerned that the end-users get the information they need to make informed choices, and this is reflected in such FuturEd projects as the Consumer’s Guide to Training and the consumer’s guide:  What Questions to Ask When Choosing Work Skills Analysis Tools.  Current FuturEd projects focus on creating a consumer’s guide to on-line learning, standards for K-12 e-schooling in the US, and a study of the uses of ICT in international education in Canada’s post-secondary education system.

Barkhouse, Nancy
Teacher, Atlantic View Elementary School, Halifax Regional School Board, Nova Scotia
June 4, Session 4
Creating Online Materials for/in a Classroom
As an elementary teacher there are many ways to integrate the use of web based materials into the daily classroom program.  Web pages created for and by students address many educational goals.  The Grassroots 2000 project that I co-ordinated last year was chosen by Schoolnet/Industry Canada to be used for a Case Study into effective practices.  This was conducted by the Conference Board of Canada.  Who is served? What are the objectives? What are the educational benefits for students and for teachers?  What are the keys to success?  What are the challenges? What did it accomplish?
Join me and find out!

The Literature Circles project provided a learning context that addressed the computer technology and literacy deficits of inner-city students.  Literature Circles is an instructional strategy whereby students can positively share the reading experience and its associated application and learning of content, language skills, literacy, social relationships and interactions. The students created written, oral and pictoral book reviews that were posted to a web site. The preparation of the web site material challenged the students' technology and communication competencies as well as their personal and social competencies. The web site is a cyber space that accommodates this age group's reading levels, language capacities and abilities, and three different learning styles.

The session will begin with a presentation of the context, technologies, methodologies, results and evaluation of the Literature Circles Project as well as a demonstration of the web site. This will be followed by a question and answer session.

Burka, John
Professor, Anatomy & Physiology
June 5, Session 5
The PEI Science and Technology Awareness Site:  A valuable tool for enhancing science literacy in the community.

The PEI Science and Technology Awareness Site (STAS) is the outgrowth of science awareness activities and Science Fair work at the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI).  A website, situated on the internet at http://stas.edu.pe.ca, was started in 1997 and since then has grown, expanded, and been revised to make it interactive.

Carey, Sheila
Project Officer, Canadian Heritage Information Network
June 4, Session 1
Learning with Museums: a gateway to learning material created by Canadian museums and heritage associations.
For over 28 years, the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) has been working with the museum community to develop rich, authoritative heritage content.  In an effort to ensure access to this and other on-line heritage resources, CHIN, the heritage community, and the educational community collaborated on 'Learning with Museums', a gateway to learning material created by Canadian museums and heritage associations, now available through the Virtual Museum of Canada (www.virtualmuseum.ca).  A working group with members from the Canadian heritage community, OISE, Schoolnet, the Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) in the United States, and other partners, examined the issues which surround access, particularly as they relate to material in the distributed environment.

The presentation will examine issues around providing access to distributed online resources for educators and students.

This presentation will focus on:
-the role of standards in pre-service teacher education
-the role of standards-based portfolios in teacher certification
-advantages and disadvantages of paper vs electronic portfolios
-implementing electronic portfolios in teacher education institutions
-the use of electronic portfolios in developing reflective practitioners
-the impact of electronic portfolios on pre-service teachers' use of technology in their teaching

Davis, John
Managing Directory, Classroom Video
June 5, Session 4
Classroom Video on Demand
All our 300 videos have been digitized as MPEG-1 and stored on a hard disk drive.  This 76 GB HDD can be attached to a laptop via firewire.  Classroom Video has developed an interface searchable by subject, grade and keyword.  There is almost instantaneous access to a selected video.  Teachers’ guides for the videos are available as PDF files.  Programs can be played from a variety of access points (like chapter headings); the viewer can grab frames from the video and text from the guides.  This system can operate over a network with up to 40 clients accessing the HDD simultaneously.  New videos would be sent to clients on CD and could be added to the collection as they are produc

Through a demonstration and slide presentation, particpants will learn about the planning, development, and  implementation model used in creating the document, and you will discover its application to integrated school  library programs; this electronic document includes: a collection of exemplary resource-based learning projects (from entry to grade twelve, developed by school-based educators), information technology activities (including web-based projects), facilitated discussion about information literacy and resource-based learning

You will have ample opportunity to consider how you might apply this model to your particular situation.  Come prepared for a truly interactive  learning experience and discover why educators and curriculum developers in Atlantic Canada and beyond are excited about this approach to building students' media and information literacy.

