The organizing committee is very excited to welcome two guest speakers this year: Daniel Dupont and Awad Ibrahim.
Daniel Dupont
Daniel Dupont works with EduConsillium to develop, implement, and manage training and education to improve performance in changing organizations. He has been at the forefront in the development of Human Resource Technology practices and in the implementation of distance education technology. Over the last 25 years, he has held senior roles in large corporations as well as multiple governmental and public organizations.
Keynote Talk - Assessing Personnel Digital Competencies to Enhance Business Productivity through Action Research
This case study keynote illustrates how education and business research processes can be applied together in corporate settings. We will examine lessons learned from a research initiative by CEFRIO, a network of university, industry and government researchers who collaborate to support organizations' adoption and use of digital technologies.
Motivated by the premise that digital capacity has an impact on business productivity, CEFRIO examined digital capacity in small and medium-sized businesses. This study focused on how businesses can enhance their digital capacity by integrating personnel development into their business plans, with the ultimate goal of increasing productivity. An action research approach was used to identify the competencies and assess them.
Employees' digital competencies, such as collaboration in digital environments, were assessed in 15 small and medium-sized businesses in the Aeronautic and Clothing industries. We will examine how digital competencies were assessed on the job and in employees' personal lives, and how these data contribute to a more accurate understanding of their competency levels.
Professor Awad Ibrahim
Awad Ibrahim is a Professor at the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Education and has over 100 publications to his credit. He is a curriculum theorist with a wide range of interests including youth and Black popular culture, social justice and community service learning, and applied linguistics. He has ongoing projects in Morocco, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
Keynote Talk - From Hong Kong to Brazil to the Arab Spring: What can the Global Hip-Hop Nation Teach us about Citizenship?
Using Brazil, Japan, Hong Kong and Arab Spring as examples, my aim in this presentation is to explore the semiotic meaning of Global Hip-Hop Nation. This is a Nation, I am contending, that has its own linguistic and cultural passport. You gotta know the code: from graffiti to b-boying/b-girling, DJ-ing, and MC-ing. Only then do you become a citizen of the Global Hip-Hop Nation. So, I am asking: how does one get this passport, that is, how one access this Nation and get his/her passport stamped?; and what are the political, linguistic and cultural implications of becoming a citizen of this Global Nation? Once your passport is stamped and you become a “citizen” of this Global Nation, I am concluding, then you have access to cultural and linguistic codes that only citizens of this Nation have access to. In the case of Brazil, especially in the favelas, thanks to Hip-Hop “race” can be talked about and addressed as a social issue (problem if you like). In the case of Japan, the citizens of this Global Hip-Hop Nation impacted the Japanese language in such a way that the Japanese language has rhymes now where it did not have before the introduction of Hip-Hop in Japan. In the case of Hong Kong, the devalued Cantonese language is now front and center, again, thanks to the impact of Hip-Hop in Hong Kong. In the case of the Arab Spring, finally, I am arguing that the whole Arab Spring Revolution started with a Hip-Hop song. In conclusion, I will draw broad lessons for civic engagement and citizenship education. I will also address local projects I initiated in Canada dealing with civic engagement, spoken word and young people. Are you ready? Hip-Hop is takin over. WORD!