All Posts Tagged With: "Dalton McGuinty"

Hand-held device will soon become part of classrooms across the country

The role of technology in the classroom has no doubt been a contentious issue since the first Roman student brought an abacus to his grammaticus. Using the most up-to-date equipment in school has always seemed to be a necessity. And yet the process of learning hasn’t really changed that much since ancient times: teachers still need to teach and students still need to pay attention.

Last week Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty sparked a national debate on the role of technology in Canadian classrooms. Asked about a proposal to relax a ban on cellphones in the classrooms of Toronto-area high schools, the premier seemed rather agreeable to the idea. “Telephones, BlackBerries and the like are conduits for information and one of the things we want our students to be is well informed,” he said. “It’s something we should be looking at in our schools.”

McGuinty has a point. It seems inevitable that some sort of hand-held wireless device will eventually become part of education systems across the country. The cost and complication of traditional textbooks makes electronic delivery of course material straight into the hands of students a rather attractive proposition. For this reason alone, electronic tablets or smartphones such as the BlackBerry likely have a place in the classroom of the future. The prospect of linking students together via communication technology also holds great educational promise.

At the same time, we can’t ignore the enormous and obvious downsides of such technological intrusions. Cellphones may be conduits for information, but they’re also tools of mass distraction. Texting, tweeting, surfing and updating your online profile have nothing to do with learning and no place in the classroom. Yet it’s even become commonplace for parents to text their children during school hours. What are they thinking?

Any effort to make cellphones part of the official school day must solve the problem of their non-educational use, either by setting strict rules of acceptable conduct or blocking access when it’s not appropriate. And we should recognize that there’s a big difference between integrating wireless devices into the curriculum and simply inviting students to bring whatever diverting gadgets they might possess to class. The fact not every student owns a smartphone must also be addressed. Regardless of what the future holds, it’s far too soon to be advocating widespread use of cellphones in the classroom.

It’s also the case that the value of technology to learning is frequently oversold by eager advocates. A long series of educational revolutions via technology has been promised throughout the years: from television to video to desktop computers to laptops to SMART Boards to cellphones. Despite claims that these innovations will change the educational experience for the better, there’s no evidence technology actually leads to higher marks for students.

The ubiquitous presence of wireless laptops on university campuses in many ways anticipates the presence of cellphones in public schools. A study from 2008 in the academic journal Computers & Education looked at how these laptops have affected classroom behaviour. “Results showed that students who used laptops in class spent considerable time multitasking and that laptop use posed a significant distraction to both users and fellow students,” the research observes. “Most importantly, the level of laptop use was negatively related to several measures of student learning.” Students with laptops had lower test results than those without. The reason? They were often not paying attention to their teacher. We should expect the same thing from cellphones.

Similarly, a 2009 study looked at students who sent instant messages during class. Texting students took longer to perform simple tasks such as reading a written passage than those who did not. Consider it another blow to the alleged benefits of multitasking. An investigation into PowerPoint lectures found students enjoyed them more than traditional presentations, although this did nothing to raise test scores. Clickers, small hand-held wireless devices used for in-class quizzes that are popular with students and teachers, similarly have no discernable impact on marks.

Technology may lower school costs, make marking more efficient and even raise student satisfaction. But it can’t produce students with better grades. And this means technology will never replace the timeless need for skilled teachers capable of catching the attention of easily distracted students and engaging their minds. The smartest phones may be the ones we keep outside the classroom.

From the editors

Proving the law is ‘unconstitutional’ may not be so easy

Twenty-year-old University of Western Ontario student Kevin Wiener has challenged Ontario’s controversial new law, which prohibits drivers under 22 from consuming any alcohol before getting behind the wheel.

Wiener filed an application with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, telling the Toronto Star, “As a young person, I don’t feel it’s fair for the government (to do this).”

“The Charter (of Rights and Freedoms) prohibits discrimination based on age,” he said.

That’s very true. But the Charter also guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it “only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified.” That little line may upset Wiener’s battle. Though it may not be “fair,” the necessity of such an “infringement,” so to speak, can be easily justified.

Statistics show that drivers under 22 are simply more likely to be involved in fatal drinking and driving collisions than older drivers. Furthermore, age is not a static group; everyone is under 22 at some point, and some studies, such as one by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, show that brain development of an area inhibiting risky behaviour is not fully formed until 25. But of course, that’s academic mumbo-jumbo. Too bad that’s just what the Ontario Superior court loves to hear.

