The Ontario Public School Boards’ Association (OPSBA) is asking for input from educators and the general public on their recently released call-to-action, “Vision for Learning and Teaching in a Digital Age (February 2013).”

The document is the sequel to the OPSBA 2009 document, “What If?” and represents the thoughtful and informed work of trustees and key staff from a broad range of Ontario public school boards. It is intended to promote the vital importance of a provincial vision for the role of learning and teaching in a highly connected world. It recognizes the higher order of skills that students need to be successful and how technology is integrated into how they engage with their world.

OPSBA has created a survey to solicit a broad range of views about their key recommendations and hopes to use this input to support their next steps and to identify key actions that will move this initiative forward.

The ECOO Board of Directors encourages all ECOO members and concerned parties to get involved by taking time to review the Vision for Learning and Teaching in a Digital Age document and asks that you then take the next step and share your input.

• the document: Vision for Learning and Teaching in a Digital Age (PDF)
• the survey: Vision for Learning and Teaching in a Digital Age Survey

Says Judith Nyman, Director of Program Policy for OPSBA, “The more responses we receive, the better informed we will be regarding next steps. I ask that you forward this email to as many of your contacts and colleagues as possible to maximize the number of individuals involved in this important dialogue.”

Thank you for your assistance in completing the survey.

Mark Wagner Welcomes Participants  (image CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0), by @ecooweb

Over the weekend of April 20-21, over five hundred educators gathered at Eastwood Collegiate in Kitchener, Ontario for the Google Apps for Education Ontario Summit. Participants travelled from all over Ontario (and even beyond its borders!) to attend the two-day Saturday/Sunday summit, which featured over 70 sessions, in addition to three keynotes and a demo slam event.

A number of leading Google App educators visited Ontario to provide the weekend series of keynotes and sessions, supported by a good collection of local-to-Ontario Google App-using educators and software vendors. The event was sponsored by ECOO and hosted at Eastwood Collegiate with the support of staff and students from the Waterloo region. Thanks go out to Mark Wagner‘s team, as well as ECOO’s Bill Mackenzie for spearheading the event, and WRDSB’s Mark Carbone for ensuring wonderful support and WiFI capacity.

Resources from the Summit are shared online for your use.

Plans are underway to host another Google Apps for Education Ontario Summit in 2014. Keep an eye out for dates on our ecoo.org/events/ page.

Images from the event are hosted on Flickr and are available for use under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Every Ontario educator needs to watch this episode of The Agenda. Recorded this past Sunday at Trent University as part of TVO’s Learning2030 series, the 54-minute episode digs deeply into the state of learning and education in Ontario today, and asks difficult questions about the system’s readiness to educate the graduating class of 2030.

The Agenda’s Steve Paiken speaks with a panel featuring Michael Fullen, Camille Rutherford, Cathy Bruce, and Ron Canuel, and features wonderful studio-audience interviews with ecoo tweeps Heidi Siwak (@HeidiSiwak), Zoe Brannigan-Pipe (@zbpipe), and Colin Jagoe (@colinjagoe).

Ontario’s new Minister of Education Liz Sandals, and Ontario’s new Premier (and former Minister of Education) Kathleen Wynne must hear the significant challenge to their mandates in panelist Ron Canuel‘s closing words:

” — the inertia context in education is profound … the system is a big C conservative. The people working within it are trying their best to be creative, are trying to be the risk takers … teachers do gravitate towards this … there’s not one teacher who wants to do a lousy job out there …

“I’m going to say this now, and I may really upset some people, but I think there are some district leaders, and Ministry folks, that have really got to change their paradigms, and they’ve got to show a lot more courage to bring this forth, because without the courage, we’re not going to see the change.”

[Ron Canuel is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Education Association. He has over 34 years of experience in the public education sector, most recently as Director General of the Eastern Townships School Board in Quebec, where 1:1 computing initiative was undertaken over ten years ago.]

THANK YOU! Our Call for Presentation Proposals is now closed.

We are extremely excited about this year’s annual conference, Bring IT, Together! — and we are very pleased with the response to our Call for Presentation Proposals. You have definitely come through in offering to share your expertise as we continue to support Ontario’s learners, educators, administrators and support professionals, schools, districts, and education technology companies in this dynamic time.

Our Conference Committee is now charged with the significant task of carefully reviewing all of the proposals, and working to build for you the very best, balanced, and engaging program possible. This is always one of the most challenging, yet rewarding parts of preparing for our annual conference, and we have already begun the process. We will be contacting presenters in May, and are aiming to share our program with you by the beginning of June.

