Changing Education

Did you have a chance to look at the Learning and Violence project interactive multi-media tools yet?

For adult educators and learners, the issue of how people have experienced, or are experiencing, violence can be the elephant in the room. Learners feel that they cannot bring it up and, if they do, many educators feel out of their depth. Many of the mechanisms people develop to survive violence can work as barriers when they want to learn something new and sometimes these mechanisms result in behaviours that look to educators like learning disabilities, lack of motivation or resistance.

The Changing Education multi-media tools are designed to help us name the elephant and open up the conversation.

Jenny Horsman, a community researcher and educator who coordinated the project and whose long-term work on the issue of how experiences with violence impact learning informed the research, says, "It is important it is to come to learning whole and full of hope. When we feel stupid, there is nowhere to go. But when we try a whole new conversation, we can try a whole new set of approaches.”

The tools will soon be available on DVD for those who do not have access to the internet. The project is looking for new partners in Canada and internationally to develop tools for learning in workplaces, schools, corrections and homes. Visit http://www.learningandviolence.net/changing.htm

Multimedia tools for learning about violence and learning

The Learning and Violence project would love show you the interactive multi-media tools they have created to support learning and teaching in a context of violence.

Join them at George Brown College, 200 Front Street East (Front and Jarvis) in the Front Lobby on Friday October the 14th.

10:00 to 4:00 check out the new tools yourself – and chat to the creators, instructors and students who have used them.

12:00 to 1:00 Listen to what people have to say about them.

If you can't get to the launch, check out the resources on the website.

"Violence shapes us. It can make us stronger as learners, teachers, and simply as people in the world. It can also make it hard to trust ourselves and others, and difficult to learn. Its impact on learning is not well recognized, but the resources and allies found here can help all of us – whatever our role or experience – to address this issue creatively. On this site you will find:

• practical ideas to make it easier to learn or teach when violence or hard times mark our lives and/or the lives of those we work with;
• people and organizations exploring violence and learning through research or practice."

Special-needs voters get civics lesson

A class at Frontier College in Toronto is helping students learn about the voting process ahead of the Oct. 6 provincial election.

Click here to watch Zulekha Nathoo's story.

Election Math

What do you know about government deficits and debt?

What do you think of the election promises about raising and cutting taxes and spending? Do you believe the politicians? Do you think you could do better?

You can try out your own election math at the CBC Election Promise Calculator.

The current Ontario budget deficit, forecast at $16.3 billion for the 2011-12 fiscal year, according to budget figures.

Program costs and revenues are detailed in the calculator. They can be adjusted to see the impact on the deficit, which changes in accordance to changes in the position of the sliders.

Look what happens when we make all the spending zero...

We still have $97,415,000,000.00 deficit.

What programs would you cut?
Or would you increase program spending?
What taxes would you raise?
Or would you cut programs?

Can you make these decisions?

Here is what the leaders of the three parties said they would do in the debate:



But is this the right time to be trying to balance the budget? Or should we be "stimulating" the economy?


Unemployment in Ontario is at 7.5% (read more here).

Here is what the leaders of the three parties said about jobs in Ontario in the debate:

Voting 3 Ways

What do you think about our voting system in Canada? Do you think it is fair? Do you think it is democratic?

At Three Ontario Votes you  can try voting under three different systems to see how different voting systems work:

• the first-past-the post system we use in Canada
  
• the alternative vote system they use in Australia
• the proportional representation system they use in the Netherlands

You can try the three ways of voting at Three Ontario Votes until election night on October 6.

You have to agree to participate in the research. You do not have to put in your riding. It is a bit awkward finding your riding in the drop down menu because they are not in alphabetical order. You can keep typing the first letter of your riding until it shows up. You can find your riding here if you know your address or postal code.

Then you cast ballots 3 times according to the rules of the first-past-the-post system from Canada, the alternative voting system from Australia, and proportional voting from the Netherlands.

At the end you can complete a short questionnaire about your political preferences. This will help the researchers understand more about how people would like to vote.

After the simulated ballots have been cast, the researchers will tally the vote counts and then determine the results of the vote in each system. The researchers would then examine how those results show the consequences of different electoral systems.

The three systems

You can read information on different electoral systems and how elections work in Canada, Australia and the Netherlands at Three Ontario Votes. Here is a chart about the three systems from a CBC story about the project:



Our system is called "first-past-the-post." It means whoever gets the most votes, wins. It means that if Candidate A gets 40 votes, Candidate B gets 35 votes and Candidate C 25 votes, then Candidate A wins even though only 40 out of 100 people like that candidate best. In Canada, parties often win elections with about 40% of the "popular" vote. This means that 40 out of 100 people voted for the winning party and 60 out of 100 people voted for other parties.

You can see that in the last Ontario election that, in Toronto, the Progressive Conservative Party got 23.53% of the vote, more that the NDP, but got no seats from this area. (This chart comes from the CBC Ontario Votes 2007 Ridings page. You can see more results from 2007 here.)

Here is a 6:31 minute video about some of the problems with first-past-the-post system:

Here is a 4:27 minute video about the alternative vote system:

Here is a 2:05 minute video about a proportional representation system from New Zealand:

We had a referendum about changing to this system of proportional representation voting in Ontario in 2007. People voted to keep the first-past-the-post system.

Here is a chart showing what would have happened in the 2003 Ontario election under the two systems:

FPTP = First Past The Post and MMP = Mixed Member Proportional)

Here is a 6:25 minute video about the Ontario referendum:

*Remember to visit the TDSB LBS Wiki for more election resources.