Now, there is a compelling argument for extending the ban to all new drivers, which frankly, may be a fairer move, but let’s be real; with an impending provincial election, better to place restrictions on a demographic with the poorest showing at the polls. But I digress.

Though Wiener certainly faces an uphill battle, at least he’s going about it the right way. Remember, if all else fails, write to the UN.

-Photo by DOliphant

Stephen Hawking at the Perimeter Institute

Last Sunday an array of VIPs—Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Kevin O’Leary, the angry guy on the CBC reality show Dragons’ Den—convened in a theatre at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo to pay tribute to Stephen Hawking. The British astrophysicist sat in his wheelchair while the politicians buttered him up. Then he delivered a lecture through his speech synthesizer about his early years in physics.

The next day a bunch of physicists took a lunch break from a conference where they were discussing what happens when black holes of various sizes orbit each other. A caregiver pushed Hawking to a place at one of the cafeteria tables, where he ate some lunch and listened to the chatter and gossip among his colleagues.

There were no cameras or dignitaries at the lunch. I was there only by chance. But in some ways this was more significant than the previous day’s pomp. Hawking didn’t become the world’s most famous physicist by giving lectures, after all, but by thinking and working, and he is at Perimeter to think and work.

He is one of 10 Distinguished Research Chairs, leading international scholars who will camp out periodically at Perimeter and work with its faculty and students. He’s about halfway through his first six-week visit. On evenings and weekends he gets out to sight-see. So far he’s gone to African Lion Safari and enjoyed the ribs at Ethel’s Lounge.

Days are for discussion and calculation. Motor neuron disease slows him but doesn’t stop him. He controls his computer by twitching his cheek to control the cursor on a computer screen. It works best if you frame questions to him as a yes or a no. Neil Turok, Perimeter’s director, is an old Cambridge colleague of Hawking’s. He admitted after Sunday’s big televised show that he was impatient for the fancy business to be done “so we can get back to work.”

Of course in its own way, Sunday’s glamour was work too. A lot of taxpayer money has gone into Perimeter, about $90 million from the feds and as much from the Ontario government since 1999. That’s on top of $170 million from Research in Motion founder Mike Lazaridis. The physics that goes on there is so hard to explain (quantum foundations, anyone? Superstring theory?) that constant effort goes into underlining its importance. The man in the wheelchair is handy to that effort. After his speech, Hawking joined Turok and Lazaridis at dinner with two federal ministers, Flaherty and Gary Goodyear, both plainly starstruck.

O’Leary also became part of the sales pitch. “Imagine in 1905,” Lazaridis told the audience, “if Albert Einstein had stood in the Dragons’ Den.” Would the business geniuses have funded his crazy ideas? Not likely. But that’s what’s needed today, Lazaridis argued.

That’s the point Hawking wanted to make too, as it turned out. Sort of. Mostly he used his own life to show that you can never know what you’ll need to know. Governments spend a lot of time trying to pick winners in science. Hawking, the greatest winner of his lifetime, has never even bothered to try. He just followed his heart.

He showed up at Cambridge in 1962 hoping to study the nature of the universe with Dennis Hoyle. “Cosmology was at that time hardly recognized as a legitimate field. Yet that was where I wanted to do my research.” Hoyle was too busy so Hawking fetched up with a lesser-known prof, which came in handy when Hoyle’s defence of a steady-state universe fell into dispute soon after.

All the action was in elementary particle physics, where you could design experiments to peck away at electrons and nucleii and eke out their secrets. Cosmology was mere guesswork. Hawking quoted a colleague who considered attendees at a 1962 Warsaw conference on general relativity to be “hosts of dopes.”

Hawking’s instincts ran all the other way. Elementary particles? “Too like botany.” Hushed admiration for odd species of quarks and gluons. “Cosmology and gravitation, on the other hand, were neglected fields that were ripe for development.”

By the late 1960s, data from radio telescopes had driven a stake through Hoyle’s steady-state hypothesis. With Roger Penrose and other colleagues, Hawking was hot on the trail of proof that the universe began with a big bang. “It was a glorious feeling, having a whole field virtually to ourselves. How unlike particle physics, where people were falling over themselves to latch onto the latest idea. They still are.”

