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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Students from 91��ɫ’s Osgoode Hall Law School will make their case in increments of 140 characters or less, in what’s billed as the world’s first Twitter moot court ().

On Tuesday, Feb. 21, five teams from law schools across Canada will argue a moot court case entirely on the popular social media platform. The event, hosted by West Coast Environmental Law, begins at 1pm EST; its hashtag is #twtmoot.

“One hundred and forty characters is a great way to focus legal arguments and ideas,” says Osgoode Dean Lorne Sossin, himself an avid tweeter (). “This is a novel and timely initiative. Congratulations to West Coast Environmental Law for initiating the project and good luck to the mooters, especially Team Osgoode. We’ll be following this groundbreaking moot with great interest,” he says.

The public is invited to participate by following @twtmoot, watching the action on the Twitter Moot list () or on its (no account required), and posting with the #twtmoot hashtag – comments, discussion and heckling welcome!

Teams of two students from law schools at Dalhousie University, University of Ottawa, University of British Columbia, University of Victoria and 91��ɫ will argue a mock appeal of a recent precedent-setting environmental case, West Moberly First Nations vs. British Columbia. The case raises issues related to the survival of an endangered caribou herd threatened by coal mining and ongoing industrial development.

Osgoode students Nikki Petersen and Emelia Baack will represent the West Moberly First Nations in the appeal; they will argue that the nation’s treaty right to hunt should extend to protecting a particular herd of caribou from coal mining impacts.

Petersen hopes the social media aspect will help connect people who are passionate about issues stemming from the case.

“Twitter is a great way to let many people share their views. I see the moot as a spark to get a discussion going about environmental law issues in Canada. The response to Team Osgoode has been very positive,” she says.

The Twitter Moot will be presided over by a panel of three judges: William Deverell, Omar Ha-Redeye, and Kathleen Mahoney.

For more information about the Twitter Moot and how to participate, . Team Osgoode is sponsored by Saxe Law Office.

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

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Those questions and more are at the core of Making the Scene: 91��ɫville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s, a new book by 91��ɫ postdoctoral fellow published this month by the University of Toronto Press.

The book examines the history of Toronto's countercultural mecca, 1960s 91��ɫville. Henderson narrates the development of the 91��ɫville scene from its early coffee house days when it was frequented by Neil Young and Joni Mitchell to its drug-fuelled final months.

A cultural historian Henderson is a postdoctoral fellow with the Department of History in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

“I have always found myself drawn to that form of cultural rebellion. I admired the perhaps oversimplified idea of a peace and love movement, and I really loved the music that had been produced from within the ranks of the counterculture,” says Henderson, a self-professed neo-hippie. “So, when I was thinking about how to approach Canadian cultural history, I just aimed straight at this era [the 1960s] and the people I'd always found to be fascinating.”

Left: Stuart Henderson

The true story of the 91��ɫville scene, says Henderson, is about people trying to find a space in which to "perform" a hip identity and stretch the confines that they felt had been imposed on them by society, their parents and other sociopolitical pressures. "They were all looking for something real, something authentic. In their search, they uncovered some pretty amazing stuff and had some really interesting experiences," he says. "But authenticity is elusive and certainly fleeting. It's all about the journey, not the destination, as it turns out. A central point I want people to recognize is that 91��ɫville was not a 'hippie' place. It was a place that came to be closely associated with 'hippies' but people who fit that mold were never the only people hanging around there."

In Making the Scene, Henderson takes a new look at the hip mecca and gives a voice to people not typically heard in the popular stories associated with 91��ɫville – women, working class youth, business owners and municipal authorities. Members of biker gangs, working class kids (who didn't look much like "hippies", says Henderson), media types, store owners, gallery people, artists and musicians were the 91��ɫville neighbourhood. "All of these people were there and few of them would count as 'hippies' in any conventional definition, then or now," he says.

He explores how the 91��ɫville neighbourhood came to be regarded as the symbol of hip Toronto in the cultural imagination. Henderson argues that the popular association of 91��ɫville with the flower power generation was more accurately a close association with the widespread anxiety in the mid-1960s over the "degeneration" of the middle-class baby boomers into unproductive members of society.

The expectation of the time was that the working class and racial minorities would be rebellious and problematic, says Henderson. "The fact that these [hippies] were middle-class teenagers from the suburbs who were dropping acid and growing their hair and losing their virginity was what kept journalists and municipal authorities up at night."

91��ɫville in the 1960s, he says, was always more complicated than the 91��ɫville hippies.

In writing the book, which sprouted from his PhD dissertation, Henderson says there were many memorable experiences. "I got to spend some time with [writer and activist] who was a hero of mine. She was an astoundingly committed philanthropist and activist, and she always positioned herself at the forefront of battles to protect people from a system which had forgotten them," he says. "We spent an afternoon together a few months before she died and I was just so appreciative of her desire to participate in this project at such a late stage of her illness. I'll never forget that when I asked her why she was willing to come talk to a stranger under these circumstances, she just said: 'Oh, well, I trust the process. Write a good book'."

His next project involves a cultural history of the communal residence and alternative education experiment of the era, Rochdale College on Bloor Street. "I am writing a sequel of sorts to the 91��ɫville book. I am working on a book on Rochdale College and what I have termed 'hip separatism' in the 1970s," he says. "While 91��ɫville saw people performing cultural difference right there in the open," he says, "Rochdale remained closed to outsiders and tourists and represents a certain retreat from the integrationist, even evangelical, politics of '60s-era hip youth."

Despite his fascination with the 1960s, Henderson says that if he could dine with anyone, dead or alive, his choice would be Canadian artist Tom Thomson. "I have some good buddies who died too young. It'd be nice to see one of them again, but how do you choose? So, I'll be a Canadian cultural historian and say dinner over a campfire with Tom Thomson somewhere in Algonquin Park on a star-filled night. But mostly because I really like camping."

Henderson is on Twitter under the handle .

By Jenny Pitt-Clark, YFile editor

Republished 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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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.

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

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Follow for information about . You don't need to have a Twitter account to read the posts.

Some 91��ɫ research centres and departments are also tweeting, including:

• (IRIS)
• , 91��ɫ's knowledge mobilization unit
• (YIHR)

Lists of 91��ɫ's social media presence are available on and . See also YFile's guide to social media activity at 91��ɫ.

By Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer.

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