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Ottawa Catholic SB partners with Binogi

Ottawa Catholic School Board is now the second school board in Canada to partner with Binogi Canada Ltd. in its commitment to developing the best possible digital, multilingual learning and teaching materials for students and educators. Binogi has become one of the leading ed-tech companies that offers a 15 language digital educational platform in use by students and teachers worldwide.

As of May, 2022, Ottawa Catholic School Board (OCSB) joins a growing international community of school boards and municipalities from Sweden, Germany, Finland, and Canada in using Binogi on a regular basis to make learning accessible for all students. Sinead Tsang, ESL Consultant with the Ottawa Catholic School Board reports, "We are excited to be partnering with Binogi Canada to support our students in math, science and geography”. This partnership will focus on students in Grades 7 - 9, along with their classroom teachers, Principals, Curriculum Consultants, Superintendents, and parents. Binogi’s CEO, Linus Gunnarson remarks, “This is an exciting opportunity for our company as it will help us to truly establish ourselves here in Canada”.

All OCSB students and teachers will have access to video lessons in mathematics, science, and geography in a variety of languages including English, Somali, Arabic, Tigrinya, and Dari. “Binogi videos provide opportunities for our teachers to support all students, but particularly our multilingual students with engaging animated videos that teach content” shares Tsang who further reflects, “We share the same belief that there are teaching resources and strategies that are necessary for some but good for all students”.

Not only will Binogi be available during the school day but also at home when students can practise and consolidate their learning or explore new concepts. “The concepts in math and science are broken down very clearly and include transcripts which the students can review”, notes Tsang. Opportunities for parents to engage with what their children are learning and connect with the school are enhanced through Binogi’s multilingual platform.

Binogi is dedicated to ensuring a research-based product and through its ongoing collaboration with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, it continues to validate both the platform’s content and methodology. “The videos are available in many languages and the teacher can feel confident that the vocabulary being used is academically correct for the

speakers of these languages”, Tsang comments. “Teachers can assign the quizzes after the videos to receive quick assessments for learning to know what the student understands and which information needs to be revisited.”

Binogi embraces an asset based approach to teaching and learning where mother tongue is considered a resource and language, a scaffold for conceptual development. Tsang observes, “It is very easy for students to switch between languages and review the topic by watching the video more than once”. This multilingual digital learning platform creates equitable and inclusive learning opportunities by making content more accessible to all.

The shared commitments to digital learning, equity & inclusion, quality, curriculum based content as well as a multilingual teaching & learning stance make this an ideal partnership for Binogi and the entire Ottawa Catholic School Board community. “We look forward to continuing to explore this resource and seeing the positive impact it has on students’ engagement and learning,” states Sinead Tsang, ESL Consultant, OCSB.