This is why I am not voting

As a Libertarian and an American I cannot in good conscience support either of these candidates.

This article gives a better explanation than I could of the reasons why.

The university fair as it was

This was the third year that the American Colleges Overseas group visited our school, and the second time they held a fair. Once again, they were impressed with our students and were happy with the results of the visit. None of them offered medicine as a major, which was disappointing to some of you, but they all had varied programs.

As usual, I had a lot of good help to get ready.






Each of the schools gave a presentation beforehand. This gave some important information and at least got your hard drives working with possible questions. Very often, universities can seem similar on the surface. They all offer the same types of programs and majors, they all have nice campuses, they all have services for students, they all offer some type of financial aid. Reading about schools in viewbooks and their websites, doesn't let you distinguish them much. Meeting a rep in person allows you to ask questions that are specific to your own situation and needs.









One of the important things that I try to do as a counselor is establish relationships with reps from other schools. This is Radek Coufal from Richmond. Now I haven't seen Radek in about four years. The last time he came on his own, and gave a small presentation in the library, yes our library, it wasn't my idea to put him there. This year he is back with the group and he remembered me right away. If you want a good school in the heart of London then you should think about Richmond. They give away a lot of scholarship money too.



My friend Mr. Essam. He has always been a big supporter of the university events and can always be counted on to bring his classes to the events, which brings up another point. I can't do what I do without cooperation from the teachers. If they don't bring you to the events and let you out of class then we don't have events at our school do we? They realize that these meetings are valuable for you and I am sure they appreciate a little free time as well.



I have included some other pics of students who insisted that I put them on the site. I apologize for not including you in the first draft, but here you are after all.

It is important to have fun at these things also. Thinking about college can be stressful, so if you can make it enjoyable then good for you.


Once again the teachers are taking an active role.

Thanks again to Karen Ballard for organizing the visit for a third year in a row, and thanks to all of the reps who came and gave their time to meet with you.

Upcoming Assignments

I know it has been awhile, but for Grade 11 we are going to continue chapter 3 where we left off. You should read through the next section. I will post your online assignment next week since the fair disrupted our classes yesterday.

I am going to ask about Math HL which might be possible. History is a long shot in the dark since there is no teacher available for it. I will also be asking about Bio HL extra sessions to get the lab work done.

For Grade 12 we will be beginning chapter 15. You should do the review questions 1-14 all. This will be a very helpful 14 marks to bring up your test grade. About your test grades, the easy times of grade 11 are over. The work and its assessment are going to be stricter this year. Not tougher, stricter. That means no allowances for sloppy writing. We will be going over the standards in class again, as we did last year, and this time you will need to internalize it.

Other than that I hope both groups have a good weekend.

This is what Homayoon was talking about

Do you remember Mr. Kazerooni from the Crosscurrents article in chapter 2? Well, he remembers you.

When we were in class talking about adding hardware to our bodies to improve our ability or to overcome handicaps, many of you had the the question of how this could be done. How is it possible to make hardware respond to our thoughts or impulses.



There is an article at io9 which gives a summary and links to the original story. You should check them all out. Every year the advances get more advanced and each advance allows for further development at an even faster pace.

Another Successful Event!

For a while I didn't think we would make it, but we did. Thanks especially to the Grade 11IB students that helped out.















The fair was a big success and most of the students who came got some good information and advice. The UK colleges that attended also had good things to say about us and the comments I got from them were positive.












One thing which rang out, too true to be ignored, was the university reps surprise that our students don't take math and science at the higher level. I usually advise this although not everyone listens. If you plan on attending a competitive college you need to take the harder courses at higher level. If you are not planning on attending a competitive college, why are you taking the IB diploma?





















More happy students.



Teachers working hard.



This is better than ITGS.



Thanks to all of those who helped make this event a success. Our next one is coming soon.

The Future of Music

This is mostly for the seniors but I know that the juniors are big on music as well.

TorrentFreak has a very good article about musicians and their new approaches to distributing music. In class we talked about p2p and its impacts. This article gives a better analysis.

There were many good points made. One that stands out is when the member of The Pragmatic says that he probably wouldn't be a musician today if it hadn't been for Napster (the old free Napster). I think that this more than anything exemplifies the open, democratizing and uplifting nature of the Web. Information only has value when it is shared and sharing is the basis of all culture.

As music companies continue to employ more and more punitive measures to protect their profit from album sales (a revenue dead end) the fans will vote with their feet, or their browsers. People want their music their way. The Web delivers this to them. Bands that are good and support their fans will be supported in return, the others will retool or fade away. Instead of marketing people deciding what music we should listen to, because they think they can make money on a musician, the consumers of that music will make that decision.

Which is as it should be.

Don't be a slave

I often wonder why people get so excited about the latest gadget. I know it is nice to look cool and trendy for the few days or weeks that you have something nobody else does, but what are you really getting?

I made the point about this with grade 11 when we were discussing the reasons that we change our hardware so often. Why is it that we get rid of perfectly good gadgets to buy a new one? Because some marketing people want us to? @*#!# them. I will keep what I've got and change when I feel like it. I guess that is one of the many reasons I love Open Source so much. The software is free and it always will be. Here is another reason.

Anyway, if you are one of those worship Steve jobs, sleep in the cold all night to buy one, don't know there are non-DRM music services fruit worshiping early adopters, this is for you.

Viva Ubuntu!

Wikipedia, one of my favorite websites, has made the switch to Ubuntu. You can read some very good articles here and here that explain the reasons why.

There is also an excellent article at O'Reilly which talks about the benefits of open source during tough economic times like those we are experiencing (and it will get worse). It mentions cloud computing as well.

It looks like I picked a winner a couple of years ago when I installed Fiesty Fawn. It seems like a lifetime.

It's not that I don't care about you

It's just that there always seems to be something else to do. I haven't been blogging much and for that I apologize. I will try to do better in the future.

I want to say to the juniors, good job on your online assignment. You guys really got into it over the weekend and put up some good responses. I am glad to see that you are taking the work seriously and getting it done early. This is a collaborative assignment. The sooner everyone posts individually, the better it is for the group.

I feel like I have been running around crazily since the beginning of the year and it has to stop. SO I have decided to re-prioritize the work. I will do in class what I want to and out of class I will work on the things that I think are most urgent. I cannot be a slave to teaching, there is too much to do. Classtime will be used for university and other IB work and the teaching will have to take care of itself. I think this will also break up some of the routine that we so easily fall into.

The CAS handbook is a good example of this. Our non-existent coordinator was supposed to be involved in this. Instead of me writing it I am going to post it to Google docs and let all of you have a hand in writing it. Why should I have all the control over the content? Open source and mass collaboration work and this will be a test case. I hope you will join me.

Watch this space for further updates.

Back to school, back to work

Our break is over and it is time to get back to work. Real work since your teacher will not be so tired from here on out.

In case you haven't noticed, we have been moved to a new smaller classroom. The new location is Room 48, at the end of the hall next to the canteen. At some undisclosed date in the future the room will be equipped with the remaining computers. I don't know when because it is a secret and they won't tell me.

My office is also supposed to be downsized as well. This will probably be done sometime soon, since they seem to want to move me out very quickly. I don't know why this is, but it is all going along very fast.

Grade 11, your homework for chapter 3 is due on Tuesday. We will be covering the Green Computing and Crosscurrents sections in class. Be sure to familiarize yourself with these sections as you will have online assignments based upon them. I will also be giving you some university and CAS information. So don't miss it.

Grade 12, you guys are probably too cool for any instructions. So let me say this: file sharing next class, test next week.

There are several events this month and next. Keep watching this space.