Supported by a Mitacs fellowship, I have been working with a Toronto-based non-profit organization, People for Education (P4E), to investigate digital learning in Ontario public schools since October 2013. 

Today, a report about digital learning in Ontario schools has been officially released. Although there have been studies of digital learning in the Canadian context, this topic has not been system-wise inspected. This report draws on a rich set of data coming from P4E’s annual principal questionnaire participated by 28% of Ontario public schools, as well as student demographics and questionnaire data from Ontario’s Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO). The main findings included in this report are the following:

• Students begin interacting with computers at school from the earliest grades, and access to the internet at school is all but universal.
• There is potentially a digital divide, linked with student family incomes and remoteness of schools. 
• The use of learning technologies continues to vary considerably among teachers. More recent learning technology innovations are experimented depending on teacher’s own comfort levels.
• The use of free, online resources is becoming popular. 
• E-learning credit courses developed by the Ministry are not widely used. Students in smaller schools are more likely to earn credits through e-learning, as are students in the southwest and northern regions. 

To read more about this report, click here [pdf].