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economist sunsuntribune at the schools saturday may 8 2004 i21 all schools implement provincial curriculum board from page 20 addition to writing exams in cours es like english history or physics while some see this as unfair markham high vice principal george tisgaridis disagrees we are a unique school were a fullyear school that is nonsemestered not every course at markham high requires a written exam but every student will be participating in some time of summative evalua tion mr tisgaridis said the york region district school board expects a students grade to be a 7030 split between work done through the term and evaluations due near the courses end the learning style can be more difficult at markham because you have to maintain good grades in eight subjects at once former markham high student yvonne cai now a grade 11 student at milliken believes however the curriculum seems to be more difficult at milliken this may be biased because grade 9 is always easy and i was only at markham district in grade 9 no school is easier or harder than another york region district school board spokesperson lucia cascioli said every one of our schools imple ment the ontario curriculum she said teachers have a variety of ways to assess tools to determine how students do in courses milliken mills principal kadri mereweather strongly supports the leeway teachers are given in picking their own course materials they can choose something reflective of the community of its cultures and religions she said referring to millikens diverse popu lation she believes since teachers can choose their classs assignments the assignments can be more rele vant to the students than standard ized ones the york catholic district school board is much of the same story course and evaluation outlines are determined through meetings of school department heads commu nications officer joann macdonald said adding teachers provide dif ferent nuances to the course since the curriculum at york region schools is the same the only perceived variations come in teach ers interpretation of the expecta tions christy kissoore a grade 11 markville secondary school stu dent doesnt believe in the concept of easy schools thats what it looks like but in reality it has nothing to do with schools it has to do with individual teachers she said marking is subjective to a cer tain extent i might have an easy teacher but not an easy school theories about attending cer tain schools to get higher grades with less effort are dodgy but inter esting the topic certainly demands indepth study to discover if there is any truth to the speculation regardless the wheels of the machine keep turning as students continue their education vicky tarn is a student at milliken mills high school print offers distinct advantages over cathoderay cousins from page 20 house call on the companys behalf taking the if-you-cant-beat-em- joinem attitude the company cre ated britannicacom offering libraries and individual subcribers online access to its holdings for a fee while still selling a reduced number of print sets its a tactic that has also been adopted by scholastic which bought the grolier company a few years ago the prints sales continue said wendy graham director of scholastics education division in markham the people who have been in this business a lot longer than me they tell me that even when a board or library buys the online database they often buy the books every few years as well indeed before we close the book on these leatherbound lifesavers there are signs theyre not ready to give up the fight yet at auroras northern lights public school for example a brand new set of world books sits in the schools library a curious acquisi tion in a school designed to be a hightech laboratory for studying how technology can be best used to teach students we had a dialogue about this and we decided some people need a paperbased product principal jim forbes said you have to have a variety of resources to appeal to a variety of learning styles there are still a lot of people who find information on a screen difficult to translate in a meaningful way meanwhile at the richmond hill public librarys main branch a 1991 edition of the encyclopedia britannica is being removed to make way for an updated print set and computers allowing patrons to access the online version we find some of our users pre fer the print said mary jane celsie director of service development at the library they do different things for people the print- version pro vides a nice introduction and a hint of where else to go plus megan wallar added print versions have distinct advantages over their cathoderay cousins the thing about research on the web is the computer is not portable the newmarket mother of three said you can take an encyclopedia to the bedroom or the kitchen table i havent been happy about it but theyve even taken them to school while she says her three chil dren aged 12 15 and 16 are com puterliterate and use a lot of online research in their studies she figures the family turns to its world book set at least once a week the other thing i like is theyre a safe form of research she added on the web your kids may have good intentions but they might stumble across something theyte not supposed to see indeed a certain air of authori- tativeness has always been one of the encyclopedias biggest selling points and its one that may yet prove useful in its battle against the internet an information source thats free but also infamous for allowing biased false or porno graphic material to fall into young hands still it remains to be seen if that will be enough to keep the books alive in an age where information dates quickly and a good set of encyclopedias can become obso lete in the blink of an eye i was out in the garage the other day and the tears were just flowing ms gilmer said referring to her old set im a book lover obviously and i hate to destroy a book but what am i 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