Again, thank you for offering to help us Bring IT, Together! And we will see you at the Falls in October !

Our conference this year will be October 23rd-25th, 2013 at the Scotiabank Convention Centre  in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

We’re hoping you will take your experience in learning and Bring IT Together with your colleagues from around the province and indeed, the world. We are Ontario’s showcase for innovation and excellence in education. and look forward to seeing the diversity of learning approaches involving technology that you can offer to our community.

Sessions are typically one hour long (but we’re open to your ideas!) and you will have access to the internet and a projector (and a whiteboard if needed). We also welcome ideas for the all-day preconference as well as poster sessions and model classrooms.  We encourage you to be imaginative in content, process and product. We’re here to support you sharing your story with participants so let us know what you’re thinking.

We’d like to hear from educators from across the entire province and beyond. We welcome both the novice and expert presenter — if this is your first time, we’re happy to support you in sharing your experiences.

/>The following page will allow you to enter your proposal. You will notice we are asking for the least amount of information necessary to make our selection. More in-depth information (full contact information, tags, photographs, materials, equipment needs, etc) will be collected after we have designed our program. For each session, there will be one Lead Presenter (who will receive one day free at the conference). If you are presenting with others, just provide a list of co-presenters’ names. We regret we can only offer the Lead Presenter a free conference day. This call for presentations will close on April 19th, after which the ECOO committee will meet, discuss and confirm the accepted sessions, and then decide on the schedule.

And shortly after that, we will all Bring IT Together in Niagara Falls for a most remarkable annual conference! (Keep your eyes open for upcoming details  – this promises to be a great learning event!)

If you wish to review conference sessions from our previous conference please consult one of the following:

2012 Sessions in PDF	2012 Sessions on Lanyrd.com

We encourage you to express your creativity in terms of content, delivery and process — we’re willing to work with you to experiment and innovate.

Thanks again, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Cal Armstrong
Presentations
proposals@ecoo.org

• Date: Saturday, March 2rd, 2013.
• Time: 2:00 pm
• Location: Appleby College , Oakville
  Meeting will be in the Reading Room

Members are invited to attend in person or join in via teleconferencing.

The meeting will include:

• President’s Report
• Annual Financial Report
• Conference Report
• Report from the Chair of the Nominations Committee for the Board of Directors

At the conclusion of the AGM, the incoming Board of Directors 2013-14 will take office.

A summary of the meeting  will be provided on the ECOO website after the meeting.

Attending the Meeting

• attending in person (driving directions, map)
• attending via teleconference (see notes)

A link to the teleconference will be active here approximately 30 minutes before the meeting begins.

If you are planning to attend via teleconference, please send an email to president@ecoo.org so we can ensure that we will have sufficient (virtual) seats available!

View Larger Map

GET DIRECTIONS ON YOUR DEVICE

Onsite Parking is at the front of the property.
From the parking lot, head south, along the west side of the main building.
Follow signs to the Reading Room, which is visible from the sidewalk (large glass windows on the second floor).

Congratulations to the nominees listed below who were acclaimed to their positions.
They will represent you as the new ECOO Board of Directors for 2013 – 2014.

submitted by Ron Millar,
Chair, Nominations Committee

The ECOO Board of Directors  (2013 – 2014) 

