Tag: Technology

Masters in Early Childhood Studies

I am proud to announce that I’ve been accepted into the Masters of Arts program in Early Childhood Studies at Ryerson University. I am very excited about attending this program and learning from the amazing faculty that are involved in various levels of Early Childhood practice and study. I believe it will greatly advance my career aspirations in the education sector.

To get a better idea of my career aspirations and my intentions within the program, here is my Statement of Interest that accompanied my application to the program:

I am pursuing graduate education to gain more in-depth knowledge, acquire critical thinking skills and attain an understanding of different methodologies to prepare me to pursue a career in early childhood education policy making. I am particularly interested in a child’s right to a developmentally appropriate, culturally relevant, quality education. In the future I would like to work with national governments to build and strengthen an education system that ensures equity and inclusion in education. Furthermore, I believe that digital technology and the Internet could provide huge benefits to ensure inclusion and access in education and I would like to conduct research to shed light on the role of digital technology in education and how to properly develop school delivery models that meet the diverse needs of children.

During my studies at Ryerson, I would like to pursue research on the role of digital technology in early childhood education. Specifically, I would like to take a critical perspective of digital equity and the potential for digital technology and the Internet to support and strengthen education programs in marginalized and isolated communities. I have already begun this line of research through distance education courses at the University of British Columbia’s Masters of Education in Early Childhood Education program and through my current employment at a global education initiative at Microsoft.

I graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and an option in International Studies. Most of my courses focused on developmental psychology and during my years of study at the university I volunteered at the research-focused early childhood education centre that was part of the university. During my studies, I continually strived to match my academic experiences with real-world experiences including working on a UNESCO-sponsored global partnership between universities and peace-building NGOs. During my work on this initiative, I travelled to Bangkok, Thailand to organize a global forum and I also wrote many position papers and proposals, one of which secured $24,000 in funding. From that experience, I learned that there is a capacity for a global effort to accomplish major goals for the betterment of humanity. I also learned about some of the mechanisms for global cooperation and collaboration. This knowledge has inspired me to take on large-scale educational reforms.

Since graduating, I have continued working in relevant fields including working with youth and family communication workshops in marginalized and low-income communities. While working in these fields, I matched my front line work with broader policy work while sitting on the board of directors for a poverty reduction and prevention organization. My intent was to immerse myself into the issue of youth poverty and isolation through multiple vantage points and perspectives.

Currently, I am the communications coordinator for an academic department at the University of Waterloo that aims to generate new inter-disciplinary knowledge about social innovations and the social innovation process in Canada. Through this position, I am learning to view intractable problems through a systems and complexity lens. With a rapidly emerging field of digital technology and its implications in education, I believe it is of the utmost importance to understand the complexity of the field and deliver solutions that solve systemic problems and that are built from multiple perspectives.

My overarching career objective is to actively work on the second Millennium Development Goal set forth by the United Nations: universal primary education. I want to advocate that early childhood education is a right and can have massive long-term economic, social and individual benefits [click here to read a previous post on the subject of economic benefits]. I believe that digital technology can achieve huge gains in educational attainment and access, however, because it is an emerging and constantly evolving field, I would like to have the skills to sufficiently assess its effectiveness and coordinate proper delivery.

The program at Ryerson will offer me the critical skills and methodologies to properly understand the constantly emerging field of early childhood education and the potential for digital technology to make substantial gains in inclusion. Its focus on diversity and inclusion will give me a broader perspective of the educational needs of a global population.

Sincerely,
Nick Petten

To read more about my ideas and thoughts around Early Childhood Education, please visit my ‘Education’ section on this website.

How to Educate a Planet

I was inspired to call this blog post, “How to Educate a Planet” based on a research study that was highlighted in the Harvard International Review. The purpose of the research was to investigate the connection between the personal computer and educational attainments in developed and developing countries. In the study, they highlight two major education initiatives: the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) goal of establishing universal primary education (UPE) and Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program. The programs are identified has representing two very different approaches to improving education on a global scale.

