TakingITGlobal's newest professional learning offering, Education for Social Innovation, recently launched through a co-design partnership with the Toronto District School Board. With funding from Ontario's Ministry of Economic Development, Employment, and Infrastructure, and Cisco Foundation, this collaboration brings social innovation and entrepreneurship, which features strongly in TakingITGlobal’s mandate, together with technology in a blended professional learning course.

@ER19_TDSB @TIGed @Stamptdsb @debok1 Lively debates about technology at Social Innovation Course pic.twitter.com/mL2rP4KSbG

— Janis Castle Jones (@jjecx)

February 10, 2015

TakingITGlobal’s aim is to build on the success of previous professional development programs, which have reached thousands of educators from every region of the world. We are proud of the high level of satisfaction among educators involved in our professional development, with more than 90% saying they would recommend our training to their peers in 2014, and a high rate of educators’ self-assessment of the positive impact on their own teaching practices.

Education for Social Innovation was co-designed with a team of TDSB educators, and is focused on entrepreneurship, creativity, and design thinking, presented within the context of social innovation projects as a form of project-based learning teachers will co-design and facilitate with their students.

In 2015, TakingITGlobal and the TDSB will spark intellectual engagement and entrepreneurial interest in thousands of students by providing a rich, collaborative learning experience to 80 educators across more than 20 schools in the Greater Toronto Area. By the end of the course, teachers will have gained a better understanding of social innovation and social entrepreneurship, and its impact on communities, and will have designed and implemented a project where students develop deep learning competencies as they create initiatives to serve their schools and communities.

If you can't draw it, you can't do it! Students are creating models of change

#wearethechange @brimwood_tdsb @TIGed pic.twitter.com/R1kLFnQesW

— Abhi Arulanantham (@AbhiArul)

5 Mars 2015

The course’s teaching methodology is blending in-person instruction with online learning sessions happening between January and April. Throughout course sessions, teachers will engage with readings and online resources, participate in an interactive virtual classroom and design a project that infuses social innovation and social entrepreneurship into their classrooms.

Following a project implementation period, projects will be showcased by students to their peers, teachers, the media and invited guests at a Student Symposium in May 2015.

We’re proud to tell the world about the work we’re doing to advance social innovation and social entrepreneurship in Toronto's schools and beyond!

Are you a school or district interested in bringing this program to your area? Contact us at education@takingitglobal.org to learn more. To explore other youth entrepreneurship programs funded by the Government of Ontario, please visit Ready.Set.Work.