News from the French Side of Profweb – A Colloquium, A Summit and A Moodle Story

Here are summaries of some articles that have appeared in Profweb during the months of May and June, 2014.

• Seven reviews of presentations made at 2 conferences appeared on our pages. The conferences were the Colloque international sur les TIC en éducation 2014 (The 2014 International Colloquium on IT in Education) and the Sommet de l’iPad en éducation 2014 (The 2014 Academic Use of iPads Summit).
• Rafael Scapin, Dawson College’s IT Rep made an English presentation on ‘The Best Web Tools to Boost Your Teaching’ describing 25 resources to enrich your teaching. This presentation is available as a news item in DawsonITE.
• Roman Nowak, a high school teacher from Rockland, Ontario, discussed how teachers are using the power of technology to transform classes, engagement, motivation and success.
• Albert Strebelle, from the Université de Mons, in Belgium, discussed the effects of 2 approaches of interactive whiteboard use on student performance at this conference as well. This presentation brought into play the concept of peer instruction as a factor for success.
• Antoine Letarte, a math teacher from Cégep Limoilou presented his use of blogs to teach quantitative methods and their application to real life. Antoine Letarte also made a presentation about using Wikipedia in class.
• Nancy Brousseau, the head of the FEEP (Fédération des établissements d’enseignement privés) gave an inspiring description of her vision of the school of tomorrow.
• Manon Lessard gave a presentation about forming a community of practice to help teachers master the iPad. Manon, the IT Rep in Jonquière, presented 3 case studies of teachers who innovatively used English language apps at the school.
• The final story of the year focused on André Cyr, a chemistry teacher from Cégep de Trois-Rivières. Mr Cyr created interactive quizzes on Moodle as an alternative to the quizzes in his textbook. Were these resources an effective way to allow students to master concepts through feedback and repetition? Did students resent what he defined as ‘Big Brother’ spying on their results? Student opinion was mixed, but the concept will continue to evolve.

Bonne lecture!