Continue reading “How to Educate a Planet”

Microsoft’s global initiative, Partners in Learning, Video

Partners in Learning is a global initiative designed to actively increase access to technology and improve its use in learning. Our goal is to help schools gain better access to technology, foster innovative approaches to pedagogy and teacher professional development and provide education leaders with the tools to envision, implement and manage change.

Together with our partners around the world, we are focusing on three key areas that have the greatest potential to empower students and teachers and transform education:

Technology and Peace: UPeace offers new course

The United Nations University for Peace is offering an exciting new course called, Technology and Peace. The course is being taught by AshokaPeace’s Nick Martin. The course will teach how technology is currently shaping the peace-building and conflict management process. It will also explore the potential that technology has for peace.

Here is the course description:

“Course Description: The advent of new technologies has fundamentally changed the capacity for processing and exchanging information in the 21st century. NGOs and governments, and companies alike are just beginning to understand the potential that these tools and systems can have in analyzing and addressing a range of social problems. This dynamic one-week course will explore how technology is being used to transform conflicts, build more sophisticated statistical models, fight diseases, monitor elections, distribute food, design better economic development measures, and much more. It will also consider some of the key challenges related to access, implementation, scale, and evaluation that working with technology presents. The course is designed for professionals from both the private and public sectors to assist them in developing strategies and skills to benefit their organization amid this rapidly evolving landscape. Participants can expect a hands-on and interactive learning environment with a variety of real world examples from organizations working in the field.”

I hope that this course will be put up online for free for people to learn from, share and contribute to–which is, of course, in the spirit of what technology allows us to do. While there is a lot of resources out there on the peace-building process it requires careful curation of the educational content. When an organization or individual approaches a conflict that needs mediation and a peace-building process, it would be beneficial if they had the credentials and knowledge of how to deal with the conflict from an accredited institution. By institutionalizing the educational content of peace-building and conflict management, careful academic consideration can be applied to the curriculum.

Check out this slightly outdated video on the United Nations University for Peace:

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For more information, please visit their website at: http://upeace.org

Thomas Friedman’s MIT Keynote Lecture


I am listening to Thomas Friedman giving a lecture at MIT which has been posted on MIT’s OpenCourseWare. He is speaking largely about his new book, The World is Flat. It is a very inspiring lecture about the development of technology and how it has enabled the world to conduct its business in radically different ways. In ways that we can not even comprehend yet using our outdated economic measurements.

Around the 27 minute mark he says this:

“Because when you have a world this flat and individuals are this empowered to act on their own imagination, globally, what individuals imagine really matters. And therefore how well a university, a country, a state, a school enables and inspires an individual, I think, will be the greatest single competitive edge in the world that we are going into.”

To get the true meaning of the quote, you really need to listen to the lecture. I highly recommend it.

Thomas Friedman’s MIT Keynote Lecture

Two Emerging Trends

Two emerging trends are coinciding that are changing the way we give back to the community . The first trend is the recognition that Not-for-Profit Organizations must grasp online technology and social media to maximize their efforts. The other trend is a burgeoning generation of young professionals that want to contribute to the greater social good. How can we effectively engage this generation so that they can have that positive effect on the greater social good?

In the heart of the technology industry in Waterloo, Ontario I have seen the dizzying advance of technology in all parts of our lives. Everyone is carrying around a mobile computing platform that they continually check for up-to-date weather, emails, restaurants, stock quotes, twitter feeds, facebook messages, and the list goes on. Then they go home to their computer and are continually checking Twitter, Facebook, and Digg feeds (amongst hundreds of other social media tools) to keep track of the world around them. Our lives have become interwoven with the ebb and flow of the online world.

While the ordinary citizens are beginning to take their mobile device and online experience for granted as a matter of daily life, companies and organizations are desperately trying to keep up with emerging trends in online technology to increase their exposure and services to maximize their profits. Some have successfully grasped the rapidly changing nature of technology and social media, while others simply can’t keep up due to a lack of understanding, resources, and energy.

