IIntelligence Online
Purpose/objective of Intelligence Online
The goal of IO is to provide educators with the knowledge, tools and support necessary to integrate teaching, learning and technology. Introducing new technologies should never be about pouring old wine into new bottles. Students must be given the opportunity to think in compelling ways each time they pick up a digital tool. In a general sense, technology should allow students to do things at a level of complexity and sophistication impossible without a computer. It should allow them to create, not simply consume and reproduce knowledge. And technology use in school should have more in common with students' out-of-school experiences with digital environments than with digital textbooks and worksheets.
Teaching to accomplish these goals requires a commitment to inquiry-based learning, and teachers who think differently about curriculum, teaching and learning. The Galileo Educational Network is a professional development and research organization with proven success in creating fundamental changes to teaching, learning and staff development that information and communications technology both requires and enables. Providing professional development both onsite and online through an innovative professional development service called IO, Galileo Network is assisting teachers make necessary changes to their professional practice.
Depending on your perspective, IO either stands for Intelligence Online or it is one of the moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo. IO guides teachers through an expert process to develop and refine environments where their students learn with technology as opposed to learn about technology.
2) Main Partners
In February 2001, Galileo Educational Network Association (Galileo) formed a partnership with Axia Net Media, Axia to create and implement IO.
3) Main Beneficiaries
The primary audience is K-12 teachers. The secondary audiences are pre-service teachers and post-secondary faculty. The main beneficiaries are their students. Through implementing IO teachers create opportunities for their students to use a wide variety of technology tools, so that students can change initial conditions, alter relationships between variables and add new rules to familiar scenarios. They can make worlds: they can design and program robots that explore constructed landscapes. They can construct micro worlds and simulations with their own questions, posing problems, formulating conjectures and testing them out to see what happens. They can act out and photograph scenes from a play, digitally adding monsters, floods or exploding lunchboxes…
4) Main Contributors
While the Galileo Educational Network has over twenty-eight partnerships including two universities, several school districts and a variety of corporate and private organizations, the main contributors to IO are Axia and Galileo.
5) Essential Elements
The Galileo process is divided into three broad categories: What Matters (identifying what the students will learn), Learning Matters (focusing on how students will learn and be assessed) and Teaching Matters (implementing the project in the classroom). As an integral part of the process, teachers communicate with IO mentors and collaborate with their peers. IO also provides teachers with the ability to track student progress, assess student learning based on assessment criteria established during the planning process, and create a customized project website that gives the parents a meaningful way to participate in their child’s learning experiences.
6) Main Factors for its Success
IO benefits from world-class thinking from both the corporate (high technology) and education fields. It is based on and contributes towards current research in high quality continuing professional development.
7) Assessment/evaluation process and evidence of its strength
Each year the Galileo Educational Network commissions an external evaluation of their work. Their most recent evaluation compares the continuing staff development initiatives of one corporation, two universities and Galileo Educational Network.
8) Number of Years the program has been in existence and growth
The Galileo initiative began within one school in Alberta, Canada in 1996. In the summer of 1999, the Galileo Educational Network was formed as an independent charitable organization. Galileo is experiencing an increasing demand for services including from international customers. With the advent of IO, Galileo now have the capacity to provide a combination of onsite and online services to educators globally.
9) Impact
Evaluations of the Galileo Educational Network impact on student learning have documented new images of student capabilities beyond usual grade level expectations for level and quality of scholarship. A “monumental shift” in teaching practice is evidenced in a variety of sites across Alberta.
10) Potential replication and scale of the initiative
Full functionality of IO is now available for commercial roll out internationally.
11) Name and contact information for an underwriter who validates our application
Dr. Michele Jacobsen, Assistant Professor, University of Calgary
Faculty of Education, Education Tower, Rm. 602B
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary, AB Canada T2N 1N4
Telephone: (403) 220-2348
Email: dmjacobs@ucalgary.ca
Purpose/objective of Intelligence Online
The goal of IO is to provide educators with the knowledge, tools and support necessary to integrate teaching, learning and technology. Introducing new technologies should never be about pouring old wine into new bottles. Students must be given the opportunity to think in compelling ways each time they pick up a digital tool. In a general sense, technology should allow students to do things at a level of complexity and sophistication impossible without a computer. It should allow them to create, not simply consume and reproduce knowledge. And technology use in school should have more in common with students' out-of-school experiences with digital environments than with digital textbooks and worksheets.
