Aggregators

I'm currently between aggregators-Bloglines and Netvibes. I favor Netvibes because I can place so many things available to me one page and tab through them. I had a first happen to me today. I have read ALL of my feeds. Nothing has come back in since the last time I read. I don't know what to do with myself. Now I can explore more and focus on where I want to go with my own blogging.

Sadly, I don't believe this will happen again anytime soon. I was lucky to have two days off of work in which I spent a great deal of time at home working off of my computer. Tomorrow begins 6.5 weeks of hard work leading high school students in outdoor projects for 20 hours a week in the mornings and recruiting 45+ adult high school students in the afternoons. This will be a race to the end of the Youth Corps AmeriCorps year.

Recycling

Recycling is an easy (and necessary) way to help the environment. I do not understand that the US is not more interested in making recycling a must. With garbage going into our landfills and materials likely to run out, it makes sense to recycle and buy recycled products. So why is it that, we can still through recyclables into the garbage and consuming many non-recyclable products is reasonable. The US could follow other country's lead, such as Sweden's example.

google search your potential employee

I was reading my RSS feeds and came across a blog entry about an article addressing the availability of personal information online affecting the job application process. The idea is that when applying for a job, the business may search for information online about the person--via google, facebook, myspace, etc. So I googled myself and found only ten of several places I can be found. They mostly relate to my jobs:
Newspaper question
TLC News article
TLC News article
Kansan upperclassmen living on campus article
Student Voices group
Student Voices presentation report
JSchool Alumni news
E-Waste Press Release
E-Waste event summary
Youth Corps Newsletter

As far as Facebook, I hope no one bothers to judge my ability on my profile (which isn't all the incriminating). What I wonder though is what if someone with your name publishes something incriminating online, and it is assumed to be your's. You shouldn't be judged based on other people's doings...

The importance of tagging

A recent search of mine while finding and testing the many excellent new options/features online is tagging while using blogger. I can't seem to figure it out (granted I haven't spent much time on it), but am adamant to tag my posts. Tagging has become a great tool when users are bringing information they desire to themselves. Just check out Technorati and you'll see the possibilities are endless. Not to mention tagging found on flickr, 43things, and much more.

One way I planned on using tagging is to participate in NECC 2006--National Educational Computing Conference 2006. This conference was 40,000+ people last year and the possibilities were endless. Already it's the buzz among edubloggers. I'll tell you one thing--I sure be reading all their conference posts and participating as much as possible even though unable to be in sunny San Diego. Thankful for technology.

Education from socially aware lawyer's perspective

Last night I listened to a friend laid out a very broad version of his thesis for Rhodes Scholar application. The intriguing thing is how he got to his theory. Having studied political science in school and planning to go to law school for years, he had a very different perspective on the problem. He has spent nearly 11 months in an AmeriCorps program, working with at-risk high school youth. This has changed his passions a bit, and he now plans on going to school to study education, following traveling, before started his own charter school with a fellow AmeriCorps member.

He planned on laying out an alternative to the way countries focus on education, based on how they have run their government in the past. As example, the United States is focused on technology and democracy. The US would like to see all countries running a democracy and will never get into battles with other democracies, but will justify inhabitation of a country by helping them develop a democracy. Also the US will do what possible to increase and help our technology--i.e. oil for our major cars, home, etc.--and do whatever possible to get that. This focus, however, may very well be because of the US education. When this education is changed to focus on alternative means of fuel and acceptance of others, our international relations will change. For example: teach an American only English, of course they will come across problems relating to other cultures and not understand what it takes to respect others.

This was laid out to be very broadly, and I'd like to see it filled it. But it fits very well along with my view of global education. I see education as a way to change the world because what we teach our young becomes how the world is run. Global education to me includes helping youth to learn to be compassionate, understand diversity and love learning and working respectfully with all different people across the world. There are many organizations working on this now, such as iEARN and TakingITGlobal, but this view has not been express by the mainstream.


It was interesting, even liberating, to see someone work through to this conclusing from a completely different view point. Here was a socially aware citizen logically proving that global education must be a focus because of current politics and international relations. When I concieve of the of this view point, I work from the changing of education to help the world through changing values and changing values helping our government and international policies. There may be hope in the world for politicians.

Oh, the possibilities...

I have found many websites, extensions and more to play with online. It is nearly overwhelming to keep up with all the great possibilities. I am growing to enjoy Netvibes. I am using Performancing. I use FoxyTunes and Weather, and I'm trying out Google Notebook.