Current Projects

The Global Teenager Project is a worldwide virtual learning network designed for high school students from developed and developing countries. By joining a Global Teenager Project, students enhance their educational experience and gain an understanding of life for young peoples of different countries. The students are supported in their efforts by national co-coordinators, local education partners and by their own school leaders.

Teenagers from different countries meet through Learning Circles, an educationally based program promoting the use of the Internet, email and chat lines. Through these ICT modes, students from participating countries discuss important issues as well as informally share everyday experiences.

Knowing Our Neighbours are curriculum based themed projects in which New Brunswick students learn about people and communities in their province.

Teachers and classes from schools in different parts of the province are partnered to form a virtual learning team. Within these teams, students use online resources to research, collaborate and share information about their communities. The teacher partners plan and agree on the project theme and ensure that all learning activities are based on New Brunswick Education curriculum outcomes.

The Department of Education works collaboratively with districts and their schools to support the teachers in the implementation and completion of the project through curricular and technical support.

The Storytelling Forum is a project that explores cross-cultural aspects of curricula, Internet communication skills, media literacy and reflective thinking.

The project is based on a forum/blog through which stories are shared in a variety of genre and media. These include chat, blogs, collaborative interactions (video and audio conferencing) and formal written stories.

The project promotes literacy through online storytelling:

• Students write and read stories from peers in Scotland, Colombia, Chile, Spain and New Brunswick.
• Students' work is "published."
• Students are motivated to write using proper mechanics.
• Students can use text, digital images, video and audio to help tell their stories.
• Video conferencing "events" take place during the school year.

This is a collaborative project among students and teachers in Scotland, New Brunswick, Chile and Colombia. It is supported by the University of Dundee, the University of Bogotá, Distrital Bogotá Trainee Teachers, Dundee City Department of Education, the University of New Brunswick and the New Brunswick Department of Education.

The result of global warming and melting icecaps has been for the United Nations to identify water as a future threat for countries at or below sea level. At the same time drinking water has become a scare resource on the globe. Might drinking water become as expensive as oil?

The aim of the Water Project, which began in January 2007 and will finish in May 2008, is to connect 12 secondary schools in Canada, Bangladesh and The Netherlands to offer a rich international learning environment. Through this Learning Circle project, which focuses on water and wetlands, students in all participating schools pose a question related to a water issue in their region. ICT's facilitate an "issues based" meaningful learning opportunity.

This school year we are beginning a partnership between pre-service teachers and master teachers to improve 21st Century communication skills. The project will develop a framework for coordinating a coherent and structured approach to advancing the development of exemplary teaching and mentoring of you into the teaching profession. It is our goal that education student will work with teachers to develop lessons integrating technology, literacy, numeracy, science, and technology that can be shared with others trough a Teacher's Virtual Resource Centre.

In fall of 2007 we had 22 New Brunswick teachers partnered with 60 secondary and middle school pre-service teachers. Together they consulted and prepared a lesson that the partner teacher would use in their classroom and provide feedback. The STU class completed the project by preparing a excellent poster session of their project for their classmates, which included videos, podcasts, wikis, blogs, SMART board lessons and much more! It was very exciting to see the various directions they had taken their projects. We hope to include some of these projects in the poster session showcase at our next eLearning conference. We will repeat this project and make it even better for the elementary group in the winter of 2008; 25 elementary teachers will partner with 60 more pre-service teachers.