Audience

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Leaders

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Overview

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The Recess Project, a SaaS-based private academic social network, has been started in Toronto in the largest school board in Canada. Initially it is focusing on marginalized youth in schools in troubled districts in the City. These schools have high numbers of visible minorities and immigrant youth. These districts have low income demographics and higher than average crime rates. The focus is on elementary and middle schools because the seeds to drop out are already planted by Grade 3. The Recess social network website provides youth, teachers, parents, schools, local community, service clubs, police, and other interested parties with a virtual, private and safe environment in which they interact. Recess is bottom up driven as students create profiles, get organized into classrooms, interact with peers, teachers, their parents, ementors and community partners. Students earn rewards for their academic and community contribution on Recess. The rewards are built on a point system and can be accumulated and cashed in for sponsored products and services. The Toronto school board's goal is to reduce dropout rates by 10% with Recess being a major tool to help achieve this. Recess virtual classrooms are meeting places for youth and their teachers. The virtual classrooms contain class calendars, homework, news, blogs, video, music uploads, photography, polls, quizzes, links to online learning tools and resources, and access to celebrity and youth ementors. Initial deployment is 100 middle (Grades 6-8) schools with 50,000 students. Pilot projects have shown 100% engagement by students. Recess is seeking schools and teachers from around the world to join the network and build similar capability in their localities.

Messages

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Shared Resources

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