Guest post – Today’s post is a guest post from former ECOO President, Peter McAsh.
After reading your blog post on Friday, specifically COVID-19 and Education: Part 13, in which you mentioned #ECOOcamps, I wanted to an opportunity to mention another ECOO initiative that developed from the original #ECOOcamp Owen Sound. Thank you for providing me with that opportunity via a guest blog post.
TeachOntario worked with ECOO to support the original #ECOOcamp Owen Sound. Rather than a more traditional website for the event, ECOO used TeachOntario. An important aspect of the #ECOOcamp / TeachOntario collaboration was to provide a location to share resources in an attempt to make #ECOOcamp “More than just one day!”. This collaboration continued for the second #ECOOcamp Owen Sound, and also for last year’s first #ECOOcamp Peterborough.
Last year ECOO revived the concept of SIGs – Special Interest Groups using TeachOntario. Read the announcement blog post here
TeachOntario also worked with ECOO to livestream the BIT19 keynotes. They can be found here
Access to TeachOntario requires a login. Any person who has an email associated with a publicly funded school board in Ontario can create a free account. As an outcome from #ECOOcamp Peterborough, it became apparent that some valid potential users, for example retired educators, do not have a suitable email account to create a login. As a result TeachOntario made arrangements with ECOO whereby ECOO could vet potential users and then request a login for the users from TeachOntario. This initiative was at the end of the term of the previous ECOO Board and I have not seen anything from the current board about the launch of this initiative.
Finally, there were initial discussions with TeachOntario to expand the collaboration to support BIT20.
Due to the expanding relationship TeachOntario created an ECOO Hub to host all current, and future, initiatives. You will find the resources from #ECOOcamps, SIGs, and BIT19 keynotes on the ECOO Hub – ecoo.org/teachontario
As Doug mentioned in his Friday Blog Post the current ECOO leadership showed no interest in #ECOOcamps; the same could be said about development of ECOO’s TeachOntario Hub. In fact, two new SIGs have been launched but neither are hosted on TeachOntario. The TeachOntario environment supports collaboration and allows for a wide variety of items to be shared as illustrated in the graphic. I hope the new SIGs will be transferred to TeachOntario. The highlights of the May 4 Board Meeting mentioned that a Board Member will be working on TeachOntario SIGs.
During my two years as a member of ECOO Board of Directors, we made significant steps to collaborate with TeachOntario to benefit Ontario educators. I hope the current board, despite its slow start and the current pandemic, will continue developing the ECOO Hub on TeachOntario.
Peter McAsh
St. Marys DCVI, AMDSD (retired)
OBEA Life Member (2013)
ECOO Life Member (2019)
ECOO Vice President (2017-2018)
ECOO President (2018-2019)
BIT Committee (2013-2017,2019)
I am currently not associated with ECOO and the comments expressed here are my own.
doug --- off the record 
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