Teaching to accomplish these goals requires a commitment to inquiry-based learning, and teachers who think differently about curriculum, teaching and learning. The Galileo Educational Network is a professional development and research organization with proven success in creating fundamental changes to teaching, learning and staff development that information and communications technology both requires and enables. Providing professional development both onsite and online through an innovative professional development service called IO, Galileo Network is assisting teachers make necessary changes to their professional practice.
Depending on your perspective, IO either stands for Intelligence Online or it is one of the moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo. IO guides teachers through an expert process to develop and refine environments where their students learn with technology as opposed to learn about technology.
2) Main Partners
In February 2001, Galileo Educational Network Association (Galileo) formed a partnership with Axia Net Media, Axia to create and implement IO.
3) Main Beneficiaries
The primary audience is K-12 teachers. The secondary audiences are pre-service teachers and post-secondary faculty. The main beneficiaries are their students. Through implementing IO teachers create opportunities for their students to use a wide variety of technology tools, so that students can change initial conditions, alter relationships between variables and add new rules to familiar scenarios. They can make worlds: they can design and program robots that explore constructed landscapes. They can construct micro worlds and simulations with their own questions, posing problems, formulating conjectures and testing them out to see what happens. They can act out and photograph scenes from a play, digitally adding monsters, floods or exploding lunchboxes…
4) Main Contributors
While the Galileo Educational Network has over twenty-eight partnerships including two universities, several school districts and a variety of corporate and private organizations, the main contributors to IO are Axia and Galileo.
5) Essential Elements
The Galileo process is divided into three broad categories: What Matters (identifying what the students will learn), Learning Matters (focusing on how students will learn and be assessed) and Teaching Matters (implementing the project in the classroom). As an integral part of the process, teachers communicate with IO mentors and collaborate with their peers. IO also provides teachers with the ability to track student progress, assess student learning based on assessment criteria established during the planning process, and create a customized project website that gives the parents a meaningful way to participate in their child’s learning experiences.
6) Main Factors for its Success
IO benefits from world-class thinking from both the corporate (high technology) and education fields. It is based on and contributes towards current research in high quality continuing professional development.
7) Assessment/evaluation process and evidence of its strength
Each year the Galileo Educational Network commissions an external evaluation of their work. Their most recent evaluation compares the continuing staff development initiatives of one corporation, two universities and Galileo Educational Network.
8) Number of Years the program has been in existence and growth
The Galileo initiative began within one school in Alberta, Canada in 1996. In the summer of 1999, the Galileo Educational Network was formed as an independent charitable organization. Galileo is experiencing an increasing demand for services including from international customers. With the advent of IO, Galileo now have the capacity to provide a combination of onsite and online services to educators globally.
9) Impact
Evaluations of the Galileo Educational Network impact on student learning have documented new images of student capabilities beyond usual grade level expectations for level and quality of scholarship. A “monumental shift” in teaching practice is evidenced in a variety of sites across Alberta.
10) Potential replication and scale of the initiative
Full functionality of IO is now available for commercial roll out internationally.
11) Name and contact information for an underwriter who validates our application
Dr. Michele Jacobsen, Assistant Professor, University of Calgary
Faculty of Education, Education Tower, Rm. 602B
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary, AB Canada T2N 1N4
Telephone: (403) 220-2348
Email: dmjacobs@ucalgary.ca
Authors:
Dr. Sharon Friesen
Dr. Patricia Clifford
Candace Saar
Brenda Gladstone (primary contact)
Galileo Educational Network
Education Tower #846, 2500 University Drive NW
Calgary, AB CANADA T2N 1N4
Ph: 403-220-8942
Fax: 403-210-8111
Email: gladston@ucalgary.ca
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