About Us

About StudentLink and StudentLink Canada Ltd. (formerly StudentLink Ontario)

StudentLink Ontario was formed in January of 2000 as a result of the success of StudentLink, an Internet menu system created to help Ontario elementary school children.

As the Internet was made accessible to Ontario classrooms it became apparent that students and some teachers would have difficulty locating valid web sites that pertain to Ontario curriculum in a timely manner. Younger students had difficulty typing in long web addresses, while older students tended to “wander” to recreational web sites.

Teachers, already pressed for time, found it difficult to prepare lessons and activities that included Internet use and supported Ministry expectations.

The problem was addressed initially by a group of twelve teachers upgrading their computer literacy credentials through the Queen’s University Faculty of Education Summer Program (1997). Under the supervision of course director Jim Finan, the group produced StudentLink 1…a short group of websites arranged by school division and freely distributed.

At the completion of the course, the success of SL1, and with the arrival of the then new Ministry curriculum documents, Mr. Finan began harvesting websites for all subjects, strands, and grade levels based on the new curriculum. That task took three years.

As the task of gathering, evaluating, and categorizing the sites continued, it became apparent that the database would have to continually be monitored and updated. Mr. Finan employed Ontario teachers on a contract basis to assist in the maintenance and growth of StudentLink 2.

In May of 2000, StudentLink 2 made its debut at the Ontario Educational Computing Conference. In June of 2000, eight school boards purchased SL2 for use in their schools. Currently, StudentLink is licensed to thirty-five school boards in Ontario and more than five hundred copies of StudentLink have been licensed to individual schools using the Ontario curriculum including the Maple Leaf International School in Trinidad and the Sheikh Zayed Private Academy for Girls in the United Arab Emirates.

The StudentLink team audits and updates the StudentLink menu system on a monthly basis. Teachers from across the province assist in the on-going development of StudentLink by suggesting new links and creating shareable “SL Walkthroughs”, lessons based on particular classroom themes. These are purchased and posted on the StudentLink Canada web site, and made freely available to all teachers.

In August of 2001, StudentLink Ontario became incorporated. Ontario product name was shortened from StudentLink 2 to simply StudentLink.

In May of 2004, StudentLink Canada: Alberta Edition was introduced at the ATAAC Conference in Jasper. This rendition features over 10,000 links based on the Alberta Ministry of Education curriculum documents Grades 1 through 9. Currently six Alberta school boards have purchased StudentLink for their classrooms.

In June of 2005, StudentLink Ontario Ltd. was granted national incorporation as StudentLink Canada Ltd.

The StudentLink Mission

Our goal is to integrate the Internet as an effective learning tool in Ontario and Alberta classrooms. Using hypertext markup language, the syntax of the Internet itself, StudentLink Canada Ltd. and its affiliated educators will strive to bring success-oriented, student-centered, curriculum-based web sites to Ontario and Alberta students.