So, the phone canvassing office has been going relatively well. We’ve been using a voice-over-internet call center technology from directleap.com that vastly increases our ability to reach people.

We could use a little more people. All it requires is to commit to come to the office in downtown Ottawa either Tuesday or Thursday evening until May 12th, the day of the referendum.
(more…)

.

I’m doing an early, draft release of this blog post. I really want to share this now rather than wait for perfection. It’s me being creative . When I get more sleep, I’ll revise for mistakes.

There are three YouTube videos posted this year which, after watching, is helping me redefine what education should be, not just what it should not be.

• A Vision of Students Today: “If students learn what they do, what are they learning sitting here [silently in straight rows facing a speaker at the front of the room?]“
• Ken Robinson on creativity: “Creativity is important as literacy and we should treat it with the same status. … If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original… We are educating people out of their creative capacities.”
• Jeff Hawkins on brain theory: “We have an intuitive, strongly held but incorrect assumption that is preventing us from seing the answer: … that intelligence is defined by behavior”.

So after watching Jeff Hawkins, let me ask you: what are the intuitive strongly held beliefs about intelligence & what education should be that is keeping us from making a better education system?

(more…)

I think part of the solution will come by changing our thinking about education, making creativity as important as literacy. Ken Robinson makes a compelling case.

Donald Brown talks more in details about the ethical dimensions of climate change.

Chris Tindal, federal candidate for Toronto-Centre, made a presentation at an event sponsered by the sponsored by the WWF, Greenpeace, the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, Sierra Club of Canada, and the Pembina Institute called Power to Choose.

The alternative to the longstanding American food policy of “cheap and lots” is to eat locally, eat seasonally and eat organic. Filmmaker Bonnie Bucqueroux and her dog Schmoopsie look at the sustainable agriculture movement, including a visit to Michigan State University’s Student Organic Farm, where Dr. John Biernbaum discusses the options people have to grow their own food or to buy from local growers.