Improving education with technology – Dundas Central model

The Spectator covered Dundas Central teacher Heidi Siwak’s (@HeidiSiwak) efforts to use technology to improve learning using technology last December in this article, but I’ve been meaning to throw up a post about it here in case anyone missed the story. Heidi’s efforts have also been covered in The Globe & Mail’s “Future of Education” series, and last month Dundas Central won The Ken Spencer Award given out by the Canadian Education Association for innovation in teaching and learning.

The class uses YouTube, has experimented with a livestream channel and podcasting, uses a document camera to share information, has hosted a student-led global Twitter chat, and have designed a tourism mobile app, amongst other innovative efforts. Heidi is sharing these new models for learning with peers in the US, Canada and Australia, turning the initiative into what the writer of the Ken Spencer Award text called the ‘Dundas Central model’.

Heidi maintains a blog at www.heidisiwak.com where she documents these efforts, in addition to posting about education and technology in the classroom. The students themselves explain how they use technology and what they’ve been up to in the video below, which itself won the 4th Annual 21st Century Video Classroom Challenge.

I have a research interest in education technologies and I’m a fan of “learning by doing” when it makes sense. So it’s great to see a classroom that embraces experimentation with new technology and practical applications. It’s even better to see that the results are being shared openly with the world so others can benefit from the experimentation.