The Treehouse Group

The Treehouse Group wishes you a Happy New Year! And what better way to kick off the year than with a brand new set of Treehouse Talks?

In fact, we were so eager to bring you our January speakers that the Talks will take place this Friday January 6th (the first Friday of the month, not the second). We apologize for the change of schedule, but hope to see you all at the Reference Library that evening from 6:30-8:15pm. You’ll have the chance to sketch out your ideal vision for high-rises in Toronto with the help of a documentary filmmaker and an architect, to reflect on the power of people to change the world with a leader of fundraising and philanthropy, and to discover a world of amazing patterns from an experimental physicist.

Our three speakers are:

From 6:30-8:00 pm, Friday December 9, 2011, join us at the Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge St.) for this month’s Treehouse Talks! As always, we’ll continue the conversation at a nearby bar, The Pilot, following the session.

We look forward to seeing you there!

UPDATE: Photos from the event can be found here.

If you’ve subscribed to our newsletter you’ve likely already read about this, but we’d like to make another plug for the GREAT looking knowledge eXchange, Art, Science and the Brain: New Models of Learning for the 21st Century. If you’re interested in the possibilities that exist in education you’ll want to reserve this October 31-November 1 to attend.

Co-presented by ArtsSmarts & Social Innovation Generation at the MaRS Discovery District (SiG@MaRS), it will be devoted to exploring the nature of inquiry-based learning and its effect on our brains. Attendees will be called upon to take part in all kinds of interactive seminars that put into practice the inquiry-based learning techniques that are being discussed.

The price of admission also includes entry to a great evening cocktail event featuring a presentation and book-signing by Dr. Daniel Levitin (James McGill Professor of psychology, music & Computer science, McGill University; Author, This is Your Brain on Music and The World in Six Songs), and a live performance of Surface Tension by Eve Egoyan and David Rokeby.

Featured Speakers Include:

• Dr. Mariale Hardiman (Assistant Dean, Urban Schools Partnership; Chair, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in Education, Johns Hopkins University School of Education)
• Dr. Stan Kutcher (Professor, Dalhousie University Department of Psychiatry; Sunlife Financial Chair in Adolescent Mental Health Director, WHO Collaborating Centre)
• Stephen Huddart (President & COO, The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation)

Would you like more information?

Email: info@21c-learning.ca.
Web: 21c-learning.ca
Eventbrite: 21c.eventbrite.com
Twitter: @21C_Learning

ArtsSmarts/SiG@MaRS Event Flyer :: November 1st Event Flyer

For some next week means going back to school, for others next week means TIFF. For the Treehouse Group it means both… and more! Come advise the former President of the University of Calgary on what to do with Canada’s public university system, find out what it’s like to teach Lindsay Lohan, and discover what it will be like when all humans are cyborgs.

Yes, we’re kicking off a new season of Treehouse Talks at 6:20pm, Friday September 9th, 2011, in a brand new location: the Toronto Reference Library, at Yonge and Bloor.

Come help us combine 3 different ideas to create 1,000 more.

Welcome back to school. Welcome back to TIFF. And welcome back to the Treehouse!

Come join us at MaRSDD on June 3rd, 2011, at 6:20pm. We have 3 great Talks for you:

• JOHN PAUL MORGAN: Invention Is As Often About Decision As It Is About Discovery.
• RYAN NORTH: A Brief History of Comics, And How Comics On The Internet Will Save The World (Or At Least Save Comics, But That’s Still Pretty Good.)
• NATHALIE DESROSIERS: Liberty and Twitter: Civil Liberties in the XXIst Century.

Of course, the conversations will continue after the session (8pm) at Mercatto, next door.

Welcome to the Treehouse!

May’s edition of the Treehouse Talks have been cancelled, to allow us to devote our energy to this coming weekend’s Toronto Mini Maker Faire (May 7 & 8 at the Brick Works). Please plan to join us on June 3 at MaRS at 6:30 PM for the last Treehouse Talk in the Spring session, when we’ll have a fantastic new group of exciting and interactive speakers for you.

In the meantime, so that you continue thinking about the Treehouse Talks, we invite you all to write us one paragraph linking together two Treehouse Talk presentations that you’ve seen (in person or by video, at TreehouseTalks.com). The top 5 entries will receive a special invitation to the exclusive Mini Maker Faire launch party on the evening of Friday May 6th.

