Latina/o youth and Toronto public schools

This is interesting tidbit about schools  in Toronto  and the Latino youth !!

"Why do 40% of Latino/a youth not complete high schol in Toronto public schools? What can b done about it?

According to a recent study coordinated by Rob Brown of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), approximately 20% of students who start grade 9 do not complete high school four years later. Among students who speak Spanish, the non-completion rate of is almost double. This means that approximately 40% of young Latina/o students are not completing high school, that is, leaving school without graduating.

We believe that this issue is of crucial importance to our community. For this reason, we are inviting students, parents, teachers, educators and all concerned to share with us your views on the following questions:

1) Why are Latina/o students twice as likely to leave school than their peers?

2) What can be done -and/or is being done- to address this situation?"

If you would like to share your views please write a text of approximately 600 to 1,000 words about one of the two questions and submit it by email before January 30, 2008. If you wish to address the two questions, please feel free to send two documents, one for each question. A jury of community members will read all submissions.

Selected contributions will be included in a publication to be released in 2008. Contributions can be submitted in Spanish, English or Portuguese, and can be submitted by an individual or by a group.

This call is open to all people who are willing to participate, without any restrictions such as age, nationality, birthplace, migratory status, place of residence, etc.

In the body of the message please include the title or the contributions, the name of the author or authors, e-mail, telephone and mailing address for contact purposes. Only the organizing committee will have access to this information.

Please submit your contributions to Daniela Mantilla at lared@oise.utoronto.ca. For more information Email: lared@oise.utoronto.ca or visit the website: http://home.oise.utoronto.ca/~lared

[via social justice]

Successful Innovation:The Intersection of Theory and Practice

"Successful innovation within a corporate setting is difficult to achieve on a number of levels. First, innovation itself is much more art than science, random in some sense. But it also can be directed and channeled by the innovator by using past experience to guide thinking about the future, by knowing how and when to ask the right questions, and by trusting their instinct when interpreting and synthesizing data. Innovators and their managers must also recognize that failure is to be learned from, not punished." - Summary

this is a good read at HBS

new themes for iGoogle

I broke the news here

At times I hardly blog the foo, I just share it in the most appropriate zone :)-

Triggit!

Triggit is now moving to live status. I initally pentested .Seems to be kewl app to drag and drop into your blog or webpages. Not tested with FB or other social sites. IF that works then they need to have a FB mode drag and drop for pictures etc etc.. not really sure how the intergration will work, but imagine the velocity within the FB arena ?

Robert, what do you think and comments ?

Twiiter Fav's

Here's a couple of my Twitter Fav's

"Success in life has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others" 09:59 AM January 17, 2008
jowyang Five Across, Six Apart. I want to make my own 2.0 company called Four Together or Seven Away 04:35 AM January 09, 2008
davewiner If Hillary wins, her husband should apologize for everything including the "I didn't have sex with that woman" line. And do it sincerely. 06:03 PM January 08, 2008
davewiner Don't they use Twitter at ABCNews? Don't they understand that there are no timezones on teh fcuking internet. 03:12 PM January 05, 2008
QueenofSpain Before bed last night my son said a prayer. To aliens. "Hey! Hey Aliens! It's me, Jack. Make the daytime come quicker. Ok? Bye." 08:04 AM January 05, 2008
nivi "The learning process... is an integral part of how the production system functions, not a separate training activity." – http://tinyurl ... ... 05:38 PM December 27, 2007
anildash Getting ready for a road trip with the dog, the cat, and the human. 04:34 AM December 23, 2007
nivi "Do you have 20 years of experience, or the same year of experience 20 times?" – Andy Hargadon, http://tinyurl.com/yopmps 02:04 PM December 22, 2007

I'll keep culling more stuff as I read /star the twit's .. a lot more coming soon . Stay tuned

Scrabulous Strike !!

"Game companies Hasbro, which distributes Scrabble in North America, and Mattel, which is responsible for its overseas trademarks, have reportedly asked Facebook to remove the game from its application directory. And you can tell it's a serious legal matter because nobody's talking." - [ Via ]

This is crazy why would a gaming company want to take down a online game of thier's. Should not they be thankful to Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, who founded Scrabulous.com in 2006. It's  brought life back into this game. !!


I am routing that Hasbro actually buys them out and hire's them to keep the program running in the FB envoirnment. Off course they still get their $$ via ad serving !

Bloggers are ordinary people. We are not terrorists

This is a must read article by Shel . The depth of the issues becomes very clear.

Kudo's to Shel for this nice read.

Gmail displaying wrong contact

This is a strange bug that I noticed while working today. Gmail is showing my another person's contact details for some reason, when mouse over is done. Here take a look.

stats in twitter

by typing in 'stats' in twitter, you will see the number of followers and following numbers. Thats neat, I wish they had more keywords - like help , SOS whatever.. :)-

Xmas web cams around the world

you want to watch xmas around the world.. here's a list of webcams operating