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Dear Thought Leader,
Happy Friday! Another hectic week on the Canadian EdTech scene as we zero in on the holidays and end of term celebrations. I hope you enjoy this week's Top 10 as we scour the country to find you the most interesting news in K12 and post-secondary education.
A couple of highlights for me this week. It was an honour to visit the offices of Prodigy Game today to present the leadership team with the Canadian EdTech Company of the Year Award. Well deserved for a math gaming focused startup that has amassed over 30 million users and proudly Canadian! It was also cool to catch up with STEM education guru, Brian Aspinall this week in between his travels, keynotes and workshops. Be sure to tune into our podcast!
What a difference a year makes! My passion project MindShare Workspace is celebrating its 1st anniversary! It's been incredibly challenging, rewarding and transformational as we redefine the future of work & learning. To commemorate the special occasion, we're planning a party on Saturday, December 8th. Join us for a day-long celebration for the whole family!
Agenda for the Day
9:30am Yoga
11:00am Robtics for Kids
12:30 am Lunch & Learn>>The Future of Work & Learning
2pm Official Cake Cutting Ceremony
Board Gaming
Wine Tasting
Art Exhibit
and More!
Please click here to RSVP! Feel free to bring a friend!
With that, I thank you for all that you do for your students as an educator and EdTech innovator. Keep us in the loop when you have events or exciting news to share!
Until next time, keep the digital learning curve steep!
Best,
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P.S. Coming soon! Our 11th Classroom of the Future Challenge launching January 2019!
Robert Martellacci, M.A. EdTech
President, MindShare Learning Technology™
Chief Digital Publisher, The MindShare Learning Report™
Co-founder & President C21 Canada™
Founder & CEO, MindShare Workspace
Follow us on Twitter @MindShareLearn
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"Featured Podcast of the Week" |
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This Week in Canadian EdTech
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Robert Martellacci, Founder & Chief Digital Publisher and Stephen Hurley discuss about Canadian EdTech trends, screen time, STEM makerspaces and more! |
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1. Canada Invests in First-of-its-Kind Robotic Platform at University of British Columbia |
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Education News Canada - November 29, 2018 |
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Canada is committed to the global transition to a low-carbon future. That is why we are investing in the development of new and innovative technologies that will help us fight climate change, boost the economy and create good jobs for Canadians.
Canada's Minister of Natural Resources, the Honourable Amarjeet Sohi announced an $8-million investment to develop a first-of-its-kind robotic platform called Ada that uses artificial intelligence to accelerate the development process for new materials to improve energy efficiency.
Funded through Canada's Energy Innovation Program, the University of British Columbia is building the new platform, which will be capable of designing, performing and learning from experiments. The robotic components for this project are also made in Canada, creating jobs for qualified personnel, increasing economic growth and positioning Canada as a global leader in this rapidly growing technology.
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2. Indoor play keeps child obesity away, new research shows
Education News Canada- November 27, 2018
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A new study in the American Journal of Health Promotion suggests that children who have access to indoor play equipment show substantial health benefits, including less weight gain, than children who do not.
"We were interested in seeing if just playing being mildly active, without necessarily getting a high increase in heart rate was good enough to have some kind of protective effort on children's weight gain," says lead author Dr. Caroline Fitzpatrick, a research member at Concordia's PERFORM Centre and an assistant professor of social science at Université Ste-Anne in Nova Scotia. |
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3. University of Toronto Mississauga and Local Teachers Bring Transformative Biotechnology Education to Local Classrooms
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NewsWire- November 22, 2018 |
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MISSISSAUGA, ON, Nov. 22, 2018 /CNW/ - The University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM), in collaboration with the Amgen Foundation and Amgen Canada, is helping transform local science education and ignite a life-long love of science in students in schools across Mississauga and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).
The Amgen Biotech Experience (ABE), an international program funded by the Amgen Foundation and led by UTM in Canada, helps empower high school science teachers to implement real-world biotechnology labs in their classrooms, inspiring scientific curiosity.