Nominees for President
		Bill MacKenzie (Acclaimed) president@ecoo.org
I am an ICT Consultant for the Upper Grand DSB. From 2002 to 2005 I was the Chair of the Central Ontario Computer of Ontario. Since 2009 I have been the President of the Educational Computing Organization of Ontario. Working with our board of directors and conference committee we have succeeded in growing the ECOO conference from an attendance of just over 400 to 1100 attendees this year. As President I have worked hard to ensure that the ECOO membership reflects the entire provincial including voices from all regions of Ontario and all languages. Going forward, I will continue to strengthen the relationships we have built around the province and to reach out to everyone interested in the effective use of technology in our classrooms.
Nominees for Treasurer
		Harry Niezen (Acclaimed) treasurer@ecoo.org
Harry Niezen is an Instructional Technology Consultant for the Waterloo Region District School Board. Each day his work provides him opportunity to support the use of technology as an effective tool for student learning Harry has been serving on the Board of ECOO since the fall of 2009 as Treasurer. In that role, he has worked with the Board to being ECOO into a healthy financial position. Beyond the role of Treasurer, Harry is committed to seeing that the voice of educators is heard at this critical point in time as the Ministry and Boards consider the value of technology within the classroom.Harry knows the value of building and working with connected educators. He has served as the chair of the Central Ontario Computing Association (an informal network of ed tech leaders from Board across central Ontario since 2007. He has also been involved as a member of Powerful Learning Practice for the last 2 years. He can be found on Twitter (@harryniezen) and occasionally adds to his blog, Feel The Wind (http://harryniezen.wordpress.com).
Nominees for Communications Manager
		Andrew Forgrave (Acclaimed) ecooweb@ecoo.org
Andy is a classroom teacher with the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board. He has served three years on the ECOO Board of Directors as Project Manager, and supported the ECOO Conference as a member of the organizing committee for #ecoo10, #ecoo11, #ecoo12.  He has participated in several Minds on Media events, both as session leader and pedagogista, and has attended EdCamps throughout Ontario, including acting as a co-organizer for EdCampQuinte.   As a long standing advocate for the use of technology in support of learning, a former curriculum coordinator, and lead developer for Curriculum Unit Planner for Ministry of Education,  Andy is a co-founder of 105thehive.org K12 Student Internet Radio, and actively engages with educators on Twitter as @aforgrave, where he also shares his enthusiasm for radio, photography, and haiku!  Andy blogs occasionally at edVisioned.ca, and more frequently at aforgrave.ca/detritus, where he explores the role of creativity and digital storytelling in learning.
Nominees for Project Manager
		Brenda Sherry (Acclaimed) projects@ecoo.org
Brenda is currently an Itinerant Technology Coach at Upper Grand District School Board in Guelph, Ontario, after 20 years as a regular and classroom and special education teacher. Brenda’s passion for technology use in schools comes from the fact that it levels the playing field for all students; providing access to content and participation in new ways, opportunities for relevant and authentic learning within the classroom and around the world, and providing ways for ALL students to demonstrate their learning. Brenda uses social media to connect and learn with teachers both nearby and around the world. She is @brendasherry on Twitter. In her spare time she has co-founded Minds On Media, she chaired the Educational Computing Organization’s Annual Conference from 2009-2011, and develops and facilitates professional learning for the Ontario Teacher’s federation and is a Community Leader with the PLP Network in Canada, the U.S. and Australia.
Nominees for Secretary
		Roger Nevin {Appointed March 22nd, 2013} secretary@ecoo.org
Conference Co-Chairs
		Cyndie Jacobs, Doug Peterson Interim Co-Chairs (to be confirmed following AGM) conference@ecoo.org
Cyndie and Doug are experienced educators with a variety of diverse teaching backgrounds including consultant, technology officer, university lecturer and facilitator at the provincial level.Cyndie brings her considerable experience from her work with OTF, including the ‘Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century’ workshops and the OTF Curriculum Forum.  Cyndie is @cyndiejacobs on Twitter.Doug’s many years of experience chairing the Western RCAC Symposium and his work with the ECOO-CS Computer Science Contest will provide a wealth of expertise for ECOO2013.  Doug is @dougpete on Twitter.

Cyndie and Doug are experienced educators with a variety of diverse teaching backgrounds including consultant, technology officer, university lecturer and facilitator at the provincial level.

Cyndie Jacobs:
Cyndie brings her considerable experience from her work with OTF, including the ‘Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century’ workshops and the OTF Curriculum Forum.  Cyndie is @cyndiejacobs on Twitter.

Doug Peterson:
Doug’s many years of experience chairing the Western RCAC Symposium and his work with the ECOO-CS Computer Science Contest will provide a wealth of expertise for ECOO2013.  Doug is @dougpete on Twitter.

The annual ECOO conference is typically held in the October – November time frame. Keep an eye on the ecoo.org website for the exact date and location when they are announced. If you are not subscribed to the ECOO Update, consider adding yourself to our mailing list to keep yourself in the loop.
Follow @ecooWeb on Twitter for updates.

The topic: Discussing the Role of the Teacher in the NOW Century.” (session description).

The panel took place at the 33rd annual conference #ecoo12: Learning in the NOW Century, hosted by the Educational Computing Organization of Ontario, held at the Sheraton Parkway North Toronto, Ontario, on October 25th, 2012.

Panel moderator and CBC broadcaster Nora Young featured excerpts from the discussion on her radio program, Spark: Episode 195: Pagination, Education, Participation. You can listen to the Education segment, entitled 21st Century Education, here: