Exchange Mentoring Inspires Everyone to Take Action

Paul McGuire describes exchange mentoring and how expert students fit in to our collaborative work with new technologies in the classroom. Finding a purpose for technology tools will help educators to facilitate collaboration to engage students of all ages. If you're new at this, Paul will inspire you to take the next step. Paul's career in education has included roles as a teacher, vice-principal and principal, elementary panel project leader for Trillium implementation, and System-wide Program Coordinator for Academic Information Technology. In his position as Program Coordinator, Paul supervised and supported the Toronto Catholic District School Board's eLearning initiatives; including the implementation of the Board's first on-line credit courses, and an extensive number of projects highlighting the use of Information Technology in the classroom, school and Board. Following his work with TCDSB, Paul joined The Learning Partnership as their first Director of Technology Strategy. Here his responsibilities included the management and direction of the Teacher eLearning Research-Demonstration Project that focused on enhancing professional development for teachers in Mathematics and Science-Technology using a blended eLearning model. Recently Paul has been involved in a variety of consulting projects in education. He has supported the implementation of collaboration and communication technologies for educational professionals, and provided guidance and research on the efficacy of portal technologies for educational institutions. Ongoing work with teachers has included training and support in the use of interactive whiteboard technology in the classroom. He continues to work with the Catholic Principals' Council of Ontario providing application support and training. As members of The Learning Partnership's (TLP) Round Table on Technology team Paul, and his colleague Mary Anne O'Leary, have worked with Ontario school boards in the development of their ICT Strategic Plans. They have also organized several mini-summits for TLP focusing on exemplary practices in educational technology. Paul is currently teaching two courses for the Faculty of Education at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Learning with ICT Primary-Junior and Intermediate-Senior. He has also taught Technology for Teachers, Information Design and the Analysis and Management of Classroom Behaviour.