Theme: Convergence

A convergence is the point where everything comes together into one place. On April 29th that is what will happens when over 700 students and staff from the Durham Catholic District School Board meet to share new ideas, hear amazing speakers and see just how much in common we all share.

Durham Catholic District School Board Office
650 Rossland Rd W
Oshawa, Ontario, L1J 7C4
Canada

Adaline

Performer

Adaline's moody torch songs have been featured on dozens of TV shows and films including Grey's Anatomy, 90210, Rookie Blue, Lost Girl, Ringer, The Fosters, Degrassi, and more. She recently wrote the musical score for the NBC Chiller short film "Fear Of Mutilation", and worked with Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene on the score for the Bret Easton Ellis written film, The Canyons, directed by Paul Schrader, starring Lindsay Lohan. She has been featured on ETalk, MuchMusic, and ET Canada. Adaline’s album "Modern Romantics" earned a nomination for “Pop Recording of the Year” at the Western Canadian Music Awards and was deemed by CBC Radio “A visionary classic; A breathtaking indepth journey of the imagination”. Adaline recently completed a composer residency at The Canadian Film Centre and getting ready to release her third album "Aquatic" in the spring of 2016.

SMARTS

Performance Group

What happens when you take the best of the arts from St. Mary Catholic Secondary school and bring them all together? Why Convergence of course! Dance, music, acting, visual arts and photography will all come together to create a student performance which showcases the arts and tells the story of convergence which occurs in all of us. This piece was conceived by an idea by Craig Zimmer and created under the direction of Dante Labriola.

Ashanthi Francis

TED-Ed Club Member

Ashanthi Francis is a 15 year old high school student from St Mary Catholic Secondary School with a passion for racial equality and human rights. She is involved in her school’s choir, hip hop team, and ambassador program. She is very involved within the arts and has an large interest in music and literature. She hopes that her talk will inspire people like her to raise their voice against issues of injustice.

Becky Shields

TED-Ed club member

Becky is a Grade 11 student at Msgr. John Pereyma Catholic Secondary School in Oshawa. She is a member of the Performing Arts program, has performed in numerous plays/musicals, and is a member of the school's leadership team.

Crystal Robello

TED-Ed club speaker

Crystal Robello is a 17 year-old grade 12 student at St. Mary Catholic Secondary School. She has been playing soccer competitively for 5 years, but has been playing the sport since she was nine. Crystal is also involved in musical theater, as she was a cast member in this year’s production of Young Frankenstein at her school. As a returning member of her schools Ted-Ed club for the second year, Crystal is excited to share her opinions and experiences through her Ted Talk.

Dwayne Morgan

Poet

Dwayne Morgan began his career as a performer in 1993. In 1994, he founded Up From The Roots entertainment, to promote the positive artistic contributions of African Canadian and urban influenced artists. In 2014, Morgan received the Renaissance Planet Africa Award for Career Achievement, and was acknowledged by the Ontario Black History Society as a Community Trailblazer, following up on his 2013 Scarborough Walk of Fame Induction. Morgan is a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada, a 2012 National Team Poetry Slam Champion, and four-time runner up. Morgan has received both the African Canadian Achievement Award, and the Harry Jerome Award for Excellence in the Arts, and is the winner of 3 Canadian Urban Music Awards (2001, 2003, 2005). In 2005 he was recognized as Poet of Honour at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Vancouver. In 2008, Morgan’s contribution to the Arts and Canadian society were recognized on the Legacy Black History Month poster.

Hannah Alper

13-Year-Old Blogger, Kindraiser, Change Maker, Activist, Eco Warrior, Motivational Speaker

Hannah launched her blog, CallMeHannah.ca, at age nine to share her growing knowledge and concern for the environment. A lover of animals since she was a young girl, she began to make the connection between animals and the effects of environmental destruction on their habitats and lives. Her blog began out of her desire to help and to inspire others to join her in believing that the little things that we can all do add up to make a big difference. Through her own search for role models, Hannah has become a role model herself. In her quest to “be the change,” Hannah continues to demonstrate that when passion meets action, there is no such thing as “too young.”

Isabel Pedersen

Canada Research Chair in Digital Life, Media & Culture PhD

Dr. Isabel Pedersen is a researcher, educator, and writer focused on discovering how technologies suggested today might shape the future. She is the author of Ready to Wear: A Rhetoric of Wearable Computers and Reality-Shifting Media, which explores how wearable and implantable technologies ought to be strategized for the future that they imply. Her concerns are for our future digital lives that seem dramatically divergent from our current ones. Her interests also include the predictive potential of dystopian films, posthuman pondering, brain interfaces, and bionic contact lenses. In 2014, Dr. Pedersen was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists. As Canada Research Chair in Digital Life, Media and Culture, Dr. Pedersen also holds the title of Associate Professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT).

Robyne Hanley-Dafoe

Educational Developer

Robyne Hanley-Dafoe is an award winning Psychology Instructor who uses narrative pedagogy to engage and inspire her students to achieve their personal best. Robyne’s interests focus on health and wellness for learning including topics such as resiliency, optimal challenge, and self-identity, in her own backyard and around the world. She has taught for a decade at the post-secondary level while continuing to work with elementary and secondary schools bringing best practices for professional development and student engagement. Robyne is committed to finding innovative solutions for creating positive learning relationships and environments for students and teachers.

Sarah Elton

Journalist and bestselling author

Sarah has written three books. Her first book Locavore: From Farmers’ Fields to Rooftop Gardens, How Canadians Are Changing the Way We Eat is a bestseller and won Gold at the Canadian Culinary Book Awards. It was also named one of Amazon.ca’s top 50 books of 2010 and is a David Suzuki Foundation Book Club pick. Locavore was soon followed by a look at how to feed the world in the future, titled Consumed: Food for a Finite Planet for which Sarah traveled around the globe, reporting on the sustainable food movement in countries such as India and France. Consumed made the national bestseller list in its first week.

Shawn DeSouza-Coelho

Writer, Actor, Poetry, Magician, Creator of Metamagic

Shawn DeSouza-Coelho is a writer, theatre theorist/practitioner, and professional magician based in Toronto, Ontario. He recently completed his MA (English, Experimental Digital Media) at the University of Waterloo, exploring the intersections between narrative and the act of play in videogames. His book, Metamagic: An Introduction, released in 2013, explores the art of conjuring magic as a medium for discourse. Shawn is currently working on his next book: the authorized biography of retired stage manager Nora Polley.

Stephen Brown

English Professor

Professor Stephen Brown Stephen Brown has been a 3M National Teaching Fellow and an Honorary Fellow of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education since 1997. He holds a BA and an MA from the University of Windsor, and a BA and a PhD from Queen’s University, as well as having done postdoctoral work at Yale University. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and has been a visiting professor at the Centre for the History of the Book and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. In 2013, he was Ormiston Roy Fellow in Scottish Studies at the University of South Carolina. He has been a member of the English Literature Department at Trent University in Peterborough since 1985, often teaching in Oshawa, and was the Master of Champlain College at Trent from 1993 until 2009. He has published widely in the field of print culture and literacy, receiving a Besterman McColvin Award and a Michael Von Poser Society Edinburgh.