OnTarget draws on year’s lessons for spring e-learning conference in Toronto

OnTarget’s executives will use the lessons of the initiative’s first year in operation as the basis of a conference to be held late this spring examining e-learning and e-literacy. The event, which is just now in the planning stages, will bring together students, academics and business leaders to discuss the delivery of online training and education. OnTarget’s program director Mark Jones tells Canadian NEW MEDIA that the venture has won enough practical experience in the field now to ask the right questions and the timing for the conference couldn’t be better. The OnTarget initiative was announced a year-and-a-half ago as a partnership between Ontario’s Ministry of Energy, Science and Technology, SMART Toronto, and the private sector to help educate students about careers in new media as well as to place graduates in careers in the sector (CNM, Dec. 14/00). The conference, dubbed E-Literacy ONTarget and slated to be held May 24 in Toronto, fits into the initiative’s mandate despite its high-level nature, Jones says. While many are familiar with the group’s push to educate high school students in the Greater Toronto Area about careers in new media, he says a more macrocosmic view of the industry has always been on OnTarget’s plate. "Our mandate was always to be the organization that addresses training and human resource issues within the new media sector in Ontario," Jones says. "Part of that involves very pragmatic things such as matching students with employers for job opportunities. But how do we contribute to the larger discussion around these issues in a way that is meaningful? Especially in the current economic climate? How do we position ourselves as an organization as the one that you can look to for that essential context? This conference is a very important part of that. It is high level…but it’s exactly where we want to be; we know that we’re balancing all of these programs and services between the things that benefit teachers and students, but also the things that benefit employers and educators." Conference participants will be drawn from the academic and private sectors who will take part in separately targeted program streams in the morning, and discuss broader issues together in the afternoon. "What we want to do with the conference is bring together people from all levels of education and the business sector to come in and discuss technology and new media training and education issues in a way that allows them to understand how their relationships are inter-connected," Jones says. He notes that topics will include developing new pedagogy tools for new media training, dealing with the pace of technology change in schools, corporate/college partnerships, trends in high-tech training at post-secondary training colleges, as well as quality standards for online content. Besides these and other foci for discussion, OnTarget will also present a new resource for high school students developed as part of the last year’s program. A dozen students from six schools have developed the resource as part of a mock business exercise – an initiative that will be repeated in 2002. Full details of the conference aren’t yet available, but Jones says that Apple Canada has signed on as a major corporate sponsor and that others will follow. The conference will be produced by Bruce Cole, a veteran of new media events.

OnTarget draws on year’s lessons for spring e-learning conference in Toronto

Broadcast | February 7, 2002

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