Emery, Winston/ Llewellyn,  Leon /  Tiseo, Frank
Educational Studies, Faculty of Education, McGill University
 June 6, Session 1
Planning and Implementing a Desktop Publishing Project
This media literacy project enabled a goup of secondary students at Laruier Macdonald High School in Montreal to develop their skills through the manipulation of old family photographs and original texts to produce a book.  The students found the photographs and used image manipulation software to restore them; they interviewed parents and granparents about the photographs and researched them using traditional library and internet resources, then used desktop publsihing software to combine the photograrphs with original stories created from the interviews and research.  Finally, they assembled the stories and produced the book "Rainbow of Dreams: Memories in Black and White".

This presentation will walk you through the process of planning and implementing the project.  We will also present possibilities for other forms of representation such as web pages and magazines.

Strategies for utilizing the Web by academic departments have taken many forms. Some departments have chosen to create online resources as a multimedia backbone for a range of courses. Some have digitized and put online local collections or bodies of material germane to the discipline represented in the department. Some have distributed Web resources for use by faculty on an as needed basis. All such technology adaptation has commonly required extensive resources, such as grants, equipment, space, support services, and staffing. But it is also clear that the effect is transformative when the means to sustain the adaptation over time is found.

Because the use of Web-enhanced resources and media in instruction requires considerable preparation and readiness, its managers are forced to focus on pedagogy; thus departments adapting the Web for instructional use have inevitably reoriented themselves so as to place special emphasis on pedagogy training and effective teaching. In many cases departments that have embraced the Web have made strategic changes in the way they work and in the educational goals they strive to meet, and the Web resources being developed by the department have come to serve as catalysts in assisting this change. Departments which previously had no public identity can acquire high public visibility as centers of educational excellence through this use of technology.

The information in this presentation is based on research conducted from 1999-2000 interviewing chairs of a number of departments in the United States and Canada. The presentation is illustrated by examples of departments that have followed one or another model of Web adaptation, or that have been particularly successful in realizing the goals with which they initiated the adaptation.

      2. The Education model:
      a) The role of our own students in learning by doing.
      b) Involvement of other schools, colleges and museums in distance education using
      racerocks.com
      c) Environmental Action using Internet technologies as a process in education.
      d) The educational vision.

      3. Projections for the future:
      a) After phase 2,(environmental sensors) - what?
      b) Parallel applications of the technology model.
      c) Can the model work elsewhere?

The first phase of the study  (July 1999 to June 2000) focussed on an overview of the goals and support systems for Internet use in schools established by the federal government, by provincial and territorial governments, and by teachers' associations. Particular attention was paid to initiatives for developing of technological infrastructure and the provision of opportunities for teacher learning. In phase 2 (January 2000 - June 2000), a mail survey of administrators and teachers was used to identify the nature and extent of teachers' use of the Internet, and to assess support for teacher learning and infrastructure support for Internet use in teaching across Canada. Phase 3 (July 2000 - June 2002) of the research is currently underway. Case studies are being conducted in three school districts across the country over a two-year period. Preliminary findings related to the infrastructure support and teacher learning contexts of the school, district, and provincial levels will be shared.

There has been a major commitment across the country to providing Internet connectivity in Canadian schools, but there has been no attempt previously to examine the impact of such a commitment on the national level. Our research is contributing to an understanding of the issues related to Internet implementation by providing a national picture of Internet initiatives and by assessing the extent of and support for Internet use in teaching and learning. The recommendations from our study should be of interest to decision-makers involved in the implementation of Internet use for teaching and learning at the federal, provincial and territorial, and district and school levels. Additionally, our findings from the study should contribute to the base of information needed for the updating of teacher education programs in Canada's universities and colleges.

