Posts tagged education
New and exciting models of learning in New Brunswick
Mar 24th
To date we have advised readers of New Brunswick’s efforts to shift our public education system to a 21st Century learning model. We have explored the nature of 21st Century competencies and how 1:1 notebook models empower students and foster 21st Century learning. In our last article we began identifying current ICT applications within our system to illustrate our current state of readiness to go even further (School District 16-Drupal). In this article we provide two new examples of how ICT rich environments are changing the nature learning in New Brunswick’s public education system.
1. James M. Hill Memorial School’s Broadcast Journalism:
Imagine a real television studio, a sound recording booth, HDTV cameras, video and audio mixing consoles, professional lighting, green screens, special effects software and virtual sets in a public school. These are some of the tools used by students in Broadcast Journalism at James M. Hill Memorial School in New Brunswick. This course is also being offered at four additional schools. Web applications such as Bridgit software and Moodle allow the students to participate in real time, regardless of where they are located. Read the rest of this entry »
School district boosts Web strategy with open source software
Mar 10th
Juggling daily classroom duties and other responsibilities make it very difficult for school staff and students to maintain and update school websites.
This was the case with School District 16 in eastern New Brunswick, where upkeep of the school websites often fell on the shoulders of one staff member who had little or no web design experience. As a result, many of these sites were rarely updated.
However, since developing a content management system based on the open source Drupal server software, the district has streamlined its web services. Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Read the rest of this entry »
1:1 computer model for students gains international approval
Mar 5th
“The world is finally accepting the inevitability of the 1:1 computer model in the classroom.”
Bruce Dixon, a globally renowned learning visionary, made this pronouncement at a conference in Vienna, Austria on February 23, 2010. The conference, hosted by the Austrian Ministry of Education, was sponsored by the OECD, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank (www.bildung.at/nml-conference2010). Dixon’s declaration was heard by 120 delegates representing 42 countries, including many developing nations. What delegates had in common was their effort to introduce one computer per child models into their public education systems to meet the needs of New Millennium Learners. Read the rest of this entry »
One laptop per student : A pre-requisite to a 21st Century public education
Feb 1st
In earlier articles we noted that ICT would “enable” New Brunswick’s NB3-21C public education agenda. A key reason we are well positioned to implement a 21st Century learning model is our 1:1 Dedicated Student Notebook Research Project.
In May 2004 New Brunswick Education issued a call for proposals to school districts to evaluate the learning and teaching benefits of a 1:1 student notebook model, at the grade 7-9 level. Six schools (nine classes) were selected representing rural and urban schools of varying sizes. In August 2004 Hewlett Packard (Canada) Co. provided 620 wireless notebooks over a two year period. Schools in New Brunswick were already connected with high speed bandwidth and the six research schools were equipped with a wireless network based on Cisco Systems equipment. Mount Allison University and St. Francis Xavier University were retained to evaluate the project and Microsoft Canada donated $100,000 toward the cost of the research. Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co. independently contracted the Canadian Education Association to assess the project. Read the rest of this entry »
21st Century learning competencies: What are they and how must public education adapt?
Jan 20th
In our opening article we asked “Is public education fading in relevance to today’s young learners?” And we invited readers to join and participate in the journey of the Anglophone sector of public education in New Brunswick as we developed a model of public education designed to meet the 21st Century learning needs of our students.
The obvious next question is: “What are these 21st Century learning needs?”
The OECD’s Centre for Education Research and Innovation has undertaken leading edge research on the new millennium learner, both in terms of the skills they will require and the learning environments needed to foster these skills (Innovating to Learn, Learning to Innovate, OECD, 2008).
Read the rest of this entry »
Preparing today’s students for a tech-driven future
Dec 16th
Is public education fading in relevance to today’s young learners?
As the Deputy Minister of the Anglophone Sector of New Brunswick’s public education system this question haunts me every day. My senior management team and I recognize that rapid advancements in information and communication technologies in the “Knowledge and Innovation Age” are dramatically impacting economies, societies, governance models, and individuals. Authors such as Thomas Friedman (The World Is Flat) are helping us comprehend the breadth of the changes that are sweeping digital planet earth. Read the rest of this entry »