A single-minded focus on pursuing the latest trends would never have got him where he wound up. “The importance of special places and special times cannot be overstated,” Hawking said. “That happened in Berlin, Germany, in the 1920s when quantum mechanics was born, and again in Cambridge in the 1960s. It seems to me that the same ingredients are being assembled here,” at Perimeter. “I am hoping and expecting great things will happen here.”

What’s important is not that Hawking said these nice things but that he was in Waterloo to say them. And with that, it was back to work.

Ontario Online Institute to pose challenges for students

Learning about Socrates through Facebook forums and chatting with a professor through Skype is the reality for students as e-learning claims a more dominant role in higher education.

Ontario is the latest jurisdiction to jump in with plans to launch the province’s first fully online university, and that has educators urging students to weigh their options carefully before deciding to turn their computer into a classroom. “Most people, if given the choice, would still prefer a traditional university,” said Glen Jones, an expert in higher education policy at the Ontario Institute for Education Studies in Toronto.

Related: Who needs a prof?

Jones said sometimes distance from a school, the necessity of full-time jobs and family obligations make going to university impossible. For these reasons, getting a degree online might be an attractive alternative.

But there are also drawbacks.

Sometimes the cost of clicking a mouse can be just as high as attending a university. Then there’s the lack of companionship that can sometimes make e-learning an isolating experience. And will employers value credentials earned online as much as they do those gained in a classroom?

Ontario hasn’t yet provided details on how its proposed Ontario Online Institute will work, saying only that the virtual school will offer e-courses from several universities as the province tries to produce a more educated workforce. “The ministry is working with college and universities to look at what they’re doing that has been really successful and how to improve the current system,” said Annette Phillips, a spokeswoman for the minister of colleges, training and universities.

But there are already several models across Canada and around the world for Ontario to borrow from. The University of Phoenix allows students from across the United States to earn online degrees. In the United Kingdom, Open University combines the traditional format of correspondence learning with online tools. Similarly, Alberta’s Athabasca University focuses solely on correspondence and online learning.

Richard Pinet, head of e-learning at the University of Ottawa, teaches faculty how to incorporate online tools into their classroom. He says academia in the Internet age has evolved dramatically. Pinet has used Skype for his “office hours,” as he meets with students online through the Internet program that allows people to make free video calls.

Another instructor at the university’s faculty of music has used video conferencing and sound recognition to teach a student at home how to play the piano. “The notion of any time, any place kinds of learning–that students can learn at their own pace–is an advantage to a lot of students who work,” said Pinet. “They can do this late at night, early in the morning or in their pyjamas,” he said. “In traditional face-to-face teaching the prof is kind of — I hate to say it — the sage on the stage, and what e-learning does is it looks at the prof like a guide on the side.”

Pinet says students at the University of Ottawa can earn a bachelor of education exclusively online. St. Paul’s University, an affiliate of the school, became one of the first institutions in Canada to offer PhD courses online.

Jones said while online learning is important, especially for students juggling busy lives and families, tuition can still be prohibitive. “People often assume distance education is inexpensive,” said Jones. “It’s not necessarily cheap.” Online learning replicates an in-person experience and programs still need faculty and the technology to deliver the course work.

Pinet said it can also be difficult for students to self-motivate when learning from home. “The other challenge is they have to learn how these online tools work and, if you’re technologically challenged or threatened, that can be a bit of a hurdle to overcome,” said Pinet.

Academics in the field also fear that online education could morph into a gaming-like environment, where instructors have to compete with short attention spans and constantly deliver interactive lessons.

There is also the question about the value of a degree earned exclusively online. Both Pinet and Jones said it’s difficult to assess how an employer would view an online degree, adding if the credential is bestowed by a reputable institution it shouldn’t matter how it was attained. Then again, it would also depend on the subject. “If I had a brain surgeon who took his degree online, I probably wouldn’t want that guy anywhere near me,” said Pinet with a laugh.

The Canadian Press

Centrepiece of Liberal re-election platform gets shredded as gov’t fights cash crunch

The Ontario government announced this morning that it will be cutting back it “textbook and technology grant” starting next year.

Stay tuned for more details later this afternoon.

I asked the government the following two questions, and you can read their responses below.

