Technological Overload

Luka Ilic English and Humanities, Technology No Comments

With the COVID-19 pandemic, we find ourselves in an unprecedented time and more reliant on technology than ever before. If it wasn’t clear before just how far we have come along from a technological standpoint, there is no question that we are all on the same page now. Our society has shifted dramatically over the past year and technology has now become a coping mechanism.

In our Information and Communication Technology in Business class, we were examining the legal, social and ethical issues of technology, privacy and security. In order to unpack some of these issues, we watched Netflix’s The Social Dilemma documentary film.

Below is a list of quotes from the film selected by students thought to be the most interesting or powerful:

“If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product.”

“There are only two industries that call their customers “users”: illegal drugs and software.”

“Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.”

“It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behaviour and perception that is the product.”

“We’re training and conditioning a whole new generation of people that when we are uncomfortable or loney or uncertain or afraid, we have a digital pacifier for ourselves. That is kind of atrophying our own ability to deal with that.”

“The way to think about it is as 2.5 billion Truman Shows. Each person has their own reality with their own facts. Over time you have the false sense that everyone agrees with you because everyone in your news feed sounds just like you. Once you’re in that state, it turns out you’re easily manipulated.”

The purpose of this film is not to scare people into thinking technology is bad for us and should be avoided. Instead, the point is to inform and educate people that technology can be addictive and manipulative. Even when there are genuinely good intentions behind a design, there are oftentimes adverse and unintended consequences. For example, when Facebook created the “like” button, it was meant to spread positivity and love. However, when you look at it today, you can see teens getting depressed because they don’t have enough likes or a political polarization which has fuelled endless hate comments.

The Social Dilemma shows us that social media is intentionally designed to be addictive and manipulative through subjective algorithms that determine what you see and the psychology of persuasion that is built into AI technology today. In essence, technology is now created and designed to use you and having that knowledge doesn’t necessarily make your need to fulfill your cravings less susceptible. This serves an important reminder to teens and adults alike that technology is extremely powerful and it ultimately comes down to us how we choose to use it.

Digital Aristotle: A Reflection of Virtual Learning

Zareh Demirdji Beyond the Classroom, Science and Math, Technology No Comments

It’s somewhat hard to believe that a year in lockdown has already gone by. To say it has been an interesting year would be an understatement. After all is said and done, and this human experience is in the rearview mirror, there is a lot that will be looked back upon and analyzed. One of the major realms that will undoubtedly receive a lot of attention will be education, particularly virtual learning.

Virtual learning is by no means a new idea or phenomenon. Virtual schools have existed for years now, but such schools were created for educational reasons and designed for specific situations. The pandemic, however, has thrown the vast majority, if not all of the world’s education systems into some form of virtual learning. Those who choose to attend virtual schools do so (for the most part) of their own volition. Over the last year, everyone has been thrust into virtual learning whether they wanted to or not, whether they thrive in such a situation or languish.

There is a notion in education as to whether or not the growth and implementation of technology will one day lead to a future where students can learn solely from an artificial educator. The current education system is built on top of a framework that was designed to educate students to have the skills and knowledge to be effective and efficient factory workers. In the early days of education, students would sit in desks and listen to a teacher at the front of a classroom. The teacher was a source of information that they would disseminate to their students, a sage on the stage. Fast forward to today, and the only difference in many of today’s classrooms is the colour of the board at the front of the room.

Education has gone through many “revolutions” where this, that, or the other thing was going to radically change how students learned. From radio to television and tablets, no one invention or innovation has really changed education in a fundamental way. The internet, however, offers one place that holds more information than anyone can ever hope to consume, and essentially renders the idea of a person at the front of a classroom who knows a lot of information obsolete. So who needs teachers? Are they commodities who will one day be completely replaced by screens and algorithms?