Groen, Mike
Program Manager, Multimedia Learning Group, Information Highway Applications Branch
June 5, Session 2 and 3
E-Learning Specifications and Standards
The rapidly emerging e-learning industry will be unable to reach its full potential unless appropriate technical standards are developed and adopted to promote interoperability and the re-use of full or partial learning object packages.  Multiple international initiatives are underway to address this fundamental problem.  These include IMS, Dublin Core, SCORM, IEEE-LOM, and others.
This presentation will review the status of these initiatives and describe Industry Canada's involvement with e- learning specifications and standards, specifically through its membership in the IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc.   IMS is an international organization created to develop and promote open specifications for facilitating online distributed learning activities, such as locating and using educational content, tracking learner progress, reporting learner performance, and facilitating interoperability between educational administrative systems.
Through this session, participants will have an opportunity to become more aware of e-learning specifications and standards and the impact on their activities, describe their interest in this area, identify concerns, and help build a visible network of stakeholders within Canada.

This presentation will describe the various features in consumer and prosumer DV camcorder design that lead to unnecessary image quality loss and what must be done to avoid such loss.  Video production techniques that lead to quality loss regardless of the camera technology used will also be identified.

The Communication Studies department is now revising its video production curriculum to incorporate an alternative video production paradigm that is essentially at odds with professional video and film production techniques and aesthetics.  This is the counter-intuitive paradigm of video production for the internet.  The presentation will describe these curriculum changes and relate the challenges students encounter when working within the new media production paradigm.

Learn how technology enabled ten grade four and five students to get a major Canadian politician and a Major League Baseball player involved in a class project that was voted as "best in the world". Come and find out how technology provided a missing link of discovery for a grade six student, resulting in the induction of a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins into a Sports Hall of Fame. Discover how a middle school project about shamrocks sparked an international celebration, spanning the Atlantic Ocean, involving beer suds.

This is a proposal for a 45-minute interactive seminar focusing on Vital Knowledge Software's PET Project (Pupil Empowerment through Technology). PET is a computer-based program that empowers students by correlating their
personality traits with their learning styles.

E-STAT, Statistics Canada's education database of Census and socio-economic information, is an Internet- based product that educational institutions can now access for FREE!  Teachers can access information by theme and then extract, manipulate, and save he colorful maps, graphs, and tables to fit their needs. E-STAT comes complete with a host of activities, each with a certain grade level in mind, developed by teachers across Canada.

This session will explore the capabilities of E-STAT and their relevance to curriculum for a number of different topic areas. Other resources found on www.statcan.ca will also be profiled.

The 3-year plan included significant funding for teacher professional development, technical support, wiring and infrastructure and culminated in the upgrading of connectivity to all schools in the province.

The session will discuss the foundation of the IEI project in the "Vision for the Integration of IT" in support of the curriculum, positioning the project as an economic initiative and a model for joint design, management and implementation of a province-wide initiative involving seven school boards and the Department of Education.

As the number of computers accessible to students and teachers in classrooms and labs has increased, especially in the last ten years, there has been a corresponding emphasis on; integrating technology across the curriculum;  Teachers; effective use of computers in their classrooms, however, remains an elusive goal.  Researchers have identified numerous barriers to teachers; use of computers in their classes, such as limited equipment, inadequate skills, minimal support, time constraints and the  teachers; own lack of interest or knowledge about computers.

Rightly or wrongly, teachers have come;under fire; as insufficiently skilled to make use of promising new technologies.   Governments, faculties of education, school districts, schools, communities and individuals have begun to focus on helping teachers get access to training and development in required skills.  While programs have varied widely, we have chosen to focus on three exemplary models of professional development in Canada:  a university-based model, a school-district model, and a school-based model.  In each of these examples, we elucidate the methods and practices which support and hinder teachers in their technological professional development, focusing on teachers; own stated preferences for what works and what doesn't work as they attempt to make more and/or better use of computers in their classes.

