Happy New Year! After a brief, but much-needed respite, the Enable team is back in the office, and already showing 2012 who’s boss.
We’d like to formally welcome our new co-op students, Kevin, Hank and Naheed, and we’d like to welcome Matt back for his second work term with us. Kevin and Hank will be learning the ropes with our education and training team, Matt will be working in the programming department, and Naheed will be lending his skills to marketing. We’re delighted to have all of them on board, and we can’t wait to see what new and amazing ideas they’ll bring to the table.
Well, okay, so we didn’t have a Festivus pole, we didn’t air our grievances, and the only feats of strength involved seeing how many chicken wings we could finish without busting our guts. Nonetheless, there was much non-denominational-holiday-related merriment.
2011 has been such an amazing year, and Ben and I feel incredibly fortunate to work with such talented, hard-working and funny people. Happy holidays, everyone, and here’s to an even more amazing 2012!
Two of us spent Friday and Saturday at the Ontario Conference for Exceptional Children, and met some extraordinary teachers, parents and students. Conferences and trade shows are always great for making new connections, but they also serve to inspire and reinforce that what we’re doing is important.
A point of focus in this organization is the use of technology to engage learners with learning challenges, behaviour issues, or autism spectrum disorder. Karen and I were both thrilled to think that we might reach and assist such a variety of children, especially since our first iPad app was submitted the day before the conference, and is likely to be available in the next week or two. I can’t tell you how amazing it is to find that something we’ve created has such potential!
Thanks so much to everyone at CEC for their insights!
Um, yeah, well, it’s been a while since we posted here. The good news is, our lack of blogginess over the past couple months has been due to our abundance of busyness. In an effort to get on schedule, here is a highlight reel.
With heavy hearts, we said goodbye to a fantastic bunch of summer co-op students (thanks for the hard work, guys). In September, we welcomed back Greg and Sarah, two bright lights from the University of Waterloo, for their second co-op term with us.
Karen Smolenaars joined our team as Office Manager, and Ruth Riddell came on board as our new video editor. Hooray!
ThinkAboutIt, our series of philosophy books for kids, has been making the rounds! Since our last post, we’ve released two new books (environmental philosophy and aesthetics). Three more books will be on their way early in 2012.
We also participated in Word On The Street in Toronto, as well as Milton Green’s “Green Holiday” event. This past weekend, we celebrated with an official launch party.
Work has begun on both IPad apps and teacher packs for our books! Both are scheduled for release at the end of 2011, and we’re so excited to be starting into this new venture.
1. How to convert 104 degrees Fahrenheit into Celsius. Either way, it was like sitting in front of a fireplace all day long…in a wool sweater. Hats off to Austinites for putting up with this on a regular basis.
2. We have amazing friends at LEGO Education, NI, and FIRST, and they have excellent taste in restaurants. Did you know that there are places that serve 15 kinds of meat at once, and that asparagus can be served beer-battered with lemon aioli? Thanks for the phenomenal meals, guys!
3. Partnerships can begin by chance, in unexpected places. Looking forward to working with all our new acquaintances!
4. Conferences like this are just as useful for learning to communicate and network as they are for picking up technical knowledge.
5. There are always new tricks to be learned (insert smart crack about “old dogs” here).
I’ve just spent two days at the first ever PLATO Institute at Columbia University, and am newly-inspired. The conference was composed of educators and thinkers from Canada, the United States, Finland, Turkey, Chile, Germany and beyond, all of whom were committed to bringing philosophy to pre-college classrooms.
I heard stories of how a little deep thought can help to make children better communicators, better problem-solvers, and better citizens. I also saw demonstrations of philosophy being taught to children through stories, film, art, sport, and even through food. If I weren’t already a believer in the power of big questions, I would have definitely gone home a convert.
In case you’re curious, here’s a video clip of Tom Wartenberg (a PLATO presenter) in a primary school classroom, teaching philosophy through literature.
‘Tis the season for festivals, and we’ve been busy bringing mechanical merriment to kids and parents in our community. Sporting our new philosophy for kids books, our stylish new t-shirts (thanks, Mark), as well as some nifty robot demos, we’ve been hitting the streets in search of brilliant young minds.
First came Osprey Woods Public School in Mississauga for their annual Funtastic Fair. Then came Milton’s Downtown Street Festival (Mother nature put the brakes on that one with a pretty spectacular thunderstorm). Yesterday was the Big Daddy Festival in Georgetown. Kids and their parents got to ask big questions, learn about how robots work, and even test-drive a TETRIX Ranger Bot.
I’m happy to report that we were a hit! After hearing “Hey, wanna drive a robot?”, passers-by couldn’t resist coming in for a peek. They were flipping through books, jumping up and down in front of motion sensors, and no one (big or small), could keep their hands off the controller. One parent even bestowed upon us the title “Coolest Company On The Planet” (we’d like to thank the Academy).
Many, many thanks to Ben, Pat, Scott, Octavian, Damian, Alex, and our future co-op student, Rebecca, for helping to make these events such a success!
Today we had the pleasure of being part of an educational display for the International Day for Biological Diversity, at the Georgetown Marketplace. As part of our philosophy for children program, we were excited to talk environmental ethics with some passionate young thinkers.
Also in attendance were an alligator, a wallaby, a red kangaroo, a lemur, some cool South-American Rodents, and several birds of prey (yeah, we were surprised and delighted too). There were baby trees to plant, beautiful works of carved art, and experts brimming with useful information.
The entire exhibit stood as a testament to the effectiveness (and fun) of hands-on learning, and we’d like to thank Leslie Adams of P.O.W.E.R Halton for organizing the event, and for letting us be part of it!
It’s official: Enable TC has relocated to a bigger, badder office.
The old office was getting kind of tight. Despite the fact that Zaid and Morteza looked cozy being seated so closely together, the frequency of awkward collisions increased as our team grew in numbers. So we threw our TETRIX, Mindstorms and LEGO parts in boxes and drove to our new crib only a few blocks away!
Here are some shots showing off Enable’s latest digs:
Nothing says “seize the day” like two grown men running for the ice cream truck!! Who can blame them really? The sweet tinkle-y tune calls to us all at some point. The construction of the Delta Bot is an exhausting process, and geek brains need fuel! What do you eat when you’re knee-deep in case structures and shift registers? Do you “frozen dairy dipped in chocolate” like our friends Jia and Zaid here, or do you “deep fried and salty dipped in ketchup”?
Loading ...
(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
