Theatre Glendon theatre students are pushing the boundaries of audience interaction in their upcoming  production,  , opening Feb. 28.

Inspired by the Occupy movement and adapted from Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade by student Dan Pelletier, this play explores class struggle and questions the nature of revolution. Directed by Glendon theatre instructor and award-winning director Aleksandar Lukac, it will take its audiences deep into the struggles of the 99 per cent.

Here’s the unusual bit. Every performance will be on the Internet. And – a very big and – viewers will be invited to send comments via and about the production. Those comments will be projected in real time onto the tent city set, raw and uncensored, and the student actors will answer them on stage during the performance.

“This hasn’t been done before that I know of,” says Lukac. Known for mounting , especially in his native Serbia, Lukac has alerted Toronto theatre companies about this experiment so they can witness what happens. The tweets and Facebook messages “will be a distraction or a help. Once we open the gate anything can pass through. It will show who’s watching, anyway.”

The play runs Feb. 28 through March 3 at Theatre Glendon, Glendon campus, at 7pm. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for students. Call the box office for tickets: 416-487-6822.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Bartlett identified a gap in the online realm, arguing that a need existed for a digital “nature calendar”. He is currently constructing a collection of 365 short prose pieces – one piece for each day of the year – which he is posting to Facebook where hopes to include something of the “natural” world into the social networking sphere.

Right: From left, poets and keynote speakers Brian Bartlett, Armand Garnet Ruffi and Rita Wong discuss issues in contemporary environmental literature

The purpose of the Green Words/Green Worlds: Environmental Poetry & Environmental Politics conference, which took place at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel in late October, was to examine the relationship between literature and environmental politics in Canada. A keynote panel featuring prominent Canadian poets Bartlett, Armand Garnet Ruffo and Rita Wong opened the conference presented by the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES).

FES Professor Cate Sandilands, the Canada Research Chair for Sustainability & Culture, introduced the three speakers. Making reference to Bartlett’s essay, Sandilands addressed the tension between “savouring and saving the world.” This idea became a unifying thread amongst the three speakers, who offered additional insights on environmental literature today.

Bartlett recounted the challenges of mastering the 420 character limit for Facebook wallposts. He read a selection of his Facebook poetry to the audience and addressed the feeling of being torn between sensuous desires for the earth and a motivation to “save the world”. This tension between desire and concern, he noted, could be fused into a unified way of looking at the environment through literature. Grounding one’s passion for the earth in the earth itself was a concept that Bartlett emphasized throughout his presentation.

Left: A member of the audience addresses the speakers during the keynote Q&A period at the Gladstone Hotel

Native Canadian poet Armand Garnet Ruffo also spoke, drawing attention to the Anishinabe land that the Gladstone Hotel was built upon. This acknowledgement, later echoed by Wong, served to remind the audience of the choice involved in deciding which stories one shares, and ultimately sustains. The dominant narrative portrays the Gladstone Hotel being situated on private property, while Ruffo’s “alternate narrative” frames the venue as residing on Mississauga Anishinabe soil.

“So much of our lives are spent in narrative…we use narrative to explain our existence and our place in the world,” Ruffo pointed out. He stated that stories are now more important than ever, as a new story can change the way one approaches the environment. Ruffo called for more stories to encourage empathy, suggesting that one should approach a narrative by asking: “is this a story for me?”

Wong, whose environmental justice poetry has been considered a kind of literary activism, seeks to uncover environmental racism rooted in fact, exploring these issues through her poetry.

Central to Wong’s presentation was an exploration of water as a metaphor and a material reality that connects people. Those who live downstream, for example, know something of those upstream. Wong argued that watersheds can teach a lot about our environment and communities, as they are “to the land what the voice is to the body.” She coined this idea as “watershed wisdom”.

The panel concluded with a Q&A period and a discussion of how we embrace the more challenging stories of today’s environment. Wong urged that people find joy in what they do, suggesting that writers should embrace both the beauty and the despair inherent to environmental stories. Ruffo concluded, “We are tearing up the earth and the tar sands because we have told ourselves the wrong stories…we have told ourselves that oil is more important than blood.” Creating literature mindful of the environmental context, to correct these “wrong stories”, was a strategy that the keynote speakers promoted throughout the evening.

Submitted to YFile by Mike Young, FES communications graduate assistant

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A 91��ɫ study found that – every day for five to 15 minutes for a week – increased their happiness and self-esteem.