In my estimation, the past year of learning mostly online – which has had teachers using a lot of digital resources such as videos, podcasts, and the like – has shown us that replacing a classroom teacher with digital content is not a scenario that leads to optimal learning environments. Granted, our small school full of dedicated and passionate teachers has been able to make the best of the world’s current situation; it is likely that many students have found virtual learning less than ideal. Although having one-on-one guidance for each student would be the ideal scenario, even if you could fabricate a digital Aristotle to tutor every student based on his or her individual needs, it could never replace a real – in the flesh – educator. As technology continues to advance, the sage on the stage needs to transform into the guide on the side, helping students navigate the world wide web of information overflow and teach them how to learn and not necessarily what to learn.

Stop Disasters Game

Luka Ilic Experiential Learning, Science and Math, Technology No Comments

It’s no secret that natural disasters have a huge impact on people’s livelihoods and the surrounding environment. Although millions of people are affected every year, we can reduce the human, physical and financial cost of disasters by understanding the risks of applying the best methods of prevention and mitigation.

In our unit on natural disasters, students played a game that tasked them with managing the impacts of a natural disaster of their choice. They played realistic disaster scenarios and their role was to plan and construct a safer environment for their town in order to minimize the damage of the natural disaster.

Students needed to know how the natural disaster formed and the risks it posed in order to prepare for what was to come. They started out with a set budget and had to determine where to spend it. It’s not hard to spend money, but it is difficult choosing which areas to protect, where to place your defences and how to save as many lives as possible.

With multiple playthroughs, students gained a better understanding of the logistics and factors involved in preparing for such terrible events. They began to realize that they didn’t have an infinite amount of money, they had to carefully consider all options, and they often had to make very difficult decisions. Overall, it was an engaging experience that forced students to think about the consequences their actions carry and how the decisions they make directly involve the people they are trying to save.

Creating a Student Book Review Website

Katie Freeland English and Humanities, Technology No Comments

A good book puts us in conversation with a compelling character, offers a new perspective, takes us places. It can teach us new things about our world and ourselves, make a lasting impression on our lives, or help us get through a global pandemic and accompanying lockdowns. But when presented in school, reading can sometimes be treated like an onerous chore, a burdensome task that one needs to get through—and get past. Obviously, this is not usually how we want young people to view reading.

One of the ways to address this is to offer more choice — albeit curated — to student readers, and to help them learn to make informed choices about their reading, now and in the future. The “book club model,” as opposed to an exclusive focus on common class texts, is increasingly incorporated into high school English classrooms for this very reason.

In this year’s Grade English 9 English class, most students read two novels during the octomester, and they had opportunities to share and receive recommendations from their classmates. In journals, student-teacher conferences, and even with their families, students practiced important comprehension and thinking skills as they discussed and made connections to their reading. Then as a final assignment, they each contributed a multimedia book review to create a book review website for a peer audience. Writing and publishing their reviews, however, was not just about summarizing or sharing opinions on a book; it was about helping to create a community of readers, in which teenagers are empowered to read.

Choosing the right book may be a start, but students also learned to use a range of strategies, from using an audiobook to summarizing and asking questions, as they read. Reading can be hard, and there might even be parts of a favourite book that are hard—or boring, confusing, or otherwise unenjoyable. In our English course, readers were encouraged to prepare for this, and to acknowledge it in their reviews as needed. Reviewers have also included some advice, where relevant, about what those who are interested in a particular book might want to learn more about first. It is our hope that the reviews will be helpful to other students as they make their own choices.

The site is a work in progress, and will continue to be updated and expanded with more student reviews, created in different courses as well as purely out of interest. In the future it will hopefully also see the addition of various features like grade-level and interest filtering and feedback, request, and submission forms. But for now, the Grade 9 English book reviews have the spotlight.

YMCA Academy Student Book Review Website

Creating with Code

Ada Miller Technology No Comments


In Introduction to Computer Studies we have spent the past week working with python, a simple programming language that is the basis for many programs and games that some may be familiar with. We have been creating basic programs that allow users to input commands and interact with the program. This includes a question and guessing game where users are trying to guess what the computer is “thinking of.” It can be a challenging unit for some learners, but most find it the most rewarding because they have a list of products to look back at and see how far they’ve come.