The case for Not-for-Profit Organizations

There is a particular type of organization that are in a unique position when it comes to the use of social media and online technology. That is, the Not-for-Profit Organization (NPO) with a social cause. A NPO can stand to gain everything from effectively using social media in increasing their organization’s exposure, running advocacy campaigns, and finding new sources of funding to continue and expand their work. However, NPOs have a fundamental weakness that is inherent in their operations, and that is, the lack of a sustainable and healthy funding source. Because of that weakness, many NPOs are unable to keep up with this dizzying advance of technology because of a lack in resources, usually in the form of a lack of employee time.

This inability to keep up may leave some NPOs apathetic about effectively using social media and emerging online technology which creates a cycle that leaves them further and further away from their online presence and greater public exposure.

The Emerging Trend of the Young Professional

The situation may seem bleak for these NPOs, but there is another emerging trend that is gaining momentum. That trend is the willingness and energy of young people in the technical-skills professions that want to contribute to a greater social impact. Those technical-skills professions lie in the financial, graphic design, web design, engineering, computer science fields, to name a few. These young people have graduated from university and college with a technical degree and are immediately thrust into the corporate world where they will make the big bucks and be put to work to maximize the profits of their respective corporations. But it isn’t only about the money anymore for these young professionals. They want to create a greater social impact on the world around them and not only an impact on the quarterly reports of their corporations.

So, that’s the situation we have right now. We have NPOs that know they need to develop their social media and online presence to maximize their efforts but are being left behind and we have an emerging class of young professions that want to contribute to a greater social impact.

So how will we effectively engage this generation of young professionals to contribute to the greater social good?

A Solution: Time for Change

One such example of a social venture to bridge the gap between the young professionals and the not-for-profit sector is the Time for Change initiative. The inaugural event took place on December 3rd, 2009 at the HotShots Gallery in Toronto, Ontario. The event was a silent photo auction, but instead of participants bidding money, they bid time in the form of hours that will be matched with not-for-profit organizations. The event raised 517 hours from the participants with matching hours from the organizers (including myself) to a total of 1,034 hours for 12 auctioned photos. The organizers will then match those hours from the participants with various organizations in the community in the form of volunteer time.

Most of the participants were coming from a corporate background and were around the ages of 23 to 30. Most had technical skills in computer science, graphic design, web design, accounting, marketing, etc. And most wanted to find a way to give back to the greater social good. This event presented itself as such an opportunity. Each participant will be contacted personally by us, the organizers, Kristina Lugo (@kristinalugo), Ruby Ku (@rubyku), Renjie Butalid (@renjie), and Nick Petten (@petten) to find which technical skills they would like to contribute to the advancement of a not-for-profit organization. We then work with the organizations to find out how those technical skills can be applied to their operations.

An Experiment in Social Impact

We openly state that this is an experiment to see how the concept will work in the real world. We don’t necessarily have all the solutions to creating the relationships between the young professionals, the organizers and the NPOs. We are going to critically assess each method we use and listen to the feedback of each participant and organization involved. Our fundamental philosophy is that of creating a relationship between both sectors, the corporate sector where the young professionals work and the NPO sector so that we can all contribute to a greater social impact.

To find out more about the Time for Change initiative, visit our blog at: www.t4change.com. And search Twitter with the hashtag: #t4change for the latest discussions on the subject.

Two Emerging Trends

Two emerging trends are coinciding that are changing the way we give back to the community . The first trend is the recognition that Not-for-Profit Organizations must grasp online technology and social media to maximize their efforts. The other trend is a burgeoning generation of young professionals that want to contribute to the greater social good. How can we effectively engage this generation so that they can have that positive effect on the greater social good?