Educators designing and developing courses for an international audience must design courses that are congruent with cross-cultural theories.Unfortunately, there are very few studies that have explored this issue.We are currently working on a project with the International Air Transport Association to re-design a course from a classroom based medium to a web based medium. The main question which this project explores is: what are the conditions necessary for distance education courses to met the needs of an international group of learners? Our objectives in designing the course are the following: to encourage active participation from all participants including non-native speakers , to  develop support structures for a culturally diverse group and to identify what the disadvantages and advantages of distance education are for a group of diverse learners.

We hope that the findings from this project can provide educators designing distance education course for an international audience with both the theoretical and practical foundations to design effective on-line environments.

Curriculum-correlated video titles were streamed to elementary, junior high, high school and universities in urban and rural centres. Topics included Science and Health & Personal Life Skills. Video was streamed in the ASF format at 300 Kbs. Video was accessed as entire programs and as video objects. Some programs were integrated with other online learning components.

The trial piloted an educational video streaming service called Tutorbuddy, which will be marketed to Canadian schools in the fall of 2001.

Approximately 6-8 hours of work were built into each week, including pre- and post-tests,  content material, self-directed learning exercises, bulletin board, and chat. The first two weeks of the course consisted of introductory, socialization, and team building exercises and included an Internet search skills module. The third week of the course was organized around a clinical case that required the students to research several specific aspects of diabetes mellitus; in the fourth week, the teams organized and developed a paper on the clinical problem using a jigsaw cooperative learning structure.

This session will present the findings of a study, based on research with twenty Hong Kong university students in a controlled experiment, evaluates the challenges to collaboration as evidenced by their discourse. The students were videotaped and their discourse transcribed and evaluated both qualitatively and quantitatively according to a set of discourse markers created to measure collaborative, non-collaborative and ambiguous strategies while using tutorial and game-like interfaces with a CD-ROM based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

This paper begins by exploring the differences between collaboration and similar terms such as teamwork and cooperative learning then goes on to define collaboration in the context of computer-assisted learning and show how collaboration supports negotiation of meaning and learning through scaffolded instruction. This paper ends by presenting practical strategies for software designers, teachers and students that can enhance collaboration at the computer.

Kidney,  Mike / Kuder, Tracy / Boutilier, Sue
Curriculum Consultants, Distance Education and Part Time Studies, Nova Scotia Community College
June 6, Session 1
Refocussing Aprenticeship: A Model for Apprenticeship Training into the New Millenium
Apprenticeship combines the acquisition of skills with training. Apprentices gain up-to-date quality training and learn to work efficiently, using the latest techniques. Traditionally, in each year of apprenticeship, apprentices have been required to leave their place of work for periods from three to eight weeks to attend technical training sessions. For many employers and apprentices, this arrangement has become increasingly inconvenient. Employers lose the productivity of a valuable employee and apprentices often must incur the expenses related to traveling to the training institution. Refocusing Apprenticeship is a pilot project exploring the potential of a new approach to the delivery of apprenticeship training. The goal of the project is to provide maximum access to apprenticeship training and reduce the financial burden to external funding agencies and to apprentices. Another major component of Refocusing Apprenticeship establishes a system of accreditation through which accredited employers and training providers will be recognized to a predetermined standard by the Apprenticeship Training Division. Taking advantage of the most current communication technologies, Refocusing Apprenticeship has established a Virtual Campus that allows apprentices to access their technical training through a computer terminal. Classes will combine user-friendly, interactive distance education methods with part-time classroom instruction and self-study. The Virtual Campus allows apprentices to access their technical training wherever a computer Internet connection is located: at home, at work, in the nearest training institution or Internet access point in their community. The initiative stands as an innovative example of where apprenticeship training can and should be going as we progress into the new millennium.

Jennifer Goodall is a secondary school English and technology teacher at Centennial Regional High School, Riverside School Board in Greenfield Park, Quebec.

Michele Luchs is a secondary school English and media literacy teacher who is currently on leave from the English Montreal School Board to work for the Quebec Ministry of Education on the Curriculum Reform as a member of the writing team for English Language Arts, secondary.