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4. Canada needs to do more to nurture its tech clusters, report says
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Financial Post- November 22, 2018 |
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Canada’s growing tech talent is drawing more investment to cities like Toronto and Montreal, but the country could lose momentum if it doesn’t do more to encourage industries to scale up, according to CBRE Ltd.
The country lacks “tech clusters,” dense areas of activity that contain critical mass for companies and educational and research institutions, the Toronto-based brokerage said in a report Thursday. Tech clusters like those in San Francisco and Seattle have helped propel those cities to global success but Toronto is the only Canadian city competitive enough to rank among powerhouses in North America.
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5. What Is the Point of a Makerspace?
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Cult of Pedagogy- May 20, 2018 |
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For as long as I’ve been aware of makerspaces, I haven’t quite understood them. I have seen plenty of photos on social media, with the towers made of marshmallows and toothpicks. I’ve walked through exhibit halls at conferences where the coding and robotics displays cause me to stop, stare, and try to look like I have some idea of what I’m looking at. I even stumbled into a Twitter chat one night where a group of school librarians were throwing around some pretty great ideas about building makerspaces in their libraries.
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6. Solving the world’s problems with the help of human-like robots |
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McMaster University- November 23, 2018 |
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Humans and robots living harmoniously side-by-side sounds like something from a utopian science fiction novel. But for Geordie Rose, he is realising this dream as founder and CEO of Sanctuary.ai.
Rose, a McMaster engineering physics alumnus and serial entrepreneur, was the guest speaker at the 33rd annual J.W. Hodgins Engineering Memorial Lecture on November 19.
Rose founded his first enterprise, D-wave, the world’s first quantum computing company as well as Kindred, the world’s first robotics company to use reinforcement learning in a production environment. Now, at Sanctuary.ai, he is working with a team of innovators to build a synthetic human, or “synth” – a machine that can mimic a human in form and function.
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7. Canada francophones fight over education
Prothom Alo- November 24, 2018
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A French-language university cancelled by Ontario's government this month has kindled the passions of Canada's francophone minority, who are set to replay their historical rights struggle.
In addition to nixing the proposed university that was to open in Toronto in 2020, the province with the largest francophone minority in the country -- outside of Quebec -- also cut funding for francophone theater troupes.
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8. Study aims to provide clearer picture of how digital devices affect kids
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Folio - November 22, 2018 |
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It’s not alcohol or a drug, but cellphones and iPads are also a problem for kids, says a University of Alberta expert who has launched a new project to measure children’s usage.
“Kids are struggling to control the technology, yet getting access to it at younger ages,” said Jason Daniels, a researcher with the Faculty of Extension who is exploring long-term fallout of too much screen time.
“Often the first thing they see in the morning and the last thing before bed is a digital screen. As a society, we’re really playing catch-up with knowing what the impacts are and what the long-term consequences are.”
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9. New forms of education help Canada’s skills gap
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A recent survey by Course Compare, Canada’s marketplace for education, suggests nearly one-tenth of professional developers in Canada have studied at a coding bootcamp. The survey findings, which are based on 500 developers’ salaries and educational backgrounds, are among the first to measure career outcomes of Canadians using coding bootcamps to land high-demand computer programming jobs. |
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10.It's Time To Start Thinking About World Access To Higher Education
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Forbes - November 28, 2018 |
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Dr. Graeme Atherton, founder of
NEON
and
AccessHE
, is a guest contributor for
Reach Higher
As universities across the world look to compete and differentiate themselves from each other, commonalities between them appear fewer and farther between. In the race to attract students and funding, universities increasingly mimic businesses with some having a marketing spend to match.
While more and more students go onto higher education across the world, with numbers predicted to hit 250 million by 2030, the students who are actually able to go on to higher education experience unequal opportunity. Across systems, institutions, and political regimes, your chances of going onto higher education and succeeding when you are there are far lower if you come from a low-income background, particular ethnic group, are disabled or come from a rural background.
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