Page 69 - THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM, GRADES 11 AND 12 | Cooperative Education

The school library program plays a key role in the development of information literacy and research skills. Teacher-librarians, where available, collaborate with classroom or content-area teachers to design, teach, and provide students with authentic information and research tasks that foster learning, including the ability to:
• access, select, gather, process, critically evaluate, create, and communicate information;
• use the information obtained to explore and investigate issues, solve problems, make decisions, build knowledge, create personal meaning, and enrich their lives;
• communicate their findings to different audiences, using a variety of formats and technologies;
• use information and research with understanding, responsibility, and imagination. In addition, teacher-librarians can work with teachers of cooperative education to help students:
• develop literacy in using non-print forms, such as the Internet, social media, and blogs in order to access relevant information, databases, and demonstrations;
• design inquiry questions for research projects;
• create and produce single-medium or multimedia presentations.
Teachers need to discuss with students the concept of ownership of work and the importance of copyright in all forms of media.
THE ROLE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY IN
COOPERATIVE EDUCATION
Information and communications technology (ICT) provides a range of tools that can significantly extend and enrich teachers’ instructional strategies and support student learning. ICT can help students not only to collect, organize, and sort the data they gather and to write, edit, and present reports on their findings but also to make connections with other schools, at home and abroad, and to bring the global community into the local classroom.
Technology has extended the reach of boards and schools beyond their local communities to include provincial, national, and international organizations and partners. With these enhancements, the ability to connect with communities outside the school has never been simpler, the range and diversity of community partners has never been broader, and consequently the power and potential of cooperative education has never been greater.
Whenever appropriate, students should be encouraged to use ICT to support and communicate their learning. They can also use cloud/online data storage and portable storage devices to store information, as well as technological devices, software, and online tools to organize and present the results of their research and creative endeavours to their classmates, cooperative education placement supervisors, and others.
Although the Internet is a powerful learning tool, there are potential risks attached to its use. All students must be made aware of issues related to inaccurate information, privacy, safety, and responsible use, as well as of the potential for abuse of technology. A number of digital resources to support learning are licensed through the ministry; they are listed at https://www.osapac.ca/dlr/.
SOME CONSIDERATIONS FOR PROGRAM PLANNING IN COOPERATIVE EDUCATION
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