Myrna Hynes is a secondary school English and special education teacher who is currently on leave from Riverside School Board to work for the Quebec Ministry of Education on the Curriculum Reform as a member of the writing team for English Language Arts, secondary.

The presentation will describe the collaborative development and delivery of an online faculty development initiative by three educational institutions, quite diverse in geographic location and in educational focus. The three institutions are Bath College, UK; an professional engineering school in Bogota, Colombia; and an university in Halifax, Canada. Highlights will examine some of the special challenges, barriers, constraints, benefits, and unanticipated outcomes of this initiative.

The power of learning technologies to build shared learning spaces in a global context will be illustrated by selected samples of participant interaction.

The overall project is the work of three partners:
Alvaro Torres Nieto of Escuela Colombiana de Ingenieria, Bogota, Colombia; Linda MacDonald, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, NS Canada; Ken Owens, City of Bath College, Bath, UK.
The presentation will be constructed on the work of all three partners.

This presentation will outline how these two challenges were addressed through telementoring relationships in the implementation of an online knowledge-building environment, Knowledge Forum®, in geographically isolated schools in the South Slave district of the Northwest Territories. A key feature of these relationships was their dual nature, consisting of professional pedagogical and content-area dimensions. The former enabled teachers new to the program to access direct support for pedagogical concerns and questions as they needed it. The latter enabled mentors to contribute their own subject-area expertise and knowledge-building experience through direct interactions with students. The result was a multilayered community of learners linking teachers, students, and local and remote telementors through the Knowledge Forum® interface.

The presentation will provide a short introduction to knowledge-building and Knowledge Forum®, three perspectives on how the telementoring model was developed and implemented, and and an overview its impact. It will be of interest to educators at all levels interested in how technology can be used to support developing educational practices.

The Curriculum Navigator is currently under development and will be released in phases. The Kindergarten to Grade 4 version of the resource is presently being field validated and will be released in the Spring 2001. The Grades 5 to 8 version will be released in the following year. Possibilities for providing a CD-ROM version, with less functionality, is also being investigated. This will allow teachers who do not have Internet access to use the resource. Professional learning opportunities related to the use and application of the Curriculum Navigator will be provided.

The IMYM project integrates best practice in interdisciplinary teaching at the middle years level with the use of technology as a tool for learning core curriculum outcomes.  This session will outline the scope of the project and demonstrate an IMYM online interdisciplinary unit, the IMYM web links database, and the online IMYM Conversation Station.  Research results will be shared.

An Industry Canada youth employment program, CDC houses more than 400 Web sites ranging in subjects from science and technology, to history, business and fine arts.  Every CDC site holds educational value and many include on-line teaching and learning resources for use in classrooms.  Join CDC's Director, Nora Hockin for her presentation as she will take you into a new learning dimension by demonstrating an on-line treasure trove of educational resources, including: lesson plans; curriculum units; classroom activities; quizzes and games.  Find out how to both benefit from, and participate in, Canada's Digital Collections (http://collections.ic.gc.ca).

Showcase of information and media technologies in a school environment.  Demonstration of use of presentation software ( avid/imovie, powerpoint/ hyperstudio) library/internet research skills and media technology in a student-produced daily news format show.

Harrington (1997) took up the challenge and designed a project to investigate the usefulness of a situated learning model as a framework for the design of interactive multimedia.  The interactive multimedia program she used placed the emphasis on learning, not on instruction.  In doing so, it created an environment where students used higher-order thinking, in collaborative groups, to learn strategies of assessment in mathematics that were transferable to teaching practice.

Given these two very distinct theoretical perspectives,  what are the design implications for the use feedback in the development of interactive multimediaed instructional resources?

The challenge for large distance education organizations (like the Alberta Distance Learning Centre with over 20,000 students) is to cater to the educational needs of all registered students, most of whom request print-based courses while growing numbers look to more interactive courses.

There are several issues relating to these divergent needs, including the development of appropriate learning resources, using the best technologies to meet the reality of students' environments, staff who are willing to adjust teaching strategies to meet changing needs, the evolving nature of current technologies.

