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Wednesday March 13, 2019

March 20, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday March 13, 2019

Ontario to ban cellphones from classrooms starting next school year

Ontario students will no longer be able to use their cellphones in the classroom next September, as Premier Doug Ford makes good on a populist campaign promise.

August 24, 2018

CTV News Toronto has confirmed that the Ministry of Education will change the code of conduct for students and teachers, implementing a ban on smartphone use during class time but allowing local school boards to decide how to enforce the new rules.

“Ontario’s students need to be able to focus on their learning – not their cellphones,” Education Minister Lisa Thompson said in a statement.

“By banning cellphone use that distracts from learning, we are helping students to focus on acquiring the foundational skills they need like reading, writing and math.”

The new student code of conduct is expected to have strict guidelines for cellphone use, including preventing students from placing their phones face-down on desks, even with the ringer set to silent.

September 3, 2013

Students would be allowed to bring their phones into the classroom, the government said, but usage would be reserved for educational and emergency situations.

“Obviously for emergency purposes, for medical purposes and for specific courses that require technological platforms – they’d be permissible,” Progressive Conservative MPP Stephen Lecce told CTV News Toronto.

The government said teachers and parents overwhelmingly supported banning cellphone use during telephone town halls and surveys conducted last fall, in which 97 per cent of the 35,000 respondents advocated for the move.

Among the feedback sent to the ministry of education, educators complained that phones were not only a distraction but that students were also using them to cheat and share unflattering photographs of teachers on social media.

September 17, 2010

Ministry of education officials, speaking on background, said students wouldn’t be expected to lock up their phones and while enforcement will be difficult, it will be left up to school boards.

“Parents deserve to know it, students deserve to know it for their own protection, and to be fair, educators want how they’re going to have that enforceability,” Lecce said.

While Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner agrees that cellphones can be a distraction, he is critical of what he describes as the government’s “top-down regulation” approach.

“The Ford government is just duplicating powers that educators already have to control cellphone use in their classrooms. Instead of empowering schools to create reasonable cell phone use policies, Ford is promising a province-wide ban that is impossible to enforce,” Schreiner said in a statement. (Source: CTV News)  

 

Posted in: Ontario Tagged: 2019-10, cellphones, classrooms, Doug Ford, King Edward VII, matron, nanny, Ontario, smart phones, state, tech, technology

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

September 24, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

Wednesday, September 25, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday, September 25, 2013

BlackBerry takeover offer buys company time

A takeover is necessary to give battered BlackBerry the time it needs to get itself back in order, company watchers say.

On Monday, BlackBerry said a consortium led by Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. had signed a letter of intent to buy the company for $9 US a share in a deal valued at $4.7 billion US.

The news came just days after BlackBerry announced it would take a non-cash loss in the second quarter of $930 million to $960 million, mainly due to its large inventory of unsold devices. The company said at the time that it sold only 3.7 million smartphones in the second quarter, and was cutting 4,500 jobs.

If the Fairfax bid is succesful BlackBerry, which went public in 1997, would disappear from stock markets. But it would gain time to fix its business away from the public scrutiny that comes with quarterly results and coverage by analysts, and the media.
“Taking it private [is] the only way to save anything,” said Iain Grant of technology research and strategy firm SeaBoard Group.
“Otherwise just continue circling the drain — every quarter losses continue, confidence evaporates, no magic [equals] no value,” Grant said in an email to CBC News.

Peter Misek, managing director at investment bank Jefferies in New York City, said the letter of intent “is a bit of a relief.”

“It kind of sets the bar below BlackBerry, stabilizes the business and allows them potentially to keep going,” he told CBC’s Lang & O’Leary Exchange.

Fairfax Financial, which is led by Prem Watsa, already owns about 10 per cent of BlackBerry. Watsa served on the BlackBerry board from January 2012 until August 2013, when he stepped down citing a potential conflict of interest. (Source: CBC News)

Posted in: Business, Canada Tagged: Blackberry, business, Editorial Cartoon, Fairfax, Ontario, RIM, takeover, tech, technology

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This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

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