projects involving high schools Archives | Research & Innovation

YRDSB recognizes ABEL program director Janet Murphy for service to education

fmaquito — Mon, 30 May 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Teaching with technology is a good thing, and no one knows it better than Janet Murphy.

The (YRDSB) has awarded Murphy, director of 91��ɫ’s (ABEL) on applied research program in the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, an Outstanding Service Award.

Under Murphy’s leadership, ABEL’s team has worked with teachers in more over 100 YRDSB schools to help them better understand and integrate technology’s research impacts into their curriculum. Any teacher in 91��ɫ Region’s public district can become part of ABEL; the program is also active in the Toronto, Simcoe County and Upper Grand District School Boards.

Right: Janet Murphy

“We work with teachers from kindergarten to Grade 12 across disciplines to help them to best use technology to support their curriculum goals in the classroom,” said Murphy, who received her award on April 25 at the YRDSB’s annual Awards Evening.

This support includes extending the reach of university research and expertise into high school classrooms. For example, , an interactive learning event led by the Faculty of Science & Engineering in May, was made accessible to schools across 91��ɫ Region through the ABEL program. Through the effective use of video conferencing, collaborative technologies and streamed on-demand video, the ABEL platform distributed the event’s science content, making it available for classroom use.

ABEL also provides technical support and facilitation to support and enhance YRDSB teachers’ professional learning through a blended learning program. Leveraging interactive technologies, ABEL delivers professional learning to the classroom or school in a variety of online formats, including real-time and/or asynchronous transmission.

“The advantage to ABEL’s approach is that it allows teachers to engage in their individual learning at a time and place convenient to them, apply their learning and then re-visit the archived session as needed. This collaborative approach allows participants to gain feedback from the group about what worked and what didn’t, and continuously improve their practice,” says Murphy. “For example, 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Education recently ran a session on teaching mathematics that was streamed live and archived to ensure teachers wanting the latest numeracy pedagogy had flexible ways to access the material.”

Outstanding Service Awards reflect the YRDSB’s commitment to quality, service and teamwork. The recipients – who may include individuals, teams or departments – provide extraordinary service that has had a positive impact on the school board’s efforts to achieve its mission and goals.

Typically, those recognized have introduced positive change, significant and permanent improvements to the organization, and/or positively influenced individuals or teams around them to make great contributions.

“Janet received the Outstanding Service Award for her ongoing leadership, vision and commitment to mobilizing new knowledge for 21st-century system change,” said John Steh, manager of Leadership Development, YRDSB. “Her team’s approach has led to new organizational structures and system change, and is an excellent example of social innovation initiated by the District’s participation in the ABEL program.”

”Janet’s recognition reflects her strong leadership and the success of the entire ABEL team. ABEL’s niche is staying ahead of the technology curve in making 91��ɫ’s research in ICT, pedagogy and digital media accessible to the education community from kindergarten through to Grade 12,” said Stan Shapson, vice-president research & innovation. “Through the partnership with ABEL, the YRDSB has continually demonstrated their commitment to seeking out best pedagogical practices while ensuring teachers have access to the latest professional development. For 91��ɫ, ABEL provides an institutional platform to move the latest research out to schools while helping to attract the best high school students to programs.”

About the ABEL Program at 91��ɫ

Launched with funding support from , Canada’s Advanced Research and Innovation Network, to a consortium led by Shapson, ABEL has nearly 10 years of experience helping teachers to make better use of technology. Through public and private sector partnerships and networks, ABEL has gained national recognition as a research-based authority and leader on the effective use of existing and emerging information communication technologies (ICT) within new models of teaching, learning, training and collaboration.

ABEL’s combination of networks, partnerships and research focus drive institutional transformation and create new opportunities:

Facilitates community outreach for researchers interested in working with public school boards.
Demonstrates the value of inter-institutional and jurisdictional collaboration by providing research and outreach platforms.
Leads the effective use of technology in teaching, training and learning environments.
Provides a platform for applied research, along with expertise into the effective use of interactive and collaborative technologies.

ABEL’s partners include the , the Ministry of Education’s , the (including more than 10 school boards), , the , the , the , the and many others.

By Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer.

