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Our key focus is to provide easy access to the tutorials and training resources which support your learning and digital literacy. We have collected the best of the "how-to" and "help" tutorials for the software commonly in use across our province...in K-12 education, in colleges and universities, and in public libraries.

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Contrary to popular belief, Google does not always provide the ideal tech support for software or "how-to" user problems...we believe it is more useful for you to quickly find a smaller selection of pre-evaluated, quality tutorials than to search through millions of hits.

Additionally we provide advanced search filters to help you limit by qualifiers such as intended audience level, Ontario curriculum links, OESS software titles, operating systems, and Creative Commons rights.  We've tried to identify the best, and to point you in the right direction.

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Yes they are. The educational, creative commons and commercial markets are creating high quality digital literacy resources, online tutorials, training and in-service – but the current discovery and delivery approach is scattered, uneven and poorly integrated. Finding resources can be a laborious search process; poor quality but high-ranking Google results still rule the day, unfortunately, resulting in a “make do” attitude among most users.

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Many of these tutorials are openly available on the internet; others require passwords, and some involve licensing fees. In some cases the owning organization will offer the entry level tutorials for free, but license the more advanced topics. Often these tutorials have been licensed for your use through your organization, school or library - you will need to ask at your local institution for the access password. We've tried to identify, and wherever possible, to point you in the direction of resources you have a right to access. Tutorials requiring future password authentication are flagged with this icon:

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If you have a question about any of the videos and tutorials that you have found by searching this portal, you need to contact the organization that owns that tutorial. Except for a small handful of internally produced tutorials, LearnOntario.ca does not own any of the digital items being made available through this portal.

To find information for a tutorial that you've found here, click on the thumbnail image or on the title and access it directly on the contributing organization's site.

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LearnOntario.ca collects descriptive information about online tutorials to make them easily searchable. One of the pieces of information we try to include is the statement of Copyright or Creative Commons reuse rights. This is offered as a courtesy and is only available for those tutorials where the owner has clearly labeled the content. For specific information about the copyright status of a particular tutorial, or for permission to reproduce or publish the item, contact the contributing organization directly.

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We have tried to limit the number of videos hosted at YouTube.com within this discovery portal, as we are very aware that most K-12 school systems and many institutional/corporate firewalls have blocked access to YouTube.  Occasionally we come across a really excellent tutorial only available on YouTube and include it. If you are currently at a site which blocks YouTube, you may see a variety of possible error messages instead of the video.

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We have tried to select to most common applications in use;

• from the results of our 2009 pilot testing,
• from the list of Ontario Educational Software,
• and from nominated applications.

If we don't cover a title you need...please contact us and ask. 

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Participating in LearnOntario.ca is an opportunity to globally market your collections and increase online discovery of your content. If you are interested in contributing content to LearnOntario.ca, let us know: submit suggested content

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This public version of the LearnOntario.ca portal has regular updates of content, both from our research and from your submitted suggestions. As well as returning here frequently to discover new resources, we offer some easy ways to "take it with you":

Subscribe to LearnOntario.ca

Help yourself to an RSS feed of your search results - When you have completed your search for the needed topic, look at your browser's address URL bar. You will see the standard tile for an RSS feed available to you.  By subscribing to the feed for this result set, any time new content is added that matches your search criteria, you will receive a new listing in your RSS feed reader.

Place our Search Widget on your site

Put a fully functioning search widget for the LearnOntario portal on the site of your choice… your blog, your classroom, school or library website. You'll be able to search for technology support tutorials from within your own space.

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