Bloomberg Announces Plan to Shore Up Arts in Schools

[24 July 2007 - New York Times] Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced yesterday that the city’s Department of Education will require all schools to maintain arts programs, and that principals will be rated in their annual reviews on how well they run those programs. The announcement came just months after the department infuriated arts groups by eliminating a multimillion-dollar program to finance arts education. Under a new set of city standards, the arts curriculums will be judged for comprehensiveness, and potential pay bonuses for principals could be affected. More

Richard Florida to Head Centre in Toronto: Reverse brain drain brings urban expert to U of T

[11 July 2007 - Toronto Star] Writing about America's "looming creativity crisis," renowned urban thinker Richard Florida nearly three years ago warned that religious intolerance and tightening security might chase away its best and brightest. "Terrorism is less a threat to the United States than the possibility that creative and talented people will stop wanting to live within its borders," Florida wrote in the Harvard Business Review in October 2004. "The nation must act in concrete ways to reassure both people – both Americans and global citizens – that it values openness, diversity and tolerance." Now, the best-selling author is proving his own prediction. Florida, 49, a public policy professor at George Mason University in Virginia, is coming to the University of Toronto as a professor of business economics in the Rotman School of Management. Florida will head the school's new $120 million Centre for Jurisdictional Advantage and Prosperity. It will study how cities, regions and provinces can attract individuals to study, live and work, and companies to start up, locate and grow. More

Innovation a key theme at NECC 2007

[3 July 2007 - eSchool News Online] Futurist Andrew Zolli challenges educators to help students find their ‘creative center.’ ...  From new standards that describe what students should be able to demonstrate with technology, to a keynote speech by futurist and author Andrew Zolli, creativity and innovation were central ideas at this year's National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Atlanta. ... The need to produce a generation of students who are creative thinkers and innovators was a key theme at this year’s National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Atlanta. More