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Faculty of Education forum this afternoon looks at technology in education

fmaquito — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:00:00 +0000

91��ɫ's Faculty of Education will host its annual research forum on technology in education today, from 2 to 4pm in 280N 91��ɫ Lanes.

Professor Jennifer Jenson (right) will present "Baroque Baroque Revolution: High Culture Gets Game". In today’s “super-saturated, socially networked, Second Life, massively multiplayer, online, keyed-in, content generating, 2.0, ‘glocal’” culture, the world of Baroque music, to many people, not only feels like a relic from an inaccessible past, but it often looks that way as well. In this talk, Jenson will attempt to show how play, its practices, contexts and discourses are mobilized, and how some of this might be theorized and reapplied through a design-based research project that created a Baroque music game.

Professor Ron Owston (left) will look at computer game development as a literacy activity in his presentation. According to Owston, serious gaming has become a burgeoning research field over the last several years. Most research to date has looked at students as players of computer games. But what happens when students are given the opportunity to be developers of their own games? In his presentation, Owston will give an overview of a large multisite study he, together with faculty colleagues and graduate students, conducted that examined the impact on literacy skills of Grade 4 students who created their own computer games. He will then review the findings of two other pilot studies he led that grew out of this work, as well as talk briefly about a research tool he is developing for remotely recording users’ interactions with computer screens.

Professor Chloë Brushwood Rose (right) will speak about community-based media pedagogy and production in a globalized world. She will outline the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded study she is undertaking with researchers from Montreal's McGill University and the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH, which aims to pay critical attention to the proliferation of community video production programs in urban centres across North America, their pedagogies, and the videos produced through them. The researchers are conducting a comparative study of three projects in New 91��ɫ City, Toronto and Montreal that explore a number of central research themes relating to media pedagogies.

This event is free and open to the community. Following the presentations, there will be a wine and cheese reception. For more information, contact , communications coordinator, Office of the Dean, Faculty of Education, at ext. 58024.

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91��ɫ prof launches Caring Minds, mental health Web site for students, teachers and parents in Grades 7-12

fmaquito — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Despite increased awareness and education, mental health and mental health issues are still surrounded by stigmas for many Canadians. 91��ɫ Professor is helping to challenge prevalent stereotypes and to encourage more dialogue about mental health issues in Canada. She is using her academic research to give students in Grades 7 to 12 the tools and knowledge they need to understand mental health both within their peer group and within the community.

Right: Megan Davies

Davies and University of Victoria Professor E. are in the final stages of a community-informed curriculum project that will provide middle- and secondary-school teachers in Ontario and British Columbia with a set of innovative, cross-disciplinary teaching units they can integrate into the classroom. The Youth & Mental Health project is funded by a Collaborative Faculty Incentive Grant from ResearchImpact, which is a 91��ɫ and University of Victoria initiative. The project is the result of a series of consultations with community groups, educators, and psychiatric survivors and it will offer students a wide range of perspectives on mental well-being. The goal is to facilitate critical thinking on this sensitive – and often controversial – topic, and to explore interrelated themes of diversity and social justice.

Davies got the idea for the project in an undergraduate class she taught at 91��ɫ over five years ago. Her students – inspired by the material they were exploring on the history of mental health in Canada – told her that mental health issues should be tackled in the classroom much earlier in a student’s education. “I really took that to heart,” she notes. “They were right; we need to talk to their younger selves.”

A series of community consultations were held in Toronto and Victoria. In September, Davies and Marshall presented four draft teaching units to middle- and secondary-school focus groups for feedback and criticism. Feedback from the groups was integrated into the units and the researchers began to develop a Web site that would house the teaching units and other resources. launched at the end of January and it is rich with lesson plans, hands-on activities, resources and helpful learning objectives.

Learners explore, across cultures and history, the shifting contours of what is, and what has been regarded as, normal mental health in the first teaching unit, Understanding, Experiencing & Equity. The lessons in the unit encourage students to consider where stereotypes about mental health come from, how they impact individuals and communities, and what can be done to combat these negative responses. In one of the activities, students are asked to discuss passages from the diary of a young woman named Lara Gilbert who lived in Vancouver during the 1980s and 1990s and struggled with depression. “The idea is to get students to think about what life is like for someone with mental health issues,” says Davies. “What better way to provoke discussion than through the writings of someone who has actually dealt with the challenges, the discrimination and the struggle for well-being.”