1) The release states “The grant is $150 per academic year.” Can you confirm that the government remains committed to its previous promises and the grant will be increasing in size for the 09/10 academic year?

A government spokesperson says the grant will remain frozen, but that they will not be increasing the size of the grant.

2) Can you provide the government estimate of how many students will no longer qualify for the grant and the amount of money the government expects to save next year?

Between the freeze and changes to the textbook and technology and distance travel grants, the Ontario government anticipates it will save $103 million next year.

Today the McGuinty Liberal government in Ontario will be releasing what should be their last budget before going to the polls this October.  They may do a mini-budget in the late summer or right after Labour Day but there is a decent chance this will be their election budget. It should be interesting to see [...]

Today the McGuinty Liberal government in Ontario will be releasing what should be their last budget before going to the polls this October.  They may do a mini-budget in the late summer or right after Labour Day but there is a decent chance this will be their election budget.

It should be interesting to see what the McGuinty Government offers to post-secondary students.  I am not expecting much considering that last year’s budget did give quite a bit to the PSE sector.  I also lowered my expectations after the disappointment I felt in the federal budget from Canada’s "New Government" (I do not know if something is new after a year).

The Conservative Budget was clearly designed to appeal to the voters they think they can capture: Ontarians living in the 905-belt. The suburbs surrounding Toronto and are fairly affluent and that is why the Conservatives put $600 million into RESP tax breaks instead of putting the money directly into the system. This will do nothing to assist lower and lower-middle class students. You have to have the money to save in order to get any tax break.  Where I grew up people just make it by and they do not have the money to save for PSE.  They barely, if at all, have the money to afford items that have become educational necessities such as a lower-end computer.  Never mind affording monthly internet access and maintenance.

Here is what I want to see in the Ontario budget:

- An increase in OSAP assistance: the government was right when they increased the maximum amount of provincial financial assistance available each year. The nice thing was that they kept everything above $7000 as grant money. The maximum loan repayable for 8-months of study remained the same. However, the maximum is still not enough. At McMaster, it does not cover the cost of tuition and residence for eight months. There are still the costs of textbooks, supplies, and other expenses. The reality is that each year, I have more expenses but I get no more funding from the government. With inflation, it becomes harder and harder to make ends meet. The government must move quickly and increase the OSAP maximum. I could even live with an inflationary increase of the $7000 cap.

- An allocation to GO Transit to keep fares steady for students: Many students rely on GO Transit to commute to school. With the increasing numbers of students, transit is needed to keep universities from paving more green space for parking. Also, the 407 express is often overcrowded for McMaster and York students.

- Better tuition regulation: The government is right to say that tuition should increase much like the cost of bread but the current increases are above inflation. The government should step forward to ensure that tuition only increases by inflation. They should put forth the funds to fill the gap between inflation and the current increase. Of course, they did make a lot of investments last year so I do not expect this to occur this year. If they promise it for next year, I am going to dismiss the promise. They can say whatever they want about the 2008/2009 budget, but there is no guarantee they will be in government, so it is meaningless.

In the run up to the budget, student lobby associations have been busy sending out news releases.

The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance was first on March 19th with Federal budget raises Ontario students’ expectations for McGuinty’s pre-election offering on Thursday.  The Canadian Federation of Students – Ontario released a pre-budget poll showing opposition to tuition fee increases on March 20th. The poll is available on the CFS website here.  They have nice slides showing the outcome of the poll here.  I called them and they sent me a copy of the questions asked and the breakdown of answers.  I have uploaded this here. Yesterday, the CFS sent this release: Student budget watch – Student representatives available for comment on 2007 Ontario Budget. The College Student Alliance wired this College Students Expecting More from McGuinty on Thursday.  So far nothing from the Council of Ontario Universities, which is the lobbying organization representing the administrations of Ontario universities.

The budget is available on the Government of Ontario Budget Site at 4pm EDT today.

I look forward to hearing the Council of Ontario Universities talk about universities having budget deficits, how this budget will not be enough to help them, how they are going to have to make cut-backs, and basically how the sky is falling for them.

Next Saturday we will see just how poor universities really are.  March 31st is "Salary Disclosure Day" in Ontario.  We will find out exactly how much university presidents and senior administrators are paid.  By looking at the salary of my university president at McMaster, Peter George, over the past couple of years, it seems that the university is doing alright.