We’re listening… Year in Review 2008-09 speakout.alberta.ca 1 ALBERTA EDUCATION CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA Alberta. Alberta Education. Speak out – the Alberta student engagement initiative : we’re listening … : year in review 2008-09. ISBN 978-0-7785-8582-4 1. Motivation in education – Alberta. 2. Motivation in education – Congresses. 3. Motivation in education – Alberta – Statistics. I. Title. II. Title: : We’re listening … : year in review 2008-09. LB1065 A333 2009 370.154 Disclaimer The opinions expressed in this publication are those of Alberta youth we spoke to at the Speak Out forums, at the Annual Student Conference, and through the Speak Out website (www.speakout.alberta.ca) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Government of Alberta. For more information, please contact: Speak Out – the Alberta Student Engagement Initiative Alberta Education 12th Floor The online Wordle Java Applet (at http://www.wordle.net) was used to create the 10044 – 108 Street above graphic. Wordle is a tool that generates “word clouds” from text. We used this tool to analyze over 4,600 footprint responses and 3,800 online discussions Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T5J 5E6 of the students. The word clouds give greater prominence to words that appear Tel: 780.427.5459 more frequently in the source text; i.e., the words in bigger fonts were mentioned Email:
[email protected] more frequently than those in smaller fonts. Contents Executive Summary . .1 The Website . .7 What Happened . .7 What We Heard . .8 How We Did . 14 Speak Out Forums . 17 Where We Were .................................................... 17 Who We Spoke To..................................................