Traditionally, mental health patients in Canada were sent to live at institutions for extended periods of time, if not their entire lives. In the 1960s and 1970s, improved treatment options and a shift in ideology occurred; governments and health professionals started to advocate for the deinstitutionalization of mental health care. The idea was to integrate – rather than isolate – patients into the community. The second teaching unit, Self-Determination & Activism, provides a snapshot into the conditions of mental health institutions and explores what the shift in practice meant for those living with mental health issues.

As Davies notes, though integrating individuals into the community may have been a noble idea, it has been a difficult and flawed process. Insufficient community services, limited health care, and a lack of funding for resources have prevented mental health patients from getting the support they need. Instead, the most powerful force for positive change has often come from psychiatric survivors themselves who have united against discrimination and pushed for better living conditions. Students in the second unit examine patients’ rights and reflect on the mixed freedoms and hardships that community living can provide.

Housing, Homelessness & Poverty, the focus of the third teaching unit, asks students to think about complex questions such as: Why are people with mental health issues vulnerable to being homeless? Should safe, affordable housing be considered a fundamental right? Highlights of the unit include surprisingly grim figures about the state of homelessness in Canada and an activity that gets students to create skits that portray the real-life stories they’ve read in class.

The last teaching unit, Well-Being, Health Care & Treatment, looks at positive mental health strategies and resources. It also examines mental health care through the lens of human rights. Lessons are complemented by historical archives, cartoons and artwork.

“Each of the four teaching units draw heavily on personal experiences, historical documents, poetry and graphic art in order to help students gain a more comprehensive and personal understanding of the complex aspects of mental health,” says Davies. “The lessons are interactive and designed to encourage a deeper learning experience through personal reflection and engagement in classroom discussion.”

Davies, who teaches in the Health & Society Program in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, continues to exchange ideas with community partners on revisions for the teaching units. She hopes to develop more units in the future and to have them linked to curriculum in other provinces, translated so that they can be accessed by francophone students and reworked for aboriginal communities. Davies also welcomes suggestions for improvement from students. In fact, she says students played a key role in the overall success of the project. “A lot of the work was done by youth – from the original artwork on the Web site to data entry and research,” Davies notes. “This was very much a youth-centred project and it only made sense to involve them at each phase.”

The project has already attracted .

The curriculum project is part of a larger heritage initiative that is funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research. As part of that initiative, Davies has been active in the creation of another Web site, , which serves as a research, resource and educational hub on mental health issues.

For more information on Davies’ research, e-mail daviesmj@yorku.ca.

By Kristin Taylor, communications coordinator, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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91��ɫ and UVic launch Caring Minds, mental health Web site for students, teachers and parents in Grades 7-12

fmaquito — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Researchers at 91��ɫ and the University of Victoria in British Columbia have taken the latest research in mental health and worked with teachers, as well as mental-health-system users and service providers, to create an online curriculum easily used by teachers and grasped by high-school students.

helps young people address the stigma and discrimination associated with mental health concerns and treatment. It provides Grade 7 to 12 teachers, students and parents with four teaching units—covering discrimination and stigma, housing and poverty, rights and activism, and well-being and treatment—that come with activities, lesson plans and resources.

The project garnered coverage in Victoria, BC’s .

Led by , associate professor in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies' Department of Social Science (left) and , professor of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies at UVic, the project was , which launched several pilot projects by offering grants to help researchers and their partner organizations address research issues with relevant public policy and/or professional practice implications. , which covers Esquimalt, Oak Bay, Victoria, View Royal and a portion of Saanich and Highlands, is among the project's partners.

Caring Minds features original artwork created by William Willis, a sixteen year-old secondary school student, and help make the site visually appealing while keeping its focus appropriate for a youth-centred project.

Davies and Marshall are now disseminating their research findings, pursuing additional funding to further resource development and expand the program internationally while seeking ways to integrate their materials with other provincial curricula and international Web sites. A more detailed overview of the is available here.

By Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin – and – researchimpact's blog about knowledge mobilization at 91��ɫ and the University of Victoria.

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