As a teenager, Richard studied music with Trevor Payne at John Abbott College and attended Berklee College of Music in Boston. He has performed across Canada with full-time rock bands, and/or recorded original music, since the early 80s. 
Richard's been a teacher of rock, jazz & classical guitar, first, at 18, as a sub for his own private teacher, later formally at the now defunct Toronto Percussion Centre. He taught at The Arts Music Store in Newmarket, Ontario, for 6 years. He holds the degrees of Bachelor of Fine Arts Music (Special Honours), Bachelor of Education, and Master of Education from York University, plays guitar and trombone, and taught grade 6-8 band, math and computers (HTML and yes, Hypercard!) at the Toronto District School Board and North York School Board.
Richard's HTML, CSS, and JavaScript experience stems from a stint as webmaster for the Faculty of Education at York. Richard thoroughly understands and embraces the fact he’s a “Webmaster/PluginMonkey”, indeed he's long been fond of saying he learned web design the same way he learned guitar, by stealing other people's licks. Richard's first formal computer science instruction of any kind was completing Principles of Computing (Part 1) An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python (Part 2), two MOOCs offered on Coursera by Rice University. His Coursera achievements also include Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects (McMaster University, University of California San Diego). Richard currently produces eLearning for the Government of Ontario, using Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate, HTML5 and video. Opinions expressed here are his own.