Entries must be submitted to nicolas@treehousegroup.org by noon on Thursday May 5th. We’re looking forward to seeing the entries!

Would you like to know more about the Mini Maker Faire? We’re updating our list of Makers regularly here. If you’d like to contribute to our fundraising drive you may do so via Ulule, here.

A photographer, a judge, and a biologist walk into a room… No this isn’t the beginning of a bad joke. It’s the beginning of a great set of Treehouse Talks.

Do you want to know how building a whale is similar to interpreting the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? Are you curious to find out why pictures and legal text have more in common than you think? Come to find out these answers at MaRS on April 1st, 2011, at 6:20pm. We have 3 great Treehouse Talks for you, and we’ll try to find out what they have in common:

• Dr. Monika Havelka, an evolutionary biologist and one of Ontario’s best lecturers, will help the audience understand how to create a whale from a four-legged mammal.
• Justice Robert Sharpe, a judge of the Court of Appeal for Ontario, will run a debate to find out whether women really were persons according to the Constitution of Canada in the 1920s.
• John Beebe, a photographer, will lead a highly active presentation to challenge audience members to see and consider how we understand ourselves and others as complex people.

We’re excited. We hope you are too. See you there!

The conversations will continue after the show (8pm) at Mercatto next door.

Videos from the March Talks are up now.

Welcome to the Treehouse!

Site 3 coLaboratory and the Treehouse Group are joining together to put on a Mini Maker Faire in Toronto!

The term “Maker” refers to a growing community of hobbyists and professionals – including a range of people, from hackers to crafters – who are dedicated to the act of creation: everything from technological gadgets to clothing, software to home furnishings, and beyond. It is a culture built on do-it-yourself (DIY) values, which in many cases involves taking something that is mass-produced and repurposing it to create something new.

A Maker Faire is a place for Makers to come together to compare notes, see what others are doing, and to spark ideas for new projects and expanded collaboration. It facilitates the exchange of information throughout a community whose members in many cases work alone or in semi-isolated groups.

Mini Maker Faire Toronto will facilitate this exchange by including commercial and non-commercial Makers, independent designers, hackerspaces, workshops, demos and speakers. It will open up the community and their projects to outsiders, and encourage discourse between visitors and participants, not just between the Makers themselves. The event will be equal parts entertainment and education for the varied cross-section of visitors that will be in attendance. The majority of our booths will be interactive, and visitors will have opportunities to take home a part of the experience when they participate in the workshops on offer.

Reserve the weekend of May 7 & 8, 2011, for The Maker Magic. If you’d like to find out how to apply, you can check out our website. We’ll also be updating our Facebook event page, and our newly-minted Twitter feed.

Spring must be right around the corner. Yes, that’s right: we’re back with another round of Treehouse Talks! As always, the Spring 2011 session is loaded with exciting and innovative speakers who appear at first glance to have nothing in common – a theoretical physicist, a politician, an artist, and many more - but Treehousers know that where 3 ideas collide, countless more emerge.

Speaking of collisions, the first set of Talks begins with a bang on Friday March 4th, 2011, at 6:20pm at MaRSDD. We are hosting:

• Father Joseph Ogbonnaya, whose life has taken him from the hardships of Nigeria to the rigour of doctoral study, will discuss how international development must be examined integrally to incorporate aspects of social justice and other human values.
• Sheila McCook, a former journalist and keen observer of words and people, will track the evolution of newspaper headlines over the past 50 years. Will newspapers’ current elegant appearance ensure their longevity?
• Dr. Jordan Peterson, a psychologist who specializes on human emotions in situations of fear and anxiety, will take time from his busy practice to help the audience plan their ideal future, rationale, and strategy.

We’re all looking forward to seeing you there.

As always, you’re welcome to continue the conversations after the show (8pm) at Mercatto next door.

Welcome to the Treehouse!

MaRSDD and the Treehouse Group look forward to hosting the introductory event for the Worldviews Conference on Media and Higher Education. This pre-conference event, to be held on the afternoon of April 4th, 2011, will be a closed door session for a select group of innovative thinkers from the worlds of academia and journalism.

For more information please refer to our event page.

If you have any questions, or would like to be involved, email lindsay@treehousegroup.org.