After six months, many were still actively helping others and were reporting that their happiness and self-esteem levels were still up, according to the study, which will be published in the spring edition of the , an international scientific quarterly available online through Springer science and business media.

Myriam Mongrain, associate professor of psychology in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health and lead author for the study, says 700 people from across Canada were recruited online at the end of 2007 through a Facebook ad and then directed to the survey site, . The age group of respondents ranged from 18 to 73 with 80 per cent women and 20 per cent men.

The data collected on the original respondents – before they had started the compassion exercise – showed that the majority were “depressed,” says Mongrain.

Of the original 700 recruits, 458 people completed the first week’s exercise which required them to help or interact with another person every day – it could be someone they knew or a stranger – “in a supportive and considerate’’ way. The positive effects on their happiness and self-esteem were “very strong,” says Mongrain.

After three months 260 responded, with the majority saying that they were still performing acts of kindness – one to three days a week – and feeling the same positive effects. After six months, which was the end of the study, there were 179 responses with most still doing a good deed one to three days a week and feeling happier for it.

Despite the high drop-out rate, the results indicate that the exercise of performing acts of kindness “sustained increases in happiness and self-esteem,’’ says Mongrain, who had help analyzing the data from co-authors of the study, [91��ɫ researchers] Jacqueline Chin and Leah Shapira.

The study, funded by the , was also covered May 17 in the London Free Press and Toronto Sun and May 18 in The Globe and Mail and on 680 News in Toronto.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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More than 700 people took part in a study that charted the effects of being nice to others, in small doses, over the course of a week. Researchers asked participants to act compassionately towards someone for 5 to 15 minutes a day, by actively helping or interacting with them in a supportive and considerate manner. Six months later, participants reported increased happiness and self-esteem.

“The concept of compassion and kindness resonates with so many religious traditions, yet it has received little empirical evidence until recently,” says lead author Myriam Mongrain (right), professor of psychology in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health.

“What’s amazing is that the time investment required for these changes to occur is so small. We’re talking about mere minutes a day,” she says.

Participants’ levels of depression, happiness and self-esteem were assessed at the study’s onset, and at four subsequent points over the following six months; those in the compassionate condition reported significantly greater increases in self-esteem and happiness at six months compared to those in the control group.

So why does doing good for others make us feel good about ourselves?

“The simplest answer is that doing noble, charitable acts makes us feel better about ourselves. We reaffirm that we are ‘good’, which is a highly valued trait in our society. It is also possible that being kind to others may help us be kind to ourselves,” Mongrain says. She notes that previous studies have demonstrated a causal relationship between compassionate behaviours and charitable self-evaluations.

“Compassion cuts both ways,” she says. “If you make a conscious decision to not be so hard on others, it becomes easier to not be so hard on yourself. Furthermore, providing support to others often means that we will get support back. That is why caring for and helping others may be the best possible thing we can do for ourselves. On a less selfish level, there is something intrinsically satisfying about helping others and witnessing their gratitude,” says Mongrain.

Not surprisingly, research has also shown that compassionate activities increase the level of meaning in one’s life, which in turn elevates levels of happiness.

Researchers expected that those with needy personalities would experience greater reductions in depressive symptoms and greater increases in happiness and self-esteem as a result of being kind to others.

“We hypothesized this would occur as a result of the reassurance [needy personalities] might extract from positive exchanges with others,” Mongrain says. “We did see some reduction in depressive symptoms for anxiously attached individuals, but further research is needed to see if there is any long-term benefit.”

The study, “Practising Compassion Increases Happiness and Self-Esteem”, is forthcoming in the spring issue of the . It is co-authored by 91��ɫ researchers Jacqueline Chin and Leah Shapira.

The research was funded by the .

You can follow the project online at , on Twitter and on Facebook.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Did you know that Upper Canada was the first place in the British Empire to make laws limiting slavery (1793)?

Did you know that Mathieu Da Costa, a multilingual translator of African descent, came to Canada with Samuel de Champlain in 1604?

If you didn’t, now you do. And you can learn many more such interesting facts about the African-Canadian experience.

To mark Black History Month, 91��ɫ’s is posting did-you-knows daily on Facebook and Twitter throughout February.

The postings are part of the institute’s new project, . Funded by a knowledge mobilization grant from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada, the project aims to produce and share new scholarship on the immigration to Canada of African American refugees from slavery.

