Canadian Council on Learning | Conseil Canadien sur l'Apprentissage

The objective of this project was to develop a strategic plan for expanding family literacy in New Brunswick. To assist in developing this plan, a literature review was conducted, a key issues document developed, and a 2-day Family Literacy Forum was held. The resulting strategic plan document, available at www.nb.literacy.ca/start.htm includes highlights of the literature review, definition of key terms and issues, a conceptual model and definition of family literacy, guiding principles for the plan, and key priorities as well as goals to implement the strategic plan. The Family Literacy Forum held on June of 2008 brought together a wide variety of family literacy stakeholders: government representatives, researchers, front-line literacy educators, program providers and parents to dialogue and contribute to the development of a collaborative strategic framework to enhance family literacy in New Brunswick.

This project established a Community of Practice for information sharing, promotion of resources about promising practices and networking opportunities to enhance the capacity of practitioners who are supporting learning among young adult early school leavers under age 24 in Ottawa. An important accomplishment of the project was the creation of a profile of early school leavers in Ottawa. The profile includes a statistical analysis of custom data purchased from Statistics Canada, geographic information system mapping, a literature review, and findings of focus groups held with a total of 47 young adults who were early school leavers and key informant interviews with community agency staff. The resulting document has provided service providers in Ottawa with an invaluable tool for service planning, staff development and community education with their stakeholders. For further information please visit www.spcottawa.on.ca/YALLE/YALLE_welcomepage_e.asp

The purpose of this project was to further develop a website that supports knowledge exchange among audiences interested in improving the learning success of marginalized learners, including learners with disabilities, and learners from aboriginal and immigrant communities. The audiences involved in the project were diverse and rich in scope, comprising learners, educators, academics, therapists, healers, artists, and multi-media innovators. The key outcome of the project was the re-design of the website www.learningandviolence.net. It now features engaging multi-media and interactive materials, enhanced accessibility for marginalized learners, as well as an increased array of innovative learning resources and links. The project also helped strengthen and expand the knowledge exchange network related to marginalized learners nationally and internationally.

The goal of this project was to develop training resources for community groups, educational institutions, and workplaces to use in helping people with weak literacy skills:

• Acquire basic computer literacy skills;
• Understand the use of personal electronic information;
• Understand how personal electronic information affects decisions involving individuals, groups, and society as a whole;
• Identify knowledge gaps, concerns and experiences of working with electronic information.

The key outcome of the project was the development and testing of a training session on electronic information with a focus on how personal information is collected and used. A facilitators’ manual and other instructional materials are available at the Communautique website: www.communautique.qc.ca.

This project was designed to integrate literacy awareness and development into the everyday activities of the unions affiliated with the Canadian Labour Congress's (CLC). The CLC's intent was to encourage members with weaker literacy skills to become involved in union activities and thereby benefit from the learning and literacy development opportunities that such activities can provide. The project resulted in the development of a process and training materials that the CLC membership can use to integrate literacy development and clear language in their operations. More information about the project is available at: www.canadianlabour.ca/en/literacy_en.

This project involved implementation of a symposium to focus on family literacy in Francophone minority communities. Nearly 150 participants including the literacy, health, education, international development, research and university communities from 10 provinces, two territories and two African countries were able to exchange knowledge, network and acquire tools to promote, support and stimulate family literacy. The symposium included a broad range of topics such as parents' role, literacy and health, international perspectives, and reading promotion strategies. A report on the symposium was distributed to participants and is posted on the FCAF website.

This project was designed to increase the use of the teaching and learning software ePEARL (Electronic Portfolio Encouraging Active Reflective Learning) with a pan Canadian audience of policy makers, educators, students and parents. The goal was to promote student self regulated learning, while enhancing core literacy competencies. In conjunction with research partners, over 400 teachers and consultants were trained in the use of ePEARL - a tool to help students adopt self-regulation strategies such as setting their own process goals, articulating task demands, providing and receiving feedback, and evaluating progress. Products from the initiative include production of a Swap & Share DVD http://grover.concordia.ca/epearl/en/epearl.html, a teacher and workshop activity guide, a virtual tutorial (http://grover.concordia.ca/epearl/tutorial/), and further development of a wiki (https://cslp-epearl.wikispaces.com) for ongoing networking and dissemination of information about ePEARL. As a result of the project, enthusiasm for ePEARL has grown nationally and internationally and funding has been secured to support three annual training institutes over the next three years.

This project aimed to raise seniors' health and safety awareness by developing health literacy modules on key topics (falls prevention, prevention of elder abuse and neglect, safety in the home, healthy eating, medication awareness, mental health, care giving and receiving, sleep problems, chronic diseases, and social interaction), delivery of training to senior volunteers as facilitators of the health literacy modules, and delivery of health literacy workshops throughout BC. Feedback from workshop participants has been very positive. To expand the project's reach, the Council of Senior Citizens Organization of BC (COSCO) has distributed its workshop materials to national and provincial health and seniors-related organizations. Information about the workshops is available at the COSCO website: www.coscobc.ca/.

Project Name: Media Literacy Project
Contact: Mark Lipton Tel: 416.786.7789
Organization: University of Guelph
Date: March 2008
Theme(s): Literacy, E-learning
CCL Funding: $40,000

Project Abstract »

 

This project involved the development of a comprehensive website (www.learningandviolence.net) to build understanding and provide a broad range of educational resources including original, creative and appealing multi-media resources to address the impacts of violence on learning. The project also developed a knowledge exchange forum - supported by web-based forums and interactive materials on the website - for researchers, educators and others concerned about the impact of violence on learning. The website models a new direction for educational websites designed to provide a hub for collaboration, reach diverse audiences, and achieve a broad range of goals. Given the project's success in terms of the website's effectiveness, the highly involved and synergistic forum, and the forum participants' commitment to further development of the website, partners are eager to continue the project.

This project included a variety of activities (web-based discussion forums about published research, roundtables, web publication of lessons learned that can have pan-Canadian applicability in remote and rural communities) to stimulate knowledge exchange between northern and southern region health and literacy practitioners, and with health and literacy policy decision-makers and researchers. It provided an opportunity for participants to build relationships and to engage in conversations that link research, practice, and policy development. Information on the project is available at: www.upperskeena.ca/storytellers/CCL%20research/ccl/index.html.