In the heart of the technology industry in Waterloo, Ontario I have seen the dizzying advance of technology in all parts of our lives. Everyone is carrying around a mobile computing platform that they continually check for up-to-date weather, emails, restaurants, stock quotes, twitter feeds, facebook messages, and the list goes on. Then they go home to their computer and are continually checking Twitter, Facebook, and Digg feeds (amongst hundreds of other social media tools) to keep track of the world around them. Our lives have become interwoven with the ebb and flow of the online world.

While the ordinary citizens are beginning to take their mobile device and online experience for granted as a matter of daily life, companies and organizations are desperately trying to keep up with emerging trends in online technology to increase their exposure and services to maximize their profits. Some have successfully grasped the rapidly changing nature of technology and social media, while others simply can’t keep up due to a lack of understanding, resources, and energy.

The case for Not-for-Profit Organizations

There is a particular type of organization that are in a unique position when it comes to the use of social media and online technology. That is, the Not-for-Profit Organization (NPO) with a social cause. A NPO can stand to gain everything from effectively using social media in increasing their organization’s exposure, running advocacy campaigns, and finding new sources of funding to continue and expand their work. However, NPOs have a fundamental weakness that is inherent in their operations, and that is, the lack of a sustainable and healthy funding source. Because of that weakness, many NPOs are unable to keep up with this dizzying advance of technology because of a lack in resources, usually in the form of a lack of employee time.

This inability to keep up may leave some NPOs apathetic about effectively using social media and emerging online technology which creates a cycle that leaves them further and further away from their online presence and greater public exposure.

The Emerging Trend of the Young Professional

The situation may seem bleak for these NPOs, but there is another emerging trend that is gaining momentum. That trend is the willingness and energy of young people in the technical-skills professions that want to contribute to a greater social impact. Those technical-skills professions lie in the financial, graphic design, web design, engineering, computer science fields, to name a few. These young people have graduated from university and college with a technical degree and are immediately thrust into the corporate world where they will make the big bucks and be put to work to maximize the profits of their respective corporations. But it isn’t only about the money anymore for these young professionals. They want to create a greater social impact on the world around them and not only an impact on the quarterly reports of their corporations.

So, that’s the situation we have right now. We have NPOs that know they need to develop their social media and online presence to maximize their efforts but are being left behind and we have an emerging class of young professions that want to contribute to a greater social impact.
So how will we effectively engage this generation of young professionals to contribute to the greater social good?

A Solution: Time for Change

One such example of a social venture to bridge the gap between the young professionals and the not-for-profit sector is the Time for Change initiative. The inaugural event took place on December 3rd, 2009 at the HotShots Gallery in Toronto, Ontario. The event was a silent photo auction, but instead of participants bidding money, they bid time in the form of hours that will be matched with not-for-profit organizations. The event raised 517 hours from the participants with matching hours from the organizers (including myself) to a total of 1,034 hours for 12 auctioned photos. The organizers will then match those hours from the participants with various organizations in the community in the form of volunteer time.

Most of the participants were coming from a corporate background and were around the ages of 23 to 30. Most had technical skills in computer science, graphic design, web design, accounting, marketing, etc. and most wanted to find a way to give back to the greater social good. This event presented itself as such an opportunity. Each participant will be contacted personally by us, the organizers, Kristina Lugo (@kristinalugo), Ruby Ku (@rubyku), Renjie Butalid (@renjie), and Nick Petten (@petten) to find which technical skills they would like to contribute to the advancement of a not-for-profit organization. We then work with the organizations to find out how those technical skills can be applied to their operations.

An Experiment in Social Impact

We openly state that this is an experiment to see how the concept will work in the real world. We don’t necessarily have all the solutions to creating the relationships between the young professionals, the organizers and the NPOs. We are going to critically assess each method we use and listen to the feedback of each participant and organization involved. Our fundamental philosophy is that of creating a relationship between both sectors, the corporate sector where the young professionals work and the NPO sector so that we can all contribute to a greater social impact.

To find out more about the Time for Change initiative, visit our blog at: www.t4change.com. And search Twitter with the hashtag: #t4change for the latest discussions on the subject.