The institute is collaborating with scholars and educators, community groups, libraries, government agencies and other stakeholders to write a new chapter on Canada’s Underground Railroad-era heritage. The objective is to share this new information with the public, especially teachers, children and youth, in easily accessible ways.

For daily facts about the African-Canadian experience, visit , follow  and check out the website.

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Litoiu has won awards before, but these particular ones stem from his pioneering work in cloud computing, the next big evolution in computing technology. “It’s one of the hot topics in computing these days,” he says. Since cloud computing surfaced as a brilliant idea in 2007, he’s led much of the exploration into this new frontier.

Right: Marin Litoiu

Cloud computing will spell the end of desktop computers and institutional servers in five to 10 years, predicts Litoiu. Instead, hardware functions such as storage, memory and processing, and office and enterprise software will be provided and managed automatically from remote servers via the Internet (or “cloud”).

Through the Internet, off-site service providers will automatically update software, provide security and guarantee uninterrupted service. Software as a Service, as it’s called, will be cheaper, more convenient and more reliable, says Litoiu.

He compares it to the evolution of electricity delivery. In the early days, companies and institutions used their own generators to supply power. Now we all plug into a remote continental grid.

At 91��ɫ, a few cluster groups, including his own, already operate on clouds. Facebook and Google run on cloud computing systems, though they’re not completely automated, he says. Banks don’t yet, but “it’s just a matter of time before everything is run on virtual systems.”

Litoiu started his career as a computer science professor in Romania. He immigrated to Canada in 1996 and started a second PhD, this one in systems engineering. Within a year, IBM recruited him as a senior researcher at its Centre for Advanced Studies, where he led more than 30 research projects with academics and partners across the globe.

In 2007, when the idea of cloud computing began percolating in labs around the world, IBM created the Centre of Excellence for Research in Adaptive Systems () and appointed him director. “We were among the first in the world to create a centre to look at this very new concept of cloud computing,” says Litoiu.

Even after his return to academia in 2008, when he joined 91��ɫ’s School of Information Technology, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, Litoiu continues to collaborate with IBM on developing computing tools and infrastructure. “I’m a strong believer in collaborating with industry because it gives students industrial experience and a chance to apply their skills to real problems. I want their theses to be relevant.”

This year, IBM named him CAS (Centre for Advanced Studies) . The award recognizes Litoiu's leadership in cloud computing research, research that benefits IBM and industry at large, and Litoiu’s continuing efforts to share his research and knowledge with IBM developers.

Left: Marin Litoiu (left) accepts Faculty Fellow of the Year award from IBM's Bart Vashaw

Litoiu specializes in adaptive computing systems – in computers that take care of themselves. In naming him Faculty Fellow of the Year, IBM cited two of his collaborative research projects. One was “Real-time monitoring and simulations of business processes”, which aimed to pinpoint then shorten delays in automated functions, such as those used in finance and human resources applications. The other was developing a business-driven cloud optimization architecture, which resulted in several prototypes and papers. One paper won the at the 2010 Association for Computing Machinery Symposium on Applied Computing in Switzerland in March.

In 2009, Litoiu also won the IBM Project of the Year Award for building a two-layered cloud computing model for desktop virtualization: the first layer would provide storage and raw computation; the second, services such as software management (see YFile Dec. 18, 2008).

“These awards validate my assumption that the work we do is meaningful and has an impact not only on the academic community but also on industry, on one of the biggest players in the world in computing,” says Litoiu, of IBM. “The other important thing is that students involved in the research are directly or indirectly exposed to the industry and industrial technology and that their research is rewarded as well.”

At 91��ɫ, Litoiu leads a research team of 12 post-doc and graduate students. Soon they will be working in a new lab dedicated to cloud computing research. The Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada has just granted him $234,000, and IBM has made up the difference for a total of $500,000 to start a new project in cloud computing.

“We live in a pretty exciting world,” says Litoiu. “There are a lot of things to be done in computing. We’re not even halfway through this computer revolution.”

By Martha Tancock, YFile contributing writer

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The Star was only one of Toronto's papers to cover.

“Everybody knows somebody like that,” Mehdizadeh, a psychology student in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health, told the Star. “They’re updating their status every five minutes. They’re telling you what celebrity they look like. They’re posting pictures of themselves in a bikini.”

Her article was also covered in the , , , The Canadian Press online (via ) and . It was reported by Toronto’s 680 NEWS, CFRB Radio, and radio stations in Calgary, Regina, Edmonton and Moncton.

