The SAGITTARIUS-ORION Literature Digitizing Projects funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada aim at promoting inclusive education and cross-cultural encounters through digitizing textual and contextual materials. The material, made available for access through open access and/or the Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION), benefits students and teachers at all levels, public and private organizations, policy makers, the general public in Canada and internationally, and engages them in critical dialogue with the researchers and authors. The site encourages self-sustaining communities that will continue to be engaged in the digitizing project, and it makes research in literature available, to a broad audience of researchers, students, teachers and educators, and policy makers. Different elements of the project are being put together as we are enhancing this website both in content and technology, and directing it towards meaningful cross-cultural exchanges. Please stay tuned!

The restricted access part of the SAGITTARIUS-ORION Literature Digitizing Projects are available exclusively to schools that are connected to Ontario’s ORION research and education network. Thirty school boards are connected to ORION, which was created to provide an advanced private network to enable innovation for Ontario’s research and education institutions. This project is among the new programs and services ORION is introducing to help students and teachers derive maximum benefits from ORION’s state-of-the art capabilities in supporting teaching and learning outcomes. Teachers may find out if their board is connected to ORION, or obtain information on how to connect their school to the network, by writing Ali Abbas Mehboob Hirji or visiting www.orion.on.ca.

The SAGITTARIUS-ORION Literature Digitizing Projects have two sections: African Canadian Literature and the works of Bernard Shaw.

The SAGITTARIUS-ORION-Shaw Project , part of York University’s SAGITTARIUS-ORION initiative, is partnering with the Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION), to produce and share newly digitized resources on the Shaw plays staged in the Shaw Festival. Students and teachers are able to access annotated texts and resources for the plays directly from their classrooms, complete with the production details, classroom resources, contextual documents, research materials, quizzes and activities, a search engine, and study guides tailored to the Ontario school curriculum. Reference materials by world renowned Shaw scholars are also be available.

The SAGITTARIUS-ORION-African Canadian Literature project, also available to Ontario schools connected to ORION, consists, initially, of four autobiographies by African Canadians, ways to utilize them in various subject areas and grade levels, in accordance with the Ontario curriculum, ancillary material related to the texts, and ideas for projects, including on-line, shared among classes.

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