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About

Vision

Galileo Educational Network collaborates with a range of organizations provincially and internationally to create and support networks for incubation, development and innovation in leading, learning, and research.

Mission

Galileo Educational Network engages with students, teachers, administrators and faculty members and collaborates in:

Leading and learning
Improvement and innovation
Research and development

Guiding Principles

The following Galileo Educational Network guiding principles focus the selection of and work within the educational community.

Principle 1: Stewarding the intellect through inquiry-based learning

We promote inquiry as the stance that is foundational for all aspects of life of a school community. It is based on the belief that understanding is constructed in the process of people working together to solve the problems that arise in the course of shared activity. Organization of time, classroom resources, resolution of interpersonal disputes, planning of field trips, as well as curriculum-based activity, are all approached in the same open-ended and exploratory way in an inquiry-oriented classroom. A learning community dedicated to robust inquiry strives to foster intellectual habits of thought, meaning-making and discourse in all students, rich and poor, gifted and severely ordinary. These communities are about developing teachers’ and students’ talents and gifts.

  • They engage students in meaningful, inquiry work.
  • They respect and cultivate the dispositions that all children bring with them when they first walk through our doors: imagination, curiosity, persistence, and the drive to understand the world.
  • They respect and cultivate the ability of all children to think-with their words, their drawings, their bodies, their heads and their hearts.
  • They help students engage with, and understand, difficult matters.
  • They help students uncover things that have been hidden, and bring to life brand new questions, ideas and abilities.
  • They make school an intellectually exciting place to be, a place where learning is fun especially when it is hard and challenging.
  • They steward teachers learning and efforts.

Principle 2: Infusing digital technologies

Knowledge within every discipline is either created or furthered with the use of digital technologies. Digital technologies are used to explore and discover new frontiers and at the same time they are the source of new discoveries. When we take the stewardship of the intellect seriously as an educational charge, students are given the opportunity to think differently each time they use digital technologies. Teachers need to use technology in their professional lives. Students need to have access to a variety of technologies at every stage of their work.

Principle 3: Providing high-quality assessment

The primary purpose of assessment is to improve student learning. As such, it must be tied to meaningful, authentic tasks and activities. The intent of high-quality assessment is to improve, not just audit, student performances of learning and understanding; therefore, a range of authentic formative practices, as well as summative assessment, are needed to develop a personalized learning picture for each student. Structures need to be in place to draw students into the question of what high standards, engaged learning and quality performance entail. Within high quality assessment:

  • Students need to be taught about how assessment works.
  • Students need to be actively involved in creating rubrics by helping to set the assessment criteria.
  • Students are provided with the strategies, skills and opportunities to assess their own learning.
  • Students are provided with the strategies, skills and opportunities to provide meaningful feedback to their peers.
  • The broader school community participates in assessment. There are opportunities for other educators and peers to be involved in the assessment of the work.
  • Communication about assessment is regular and clear.
  • Students set goals, next steps and develop strategies to improve learning and understanding.
  • Procedures are in place to regularly review and improve summative and formative assessment.

Principle 4: Honoring collaboration and teamwork

Learning collaboratively is a complex process that requires learners to understand themselves, their motives, and their thoughts and beliefs, as well as the motives, thoughts, and beliefs of others. It also requires merging of individual interests into a collective aspiration. Equally important is the dialogic mode of interaction that is pervasive in the life of such a learning community. Dialogue necessarily plays a central mediating role since it is the principal means of arriving at a common understanding of whatever question or problem is at issue. Finally, it requires a group “work ethic” or way of behaving that creates a bond of trust, belonging, and purposefulness among group members. People need time to build relationships and plan a method for learning together in order to address the complexities involved in collaborative learning. Through this process they will adopt processes that support generative thinking and reflecting. Administrative structures of the school make it possible to:

  • Observe and interact with others with relevant expertise and experience in their inquiry.
  • Collaborate with one another on the design and assessment of inquiry work.
  • Acquire and use competencies expected in high performance work organizations (eg. Team work, problem posing, problem solving, communications, decision making, project management).

Principle 5: Fostering scholarship of teaching

Galileo Schools are committed to developing and maintaining high quality ongoing professional learning as an aspect of the school culture. Teachers are immersed in job-embedded learning experiences that:

  • Improve student learning.
  • Are planned collaboratively with participants and occur over a sustained period of time.
  • Provide access to alternative ideas, methods and opportunities to observe these alternatives in action.
  • Involve direct mentoring in curriculum content, instructional strategies and uses of technology.
  • Support ongoing professional conversations.

Teachers systematically inquire into various aspects of their teaching. They meet regularly with each other to critically examine, question and discuss various aspects of teaching. Through this process teachers develop an understanding of “knowledge-practice relationships as well as how inquiry produces knowledge, how inquiry relates to practice, and what teachers learn from inquiry within communities”1. Teachers in Galileo Schools have a commitment to making teaching public by publishing and presenting.

Principle 6: Providing practical thought-provoking preparation for pre-service teachers

Galileo schools are elementary, middle, or high schools that work in partnership with a university to develop ways to bring pre-service teachers into the teaching profession through an inquiry stance. Significant numbers of teachers participate in pre-service teachers’ preparation by serving as mentors, co-teachers, and colleagues in study groups, seminars, committees, and other professional, collegial activities.University faculty share their expertise, skills, and knowledge to support school improvement through direct and active participation in the school. Galileo mentors, university faculty, teachers, and pre-service teachers work as a team to support the learning of K–12 students.