On Sept.22, the study was covered in New 91��ɫ, NY's .

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Soraya Mehdizadeh of 100 users at 91��ɫ ranging in age from 18-25 years old. Her study, published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, found that individuals higher in narcissism and lower in self-esteem spent more time on the site and filled their pages with more self-promotional content.

“We all know people like this. They’re updating their status every five minutes and the photos they post are very carefully construed,” says Mehdizadeh. “The question is, are these really accurate representations of the individual or are they merely a projection of who the individual wants to be?”

Mehdizadeh says she was struck by the fact that those with lower self-esteem were more apt to use this social networking tool.

“I believe the next question to be answered is whether or not the use of such websites could be used to improve one’s self-esteem and overall sense of well-being. This sort of finding may have great implications in the lives of the socially anxious or depressed,” she says.

In the study, five features of participants’ Facebook pages were assessed for self-promotion: the “about me” section, the main photo, the first 20 pictures on the “view photos of me” section, notes, and status updates.

For the purpose of the study, self-promotion was defined as any descriptive or visual information that attempted to persuade others about one's own positive qualities. For example, facial expression (striking a pose or making a face) and picture enhancement (using photo editing software) were assessed in the main photo and “view photos of me” sections. The use of positive adjectives, self-promoting mottos, and metaphorical quotes were examined in the “about me” section. Self-promotion in the notes section could include posting results from Facebook applications including “my celebrity look-alikes,” which compares a photo of the user to celebrities, or vain online quiz results.

The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale was used to measure participants’ self-esteem. Narcissism was assessed using the Narcissism Personality Inventory.

Mehdizadeh also looked at the role of gender: she found that men displayed more self-promotional content in the “about me” and notes sections, whereas women demonstrated more self-promotion in the main photo section. No significant difference between the sexes was observed with regards to content in “view photos” or status updates.

The research was conducted as part of Mehdizadeh’s undergraduate thesis in the Bachelor of Psychology program in 91��ɫ’s .

“I thought this was an interesting way to apply theoretical paradigms in psychology to online self-presentation, which is still a fairly new concept,” she says.

By Melissa Hughes, media relations officer.

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The two-and-a-half-day professional learning event included keynote and spotlight presentations, hands-on training sessions and networking opportunities, focusing on implementing new technology tools and best practices in the classroom.

Right: Anita Townsend (left), Simcoe County District School Board's principal of curriculum services, and Anita Drossis, a teacher at Vaughan Secondary School, participated in the 2010 ABEL Summer Institute

A highlight on the first day was the keynote speech by Alec Couros, a professor of educational technology & media and coordinator of information & communications technologies at the University of Regina. His talk, “How Informal Learning Networks Can Transform Education”, demonstrated how educators can embrace informal networks such as Twitter and Facebook, and looked at how our networked future is key to the reform of teaching and learning.

The conference also included talks from Garfield Gini-Newman, a lecturer at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, and Bill Muirhead, associate provost, academic, at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Both speakers had unique takes on how the rapidly changing technology landscape will affect the future of teaching and learning.

Left: ASI 2010 participants discuss the course material

The ABEL program launched its new Web site and online community at the conference, giving delegates the opportunity to continue discussions and stay connected online once professional learning and networking sessions had ended. Visit the new Web site.

Private and public sector sponsors make the ABEL Summer Institute possible. This year’s ASI sponsors included Microsoft Canada, Polycom, Apple, the Ontario Research & Innovation Optical Network, Pearson Education Canada, Duplicom Presentation Systems, Mindshare Learning, Ontario’s Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat, 91��ɫ, the 91��ɫ Region District School Board, Turning Technologies Canada and Sobeys.

For more information and to view the event agenda, visit the  Web site.

Founded in 2002, ABEL is led and funded by the Office of the Vice-President, Research & Innovation at 91��ɫ and the 91��ɫ Region District School Board. ABEL has established national and international credibility as a leading authority on new modes of teaching, training, learning and collaboration.

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An analysis by researchers from 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health suggests that egotism and low self-esteem may be related to “greater online activity” among Facebook profiles of users between 18- to 25-years old.

In a report published by cnbc.com, a similar study from San Diego State University also found that 60 per cent of university students surveyed used social networking sites for "self-promotion, narcissism and attention-seeking."

The is available on the International Business Times News Website.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Wiliams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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