Ben Akoh, Ph.D(C), M.Ed., B.Tech
Instructor, Applied Computing Education, RRC

In 2013, I travelled by road for the first time to Thompson 760 kms north of Winnipeg, Manitoba, to present a paper at the Manitoba Education Research Network (MERN) conference held at the University College of the North  (UCN) Thomson campus. It was my very first trip to the “North” and I was very excited. This trip would eventually define the course of my life. My initial stop over was at the UCN’s Center in Misipawistik Cree Nation (Grand Rapids), 430 kms north of Winnipeg, where I experienced, for the first time, the technological challenges that Indigenous learners faced; not only with accessing content, but in pedagogy, planning, and in the delivery of learning. While I fell in love with the North and its people, I was disgruntled by the challenges that they faced, reminding me of my own humbling indigenous backgrounds. Read More →

BIT instructor Kyle Geske (shown above in front row, third from left) co-founded ODM with fellow BIT instructor Jody Gillis in 2010.

A Red River College instructor has received national recognition for his work creating online resources that promote government transparency and accountability.

Kyle Geske, a Business Information Technology instructor at RRC, was in Edmonton this week to pick up an Open Data for Democracy Award at the Canadian Open Data Summit. Read More →

On Friday, March 4^th, 2016, the 2016 Wiley Accounting Workshop was held in Vancouver, British Columbia.  The workshop, which was sponsored by Wiley and CPA Canada, saw over 80 participants including educators from academic institutions across western Canada.

The workshop featured Valerie Warren and Red River College instructor Lori Novak who shared the results of a survey of accounting students across Canada on their readiness for and challenges faced in their accounting courses. The presentation challenged the audience to put themselves in the position of their students and to try to understand the challenges communicated by the students who participated in the survey.

The presentation was followed by discussion with other instructors as well as with students from Kwantlen Polytechnic University who were attending the workshop. After the discussions, ideas were presented for overcoming the challenges that students expressed in the survey.

Lori Novak is the co-author of the accounting textbook, Accounting Principles Seventh Canadian Edition, Volume 1 and Volume 2 which was published in November of 2015 and March of 2016 respectively.

More information about the Wiley Accounting Workshop can be found here: https://cpaefblog.bccpa.ca/wiley-accounting-workshop-supports-bc-academics/

The Programming courses will follow the attached assignment standards and marking criteria.  Students should take a look at the attached document.

Programming Assignment standards and marking Criteria

A very successful spring and summer project semester (May through August) just wrapped up with our last two Brazilian students heading back home this week. Now a new group of eight BIT students is getting up to speed in the Massey Building (standing, left to right: Skye Valde, Jie Chen, Samara Hoffman, Cole Denslow, Parminder Singh, Aaron Bao; crouched: Chris Xuan; not in photo: Fiona Grant).

Their assignment: three separate fall projects (PanoPlā, Student LIFE App, Food & Farm Discovery Centre). Read More →

Reuel Ramos Ribeiro is a computer science student from Brazil who, like his five other Brazillian BIT Project teammates, is getting extra experience in Canada thanks to the Brazilian government’s Ciência sem Fronteiras (Science Without Borders) program. Though Winnipeg and the BIT Program were selected for him, Reuel said that Canada appealed to him “because of its good quality of life, the respectfulness of its population (which is easy to find), and the low level of corruption”. A puzzle games enthusiast and problem-solving driven programmer, Reuel’s technology preferences are Web-related, and his skills in that area are quickly growing these days. Easily the most quiet of the team, Reuel shines in back-end development and his database and coding skills have underpinned everything the rest of the team has built. Read More →

This is Miguel, one of the three nerds working on the ACE Technology Corner Project. My responsibility in this project so far has been to obtain all the information that is being received while the solar cells are in operation.
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The project ACE Technology Corner is an amazing idea that our Chair, Haider Al-Saidi had. He asked these three nerds (Sylvia, Miguel & Pawan) to work on it and make it a reality.

Once upon a time (2015 AD) during the summer, Haider found out that RRC has had these Solar Panels installed 10 years ago, and he found a new application for them. Guess what?? The Solar Panels have been merely energizing our department’s staff by powering their coffee machine! No wonder our staff has been so greenly energized all the time. Haider thought of utilizing this massive power source. He decided to go to the nerdiest bunch in the department. This project will provide students an opportunity to work on a side-project in learning about Raspberry Pi and micro-controller technology, while providing a place for students to re-charge their phones, iPad and laptops etc.  That’s it, and the rest is history. #WIP

Julia’s farewell cake from the BIT Space team

Coming from almost as far from Winnipeg as her team member Anderson Pires Pereira (10,000 km), Julia Chiarello Passamani also hails from the Brazilian sub-tropical state of Rio Grande do Sul, but from Passo Fundo, a city of about 180,000 people some 9,300 kms south of us. Following two academic semesters of Business Information Technology, Julia is just days away from completing her year-long stay here and her current project with Bit Space Development. The good news for her team members is that she will maintain a virtual connection to the project and continue to contribute after returning to her university in Brazil.

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A lover of technology, reading, travelling, and games, Douglas Modena’s first kick at coding was in his high school computer technician course. He then moved on to carpentry at the Brazilian National Service for Industrial Training (SENAI) before returning to Systems Analysis at the Federal Institute of São Paulo, Brazil. Now, thanks to a scholarship from the Canada/Brazil Science Without Borders program, he is wrapping up a year in the Web Development stream of RRC’s Business Information Technology (BIT) program. Interestingly, Douglas’s current development project combines his love of both information technology and carpentry. The interactive game environment he is helping to build for Apprenticeship Manitoba is a platform to introduce young adults to the skilled trades. Read More →