CHANGING LITERACY

Class sizes in the province of Ontario are set to increase. Should this matter? A recent policy brief by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) in the United States might offer some insight into class size matters.  Among the research-based facts offered are the f...

Much fuss was made in the media (e.g., IT World Canada,  Toronto Star, National Post, CBC News) this past week over the failure of the compulsory, provincial tenth grade literacy test to “load.” Essentially a technological issue left students and teachers waiting for a...

Jackie Marsh, of the University of Sheffield in the UK, has conducted research on young children's augmented reality game play on computer tablets.  Her comments on the current reports about Pokemon Go raise questions about where this technology can lead. Her comments...

ECOST--European Cooperation in Science and Technology--has just launched a website devoted to young children's digital literacy and multimodal literacy practices.  It is loaded with information about the working groups of the organization, has links to publications in...

I recently read an excerpt from Todd Rose’s new book called “The End of Average: How  We Succeed in a World that Values Sameness” published this year by Harper Collins.  The title of this excerpt, appearing in my local newspaper, The Toronto Star, was “The Flaw of Aver...

This fall, media and governments in the United States are awash with commentary about the scale and role of standardized testing in education.  Some are arguing that standardized testing is not out of control. Others are arguing for streamlining of standardized tests....

In the United States, President Obama, perhaps in response to the growing unease in American society about standardized tests, has come up with what might be called the 2% solution.  That’s the cap that was recommended be placed on standardized tests.  Two percent…ini...

In the past month or so, several bits of information have surfaced that relate to Aboriginal education in Canada.  Today, International Literacy Day, Environics released a report discussing Canada's standing globally with respect to a wide variety of achievement data....

Songs are memorable. We remember melodies and lyrics from long ago. Even though this power of harnessing the cadences of language as well as its pleasures underlies children’s nursery rhyme learning and the occasional literacy intervention, rarely has it been used in...

The annual PDK/Gallup poll on education results were released recently. The results that grab the headlines in U.S. papers mostly focus on parent attitudes towards standardized tests. For instance, the Washington Post headline reads: U.S. schools are too focused on te...