This presentation will discuss these issues and will focus on how the Alberta Distance Learning Centre meets these challenges.

Based on media/technology research with at-risk students and practical classroom experience, this workshop will demonstrate, through hands on activities, that one need not necessarily be an expert to teach about media and technology.  Participants will take away with them 'gee whizzy' ideas to use in a media/technology classroom.

Shaw, Michael
Academic Computing Specialist, Acadia Institute for Teaching and Technology
June 4, Session 5
The Acadia Institute for Teaching and Technology
With the introduction of Acadia Advantage, the Acadia Institute for Teaching and Technology (AITT) was created to provide leadership and training in applying technology effectively to learning environments at Acadia
University.   Building on this experience, the AITT began providing training to Nova Scotia teachers in 1999 supported by the Information Economy Initiative (IEI).  To date the AITT has trained over 700 teachers to
effectively integrate technology into their classrooms.  This summer the AITT will not only train NS teachers, but will be running programs for teachers from across Canada and the U.S.

This presentation will highlight examples of teachers' work created in teacher training programs at Acadia.  It will overview new program directions and strategies that are intended to improve technology training
programs.  Participants will have an opportunity to learn about free national training programs for teachers and students on implementing technology effectively in the classroom.  Finally, this presentation will invite discussion on ways that universities and public school teachers can work together to improve the use of technology in teaching.

Smith, Peter
Program Supervisor, Technology Integration, Halifax Regional School Board
June 4, Session 3
Effective Professional Development in the Integration of Information Technology in P-12 Classrooms
The Halifax Regional School Board has established a critical mass of information technology users and teacher leaders through a series of professional development measures over a two-year period, including Website support, an extensive series of week-long "camps," school level workshops, classroom visits, coaching and networking.

The team who developed and delivered the professional development will tell "stories from the field" and reflect on the essential elements of effective professional development in the integration of information technology in p-12 classrooms.

Our presentation will also address the following key questions:

In what ways do specific examples of Best Practices embody current educational theory and, especially, learner-centered principles?

Can we distill generalizable knowledge about teaching and learning from studying Best Practices, without falling into prescriptive checklists? What can we learn from past and current attempts to distill teaching and learning into principles?

To what extent are Best Practices trans-disciplinary or is a large part of their effectiveness domain-specific?

As of Jan. 1st, 2001, over 245 organizations have contributed over 15,500 metadata records to The Gateway catalog.   When teachers connect to The Gateway, they are able to access the Internet-based educational resources of participating GEM Consortium members. When they use The Gateway database, rather than an Internet search engine, teachers are
able to locate resources they need quickly and efficiently.

When you connect to The Gateway, you are able to:
-browse lists organized by subject, keyword,or grade/education level,
-search by subject, keyword, title or the full-text of the resource's catalog record,
-go directly to the resource from The Gateway.
 The Gateway:     www.thegateway.org
The GEM Project: www.geminfo.org

The GEM Project is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, and is a special project of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information & Technology at Syracuse University.

The Assistive Technology Centre, under contract with HRDC has developed multimedia curriculum (including the use and application of digital still photography, digital video cameras, iMovie2, audio manipulation techniques, graphic organizer software, photo software wordprocessing software and so on) that focusses on the enhancement of literacy skills of learners at risk.

In a current project at Grant MacEwan College, professional development activities are being tied to a collaborative course development process.  Instructors work with an instructional designer to establish course development goals, assess instructor learning needs and develop a professional development plan that mirrors the course development process.  Online course development work is supported by dedicated technical support staff. This model uses active learning, assuming that instructors are most interested in learning about instructional design and learning technologies when they need to develop a course. Using the course under development as the context, instructors will learn about ways to present content, to adapt learning and assessment activities, course management and structure that is appropriate for their students' needs and the course goals.

The Technology Implementation Questionnaire (TIQ) explores three areas related to teacher integration of computer technologies in the classroom 1) teachers' perceived costs, expectations and values 2) teachers' process of adoption and pedagogical practices 3) competency, experience and training related to computer technologies.

This session will provide an overview of the study and as well, examine the study findings and future initiatives of the project.