Reference: Cochran-Smith, M. & Lytle, S.L. (2001). Beyond certainty: Taking an inquiry stance on practice. In Lieberman, A. & Miller, L. (Eds.), Teachers caught in the action (pp. 45 58). New York: Teachers College Press.
Staff

Dr. Sharon Friesen

Founding partner and President
Professor, Werklund School of Education, Univeristy of Calgary

Sharon’s experience as a teacher includes kindergarten, elementary, junior high, high school and post secondary. Her research interests include the ways in which K-12 educational structures, curriculum, learning and leading need to be reinvented for a knowledge/learning society.   She has specific interests in: (i) the promotion of deep intellectual engagement, (ii) the ability to create learning environments that require sustained work with ideas and (iii) the pervasiveness of networked digital technologies that open up new ways of thinking, ways of working and tools for working and living in the world.

She has co-authored three books: Back to the Basics of Teaching and Learning: Thinking the World Together, winner of the 2004 AERA Division B Book Award; Curriculum in Abundance; and Back to the Basics of Teaching and Learning: Thinking the World Together Second Edition. She has also assisted schools to assess their technology requirements to enhance teaching and learning environments.

Sharon is a recipient of numerous awards for both research and teaching practice:

– 2011 University of Calgary, You Make A Difference Award
– 2007 Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences Math Educator of the Year;
– 2005 AERA Book Award for Curriculum Studies;
– 1999 The Alberta Teachers’ Association, Educational Research Award;
– 1999 Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence;
– 1997 Aoki Award for educational research;
– 1996 ASCD Celebrating Educational Successes in Alberta award;
– 1994 National Institute Award for Technology Integration;
– 1991 Alberta Excellence in Teaching finalist.

Brenda Gladstone

Co-founder and COO

Brenda has collaborated with a number of Fine Arts organizations, artists and education authorities in Alberta to engage students in meaningful worthwhile work now published online at www.galileo.org.

Brenda has a proven track record of initiating and managing a variety of education initiatives in collaboration with the business community, but she is proudest of Galileo. Brenda has a passion for supporting innovation in education so that students and their teachers have opportunities to engage in personally relevant, research-informed and evidence-based teaching and learning. Brenda holds an Advanced Graduate Diploma in Project Management and a Masters in Business Administration from Athabasca University.

Brenda is married to Doug and they have three adult children. Jeff is an actor, musician, writer and producer out of Vancouver, Ryan (Michelle Field) is a director, actor, writer and producer also out of Vancouver, and Michael (Michelle Chidley) is a businessman in Calgary.

Candace Saar, MA

Director of Professional Learning

Candace’s experience and expertise is in humanities, leadership, fundamental restructuring and reform, and teacher practice in K-12 and post secondary settings.

Under her mentorship teachers and students are invited to teach and learn in environments that are intellectually stimulating and demanding, provide ongoing feedback for improved performance and build knowledge.   As a result of such an approach teachers and students emerge as confident, responsible and innovative learners and leaders.

Candace holds an MA from the University of Calgary.  Her research interests continue in the area of high school reform and restructuring with a particular focus on changing and improving teacher practice.

Dr. Lori Pamplin

Project Lead, Leadership Curriculum Development 
Consultant

Board Members

Elizabeth Von Engelbrechten – Director and Chair of the Board

Jane Freeman – Director

Dennis Hassel – Director and Lead Independent Director

Jean Springer – Director

Brant Parker – Director

Sharon Friesen – Director and President

Brenda Gladstone – Director, Chief Operating Officer

Awards & Recognition

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) recognized Galileo Educational Network for Innovative Pedagogies for Powerful Learning – Networks

Foothills School Division, Galileo Educational Network, Okotoks Archives and Museum and The Museum of the Highwood were recognized as the 2009 winners in the Special Settings category by the Calgary Educational Partnership Foundation.

First Place 2006 SIGTel Online Learning Award for The Calgary Stampede and Treaty 7 First Nations: A Historical Perspective. SIGTel is a Special Interest Group – Telelearning of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).

The Calgary Stampede honoured four individuals and one organization at the third annual Western Legacy Awards earlier today. The Western Legacy Awards were established to recognize those who demonstrate commitment to western values and support for western heritage.

The Galileo Educational Network was recognized for inspiring students to discover Alberta’s landscape and make it their own.

The Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences is awarding the 2007 PIMS Education Prize to Dr. Sharon Friesen. The PIMS Education Prize will be presented to Sharon at a special luncheon June 8th, at PIMS-UBC in Vancouver, BC.

The PIMS education prize is awarded to a member of the PIMS community who has made a significant contribution to education in the mathematical sciences. This prize is intended to recognize individuals from the PIMS universities or other educational institutions in Alberta and British Columbia, who have played a major role in encouraging activities which have enhanced public awareness and appreciation of mathematics, as well as fostering communication among various groups and organizations concerned with mathematical training at all levels.

First Place 2006 SIGTel Online Learning Award for The Calgary Stampede and Treaty 7 First Nations: A Historical Perspective. SEGTel is the Special Interest Group for Telelearning (SIGTel), a Special Interest Group of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).

Garfield Weston Awards for Excellence in Education (The Fraser Institute). Honourable Mention presented to Glenbrook Elementary in the category of Improvements in Academics.

AERA – American Education Research Association – Curriculum Book of the Year for “Back to the Basics of Teaching and Learning: Re-thinking the World Together”

AMTEC FuturEd award

Canadian e-content – named as Best Educational Solution by Canadian e-Content Institute

Education World A+ for the Wonders of Mathematics web site.

MERLOT – peer reviewed web award

Conference Board of Canada Education Business Partnerships Award for Information and Communication Technology Integration

Prime Minster’s Awards for Teaching Excellence