Besides the film trailer, which is great, it's worth exploring the other sections in this page, or even take a look at the author's site, at http://www.andrewzuckerman.com, to get to know a bit more about his work.

From the Wisdom project "The Concept" section:

Inspired by the idea that one of the greatest gifts one generation can pass to another is the wisdom it has gained from experience, the Wisdom project, produced with cooperation from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, seeks to create a record of a multicultural group of people who have all made their mark on the world.

Yes they could. It's History being written and a lot of hope for a lot of people. I wish many of the promises made can come true. Click here to listen to his victory speech and read the text on the side. It's worth it, since he is a great speaker.

And here's a famous video made during the campaign.

Great stuff from the Playing For Change Project. More info here This is the kind of thing that should be in the prime time news.

Now that you have a bit more time, here's a great video about how we produce, distribute and consume goods, the negative consequences of our over-consumption and some things we can do to help curb the problem.

The "Story of Stuff" explained by the author:

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

As you may have heard, Bill Gates is stepping down his responsibilities at Microsoft to dedicate himself to his and his wife's foundation (it's about bringing innovations in health and learning to the global community, not about technology or making money). I think it's great to see someone as powerful and important as Bill Gates have this sense of humour about himself and the things he does (and the same can be said about many of his friends appearing on the video). I found this really funny.

The design is superb, but the concept is even better. This is a project worth spending time with, watching and listening to people from around the whole world and seeing ourselves deeply reflected in the words, feelings and emotions of these fellow humans.

From the Project's Presentation:

"Created at the beginning of 2003, "6 billion others" aims to create a sensitive and human portrait of the planet's inhabitants. The objective of the project is to attempt to reveal each person's universality and individuality. To achieve this, six directors set of across the world to interview the inhabitants of the planet. The questions chosen for these interviews are the ones which cut across all humanity, everywhere and always: they concern the family, experiences, tests, what makes us laugh, cry, what gives life meaning, and the like."

Start your journey here: http://www.6billionothers.org/index_en.php, click on "English" and open your eyes, ears and hearts.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do :-).

Tom Lehrer has recently turned 80. Many of you know him through a song in our 11th grade textbook - Pollution. Other famous songs are The Element Song, a "tongue breaker" joking with the periodic table, and The New Math, a hilarious criticism of the new (at the time) methods of teaching Mathematics.

Jonathan J. Rosenberg, Senior VP at Google, is a big fan. According to him, "Mr. Lehrer is the Harvard mathematician turned parodist songwriter-performer whose sense of humor, intelligence and rhythm created a cult following that, weirdly enough, anticipated a lot of what Google’s culture tries to be about. (...) He was the best kind of “geek” before the word made its way into pop culture.” Full text here

Songs and lyrics below.

Pollution

HI ALL :-),

Scribd - http://www.scribd.com - is a great service for sharing documents online, embedding them in your blog or forum post instead of using attachments. You can upload several file formats (Word doc, Excel xls, Powerpoint ppt and pps, Adobe PDF, Image formats like jpg, jpeg, png, gif, etc.) and use the "embed" function to get the code and paste it onto your post, just like you do with Youtube videos. We've had several members attaching powerpoints and docs to their posts, but this is a much nicer and more practical (for the readers) solution. I leave you two examples of how you can use it: a doc and a powerpoint with photos.

Girlfriend application form

Found the Free Rice project through Cliotech blog and it felt like something really interesting for those of you (of us) who'd like to improve their English vocabulary while helping fight poverty.

"FreeRice has two goals:

    1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
    2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

Boy I'd looove to be able to do this :-).

You've probably heard many times that Politics are all about lying, self-interest and beating your adversary with any weapons you have; and that politicians are bad people who are only after power and money. I guess this is true, sometimes. But not always. Politics are also a noble activity and politicians, even when disputing an election, can have ideals and fair play. Here's an example: Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton are disputing the Democratic Nomination to run for the Presidency of the United States. They were together in this show, and this is how Hillary answered the question: "Describe the moment in your life when you were tested the most" (maybe you still remember the Clinton / Monica Lewinsky affair?).

For present Moms and for all the girls who one day will be Moms too. Check this out - I find it really superb :-D: "What a Mom would say in a 24 hour period condensed into 2 minutes and 55 seconds"

Slides are here with the words (video too, but didn't work for me) - http://www.zentation.com/viewer/index.php?passcode=m7Fxb7fWWh

THought I'd share this site with you. It has a lot to do with the issues we study in the 11th grade and provides (IMHO) great opportunities to practice your English in a real context with native (and also non native) speakers while learning about the topics.

TakingITGlobal
http://www.takingitglobal.org/home.html

Here's a great video about our responsibility towards the generations that come after us.
The girl is only 12 or 13!

After a slow start (kind of) things are really catching up, with fantastic projects and a lot of interesting posts, including a great selection of videos (some produced by the students themselves) and images that make it all more lively. I wish I had the time to comment on every post (they surely deserve it) but unfortunately I don't. So, congratulations to everyone involved in making this a great community :-)

The only thing I'd like you all to reflect upon is this: the point of this community is for you to practice and improve your English. You can't do that if you just copy somebody else's words and paste them into your messages, can you? I mean, you can quote a short passage from a text to stress the point you're trying to make; in some special cases, as a time line, for example, there's not much you can do to make it different. But in any case, you should always refer to the source where you are quoting from (every one of your teachers has told you this time and again, I'm sure. If you don't know how to do this, just ask). Bottom line is, most of the text in your posts should be written by you. It's your own words we want to read. If you think there's an important/interesting text we should also read, include a link to it in your post.

Keep up the good work :-)

We've talked a lot about this. According to BBC News, "Scientists are developing robots that will help humans with a range of tasks, such as housework."

Watch the video

Here's another one of my favorites, Christopher D. Sessums (who's just won EduBlogs' award for "Best individual blog"), writing about the Skills for 21st Century Learners: Preparing ourselves for participatory culture. I think this is really worth reading.

Stephen Downes is someone with whom I share a lot of ideas on Education and Learning and on the uses of technology to support them. Read his deep and insightful post about the things you need to learn (as an individual, not just as a student). 

His list
1. How to predict consequences
2. How to read
3. How to distinguish truth from fiction
4. How to empathize
5. How to be creative
6. How to communicate clearly
7. How to Learn
8. How to stay healthy
9. How to value yourself
10. How to live meaningfully

Really worth reading. Lots of good advice there.

Many people think that bringing up children is just a matter of telling them how to behave and what to do. The fact is things are a bit more complicated than that. Watch this video from NAPCAN, the
National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, Australia. It's part of their multimedia campaign "Children See Children Do".

Direct link