Canada’s Riskiest Online Cities?

I know I’m really late to the game on this one, but I’ve been itching to write this post since February 22, when Symantec revealed their list of Canada’s Riskiest Online Cities; or, put another way, Canada’s cities that are (allegedly) the least protected from malware, hackers, and scammers. I first found out about this … Read more

Re-elect Bev Shipley? No thanks.

Heading into Canadian federal election number 41, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada wants you to believe that they are on your side, that they are standing up for families, that they know the way forward, etc. I beg to differ. I have personally attempted to contact my MP for Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, … Read more

Sustainable Food Initiatives to Take Note Of

It’s been a while since I’ve found some really good initiatives that I thought London, Ontario and Canada at large should be adopting or plain old ripping off. After all, I’ve never seen a government agency claim intellectual property (IP) infringement if someone else began doing the same thing, so why shouldn’t we?! This type of stance has been brought forth by Shawn Adamsson very recently.

Food 2030

The UK government recently unveiled Food 2030 – a food strategy designed to ensure that Britons have access to high quality, sustainably farmed/grown, food that benefits both the farmer/grower and the consumer. At the same time Food 2030 should ensure that people have good jobs, a reduction in greenhouse emissions and food waste.

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I Wasn't Taught This in School

Western Tech a high school in Toronto, Ontario...
Image via Wikipedia

Recently I went through my inbox looking at past issues of the newsletter I receive called Project GiftED. While I don’t always find myself in agreement with everything said in the newsletter or on the blog – mostly because the blog entries aren’t always about education – I do find myself intrigued often enough to keep subscribing. I got really interested when I came across an article that was actually written by the folks at zenhabits entitled “27 Skills Your Child Need to Know That She’s Not Getting in School.”

Recognizing full well that I completed high school over 8 years ago and then entered the Computer Systems Technology program at Fanshawe College, I asked a colleague of mine, James Costa, what he thought about the list.  His response below has been edited for brevity and clarity:

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The School of One

Not good enough anymore
Not good enough anymore

While researching innovative approaches to educating our children, I came across a pilot project that was run this past summer at a single school in New York City. It’s been dubbed “School of One,” and the approach is very similar to the types of things I mentioned as possibilities in “The Textbook of the Future?” To quote this New York Times article:

The program […] consists mainly of students working individually or in small groups on laptop computers to complete math lessons in the form of quizzes, games and worksheets. Each student must take a quiz at the end of each day; the results are fed into a computer program to determine whether they will move on to a new topic the next day.

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