Industry committee  Thank you for having me. My presentation is entitled “A Digital Highland”. The first half is about me, and the second half is recommendations. I'm the CEO of Project Whitecard in Winnipeg. Project Whitecard is a company that's been around for eight years. We specialize in cre

Industry committee  I'll just say that very early on we took advantage of tax credits in Manitoba which, for the new media industry, are 40% of your labour. It comes back as essentially cash the next year. With that, over the last four years we developed our own IP and were able to take advantage of

Industry committee  From what kinds of institutions?

Industry committee  We do business with the University of Winnepeg by choice. I'm also a graduate from there. We did work with the Canadian Space Agency, and I've had conversations with NASA for the last five years. What I take away from this is that what we are attempting to do now, which is diff

Industry committee  Sure.

Industry committee  Sure, yes.

Industry committee  It's estimated there is approximately $3,000 spent per student in North America on software. That's a huge figure. It's not always apparent how the digital technology appears in the classroom, but it does, whether through smart boards or through other softwares that are bought. O

Industry committee  Common core standards were established by working committees in the United States and Canada. Surprisingly, all 10 provinces are represented in the National Science Teachers Association. They have monthly meetings in which I have participated. They established certain common core

Industry committee  Yes, I think the educational model as a whole is undergoing a radical shift. If you want to see some of the cutting-edge work that's being done, the Khan Academy has created a system, whereby through 4,000 to 5,000 different videos and exercises done online at a student's own pac

Industry committee  That's exactly it.

Industry committee  I participated in the MacArthur Foundation initiative with approximately 40 other schools from around North America, including some in Quebec. Yes, we have reached out and are very much having a dialogue with them. We are working with NASA as one of our clients. They have an inte

Industry committee  I thought this was the most important question. I looked at this in terms of venture capital and IT technology, considering Palo Alto and Silicon Valley, where you hatch a billion-dollar company. The question is how Canada can deal with this. I think the model is that you centr

Industry committee  Right.

Industry committee  No. You can point at some studies around the world. There's one in Scotland where they did this specifically with a math game with grade 9 students. The students were failing, and then they weren't failing. They didn't change the passing grade.

Industry committee  I'd say that's the key to everything. We wouldn't need tax credits if there were venture capital money. We wouldn't need government funding if there were venture capitalists waiting in the wings to take on investment in Canadian companies, to make Frima 10 times larger, to make P