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Congratulations to the Peel District School Board! Recipients of the C21 Canada Shifting Minds National Award for distinctive achievement in the field of 21st Century Learning and Innovation System Award category.
Pictured left to right: Robert Martellacci, MSL/C21 Canada; Tony Pontes, Director, Peel DSB; Mark Keating, CIO, Peel DSB and John Kershaw, president, C21 Canada
By John Kershaw, President of C21 Canada, and the former Deputy Minister of Education for New Brunswick
Today’s C21 Canada’s spotlight is on the Ontario Public School Board Association. And in this context C21 Canada celebrates OPSBA’s contribution to the 21st century learning movement in Canada with an enthusiastic high five!
The OPSBA released their inspiring new document Vision for Learning and Teaching in a Digital Age http://www.opsba.org/files/OPSBA_AVisionForLearning.pdf. The OPSBA document is a testament to progressive thinking and a welcome contribution to the call for 21st century models of learning in public education in Canada. The fact that a key education leader in Canada’s largest province is actively engaging on the need for 21st century competencies and technology rich learning environments in public education can only be seen as positive to Canada’s 21st century learning movement.
The OPSBA’s new document is a call for change to position Ontario’s learners in the digital age. Rather than paraphrase the OPSBA latest document we highlight a few key passages that capture the essence of the OPSBA message on what must change.
Our Vision… requires a purposeful cultural shift in our education system that focuses on engaging and inspiring our students, that fosters creative and innovative minds and embraces the enabling role of technology on expanding how, when and where learning takes place.
The new role of education is to ensure all students have the opportunity to use their interests and passions to connect to all areas of knowledge.
The challenge for schools is to be open to adapting to and adopting the technology used by students. It represents a relevant way to empower students and engage them in taking responsibility for their own learning. It leads to building relationships in the classroom as the teacher engages with the students about the skills they bring, helps students refine those skills and encourages students to make productive and relevant use of technology in their everyday lives.
The document’s specific recommendations are high level and set the stage for real action on the path to transforming Ontario’s public education system to the reality of the knowledge and digital era.
The OPSBA vision statement is not just an important contribution to the future design of Ontario’s public education system; it is a complementary call for national action to C21 Canada’s own Shifting Minds vision and framework for change (see www.c21canada.org).
The authors are to be congratulated for a visionary document; the OPSBA is to be praised for endorsing and championing the vision; and the Ontario government will hopefully embrace the call for change on an urgent basis. The good news is that Ontario boasts many excellent examples of innovation in schools and in classrooms, and in a few instances at the district level itself. The challenge is to accelerate the pace of making these innovations systemic and transforming education to be innovative by design. Public education in Canada is rooted in the agrarian and industrial age and in today’s innovation driven society and economy we need an education system where innovation is celebrated, nurtured and rewarded.
A final word from the authors of the document: The challenge to be overcome is ensuring the readiness of our students to take their place in a world of rapid technological change and increased globalization. We need to start with an articulate Vision that will engage all our educators, all our learners, all our parents and all our communities.
Our collective and fervent wish is that one day soon the Ontario Ministry of Education and CMEC Ministers collectively issue a similar statement.
John Kershaw, president of C21 and former deputy minister of education in New Brunswick, discusses what future learning should look like, and where technology fits in with TVOparents.com.
By John Kershaw, President of C21 Canada and the former Deputy Minister of Education for New Brunswick.
![By ADialla (Flickr: City of Iqaluit) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACity_of_Iqaluit.jpg)
On July 5th, 2013 Canada’s Ministers called for higher levels of innovation in public education.
C21 Canada welcomes this public call to action, issued in a communique from CMEC’s meeting in Iqaluit. CMEC (Council of Ministers of Education Canada) is the forum where provincial and territorial Ministers of education convene to collaborate on pan Canadian initiatives and share best practices. In Canada, education is constitutionally a provincial jurisdiction, and as such there is no federal department of education. This means that CMEC is the only Canadian entity where a “national”vision and policy framework for public education can be formed and shared with the public. Thus, when Minister’s call for more innovation in education, they are in fact calling on themselves to act.
What leadership actions could the Ministers of education pursue? C21 Canada offers the following five steps for immediate action by CMEC:
C21 Canada supports the recent CMEC Ministers call for more innovation in public education. Now it is time for CMEC to act on its own call to action, and provide the pan Canadian leadership for public education they inherited from Canada’s constitution.
On June 11, 2013 C21 Canada presented Chris Whittaker of Dawson College with a Shifting Minds National Award for distinctive achievement in the field of 21st Century learning and innovation. C21 Canada’s Shifting Minds awards are presented to recognize the work of individuals and organizations in advancing 21st century models of learning in Canada consistent with C21 Canada’s vision and framework document, Shifting Minds (see wwww.c21canada.org). In presenting the award, C21 Canada’s President John Kershaw highlighted Chris Whittaker’s accomplishments in advancing 21st century models of learning and teaching in the field of physics, through the pursuit of creative and student-centred pedagogies and the design of innovative learning environments. The award was presented at the SALTISE conference at Dawson College, in front of a number of Chris Whittaker’s colleagues and peers.
Chris has been a physics teacher at Dawson College for over 15 years. According to his colleagues, what makes Chris special are 4 distinctive qualities:
The focus of Chris’s teaching is the creation of appropriate learning activities and environments. He designs activities to engage students from both a conceptual and problem solving perspective. He develops learning activities that keep the individual student in mind while leveraging the benefits of collaborative engagement of peers. He leaves room for his students to have fun and see the beauty in learning physics. His students say that by sharing his many personal experiences he makes his teaching meaningful to them while also making him more approachable.
Perhaps the most important testimonials come from Chris’s students:
Chris has played a major leadership role in designing two Active Learning Classrooms that integrate technology with teaching and learning. A major consequence of his work has been to support his colleagues’ in engaging the Active learning Classroom model. In the process of doing so, Chris has been instrumental in creating a vibrant and growing community of practice among teachers who teach in these student centred and technology rich learning environments.
Chris’ reputation of being an exceptional teacher and innovator has spread beyond Quebec. Last summer he was asked to present his Active Learning Classroom initiative to students at the University of British Columbia. This fall he was recruited to prepare a series of workshops for the Engineering Faculty at McGill University who are promoting the use of active learning among their faculty members.
Chris Whittaker is clearly an innovator, a leader and a collaborator, three traits that have earned him recognition by others, and ones that C21 Canada also wished to acknowledge. C21 Canada is honoured to recognize a true leader and innovator in the field of education.
