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Bill would require Quebec schools to adopt anti-bullying plan - 0 views

  • QUEBEC — All public and private schools in Quebec will have to adopt an anti-bullying, anti-violence plan under Bill 56, presented Wednesday in the provincial legislature by Education Minister Line Beauchamp.The minister also announced a major media campaign against bullying, in partnership with publicly owned Tele-Quebec, and Quebecor Inc., urging people to be "ordinary heroes" by standing up to bullies."Bullying doesn't start at 8 a.m. and doesn't finish at 4 p.m.," the minister said, adding that everyone has to get involved and the new policy will extend to cyber bullying as well.
Teachers Without Borders

Using technology in the classroom requires experience and guidance, report finds - The ... - 2 views

  • It’s older, more experienced teachers – not younger, so-called digital natives – who are experimenting more with new technology in the classroom, a new report suggests.And although Twitter, YouTube and mobile devices have infiltrated Canadian classrooms, the study finds that educators have serious concerns that students are “not-so-savvy surfers” – too prone to accept information published online as fact and be led astray.
  • “At the ground level, across the country, our impression is that teaching how to use technology takes precedence over the key critical thinking and ethical skills that youth really need,” said Matthew Johnson, director of education at Media Awareness Network, the not-for-profit group that conducted the research.
  • The report’s scope is small, involving just 10 elementary and high school teachers from across the country, but detailed. Titled Young Canadians in a Wired World, it is the third phase in an ongoing examination by Media Awareness Network of youth online. It takes a narrow focus on how teachers are using technology in the classroom and what barriers exist to maximizing these newest teaching tools.
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  • The Ottawa-based group will use the findings to shape a larger national survey it hopes to conduct next year.
  • n order to teach students how to be better digital citizens, the teachers surveyed said the training wheels have to come off the Internet: The filters schools use to block unverified websites prevent students from learning how to exercise good judgment.One elementary school teacher described a learning opportunity that arose when his students stumbled across a website sympathetic to the Nazis. The site’s racism, which was cloaked in careful prose, wasn’t obvious to the students.
  • The teachers said filters are also problematic because they prevent access to useful teaching aids. Teachers in Quebec and Ontario described not being able to show videos in class because YouTube was blocked. And one teacher in Atlantic Canada described a failed campaign to get Twitter unblocked so her students could collaborate on math questions.
  • “I don’t see a lot of new teachers coming in knowing how to apply technology,” said Zhi Su, a teacher and technology director at John Oliver Secondary School in Vancouver.Fresh out of college, few new teachers experiment with new technologies because they have the potential to be disruptive. It’s experience, and the confidence that comes with it, that is allowing teachers in their 40s and 50s to lead the way, according to the report.
Teachers Without Borders

Blocking tech in classrooms impedes learning: Teachers | News | Tech | Toronto Sun - 1 views

  • Blocking social networks and banning cellphones in schools makes it difficult for teachers to do their jobs effectively in a digital world, a new report says. "School policies around technology are very frustrating to me," an elementary school teacher from Atlantic Canada says in the report from the Media Awareness Network, a Canadian non-profit that promotes digital literacy.
  • Others complained of similar restrictions. A teacher in Atlantic Canada tried to get students to use Twitter to collaborate on solving math problems, but the school refused to unblock the site. Teachers in Ontario and Quebec complained they couldn't incorporate video into their lessons because the schools wouldn't allow access to YouTube.
  • When schools do use technology in the classroom, they focus too much on teaching kids how to use devices, which they already know.
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  • Teachers said kids know how to Google, but they can't distinguish good information from the fake stuff. They can use Facebook, but they don't know how to protect their personal information. They can watch YouTube, but they don't use it to learn new things.
  • Meanwhile, teachers from schools that let them integrate technology into the class on their own terms reported successful outcomes.
Teachers Without Borders

ESL teachers about to become hot commodity - 0 views

  • Her specialty - teaching English as a second language - is about to become an even hotter commodity in Quebec.The Education Department plans to expand intensive English in Grade 6 to all French public schools over the next five years. It predicts about 1,235 extra teachers will be needed to teach those classes.
  • A normal teaching workload is 300 to 400 students, said Lise Winer, a professor in second language education at McGill University's Integrated Studies in Education department."You have 10 classes and you see them for 75 minutes twice in a nine-day cycle. It's just hard to keep track of things," Winer said.
  • The Education Department believes that with the expansion of intensive English more students will be drawn to the field because the new positions will be more attractive. In intensive English classes, teachers typically work with the same group of students for a semester as opposed to juggling many classes.
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  • Because of Bill 101,the French Language Charter, intensive English classes in French schools can't involve instruction in other subjects like mathematics and science.
Teachers Without Borders

Canadian education awaits a hard lesson, watchdog warns - The Globe and Mail - 0 views

  • “Canada is the only country in the developed world that has no stated national goals for education,” he said.
  • Canada is a top-performer, and a fair one. For more than a decade, Canadian students have outperformed their international peers on the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s assessments of reading, math and science. They placed in the top 10 in every subject in the most recent results.What has made other countries take notice is that household income and immigrant status matter less to a student’s results here than they do elsewhere.
  • The report also raises concerns about the desirability of the teaching profession, and whether limited employment opportunities and constant reforms are scaring away the best candidates for teachers college.This raises alarm bells because research has shown that teachers are the single biggest in-school influence on learning.“Teachers are a fundamental question for Canadian education – how we train, assess and pay them,” said Peter Cowley, an education policy researcher at the Fraser Institute.
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  • Canada also has the weakest record on teaching national history that the council could find it its review of school curricula in other countries. Most Canadian provinces require only one high school course in Canadian history, and they tend to put a very regional lens on the material.Canadian schools are doing an especially poor job of history education when compared to American ones, said Jeremy Diamond, a director for the Historica-Dominion Institute.“We don’t start young enough, we don’t make it a priority, and we have a generation of young people who don’t know the essential things we as Canadians should know about our history,” he said.
  • The Canadian Council on Learning says there needs to be more school-industry partnerships, like those in part of Central Europe where there are a number of apprenticeship options available to high school students. In Canada, however, a bottleneck occurs as students struggle to find placements in their area of training.
  • It also recommends that Canada set up a national French-language teacher training college, “in order to preserve and enhance bilingual education.” Canada is facing a shortage of French-language teachers, both in the French school boards outside Quebec and for French immersion programs.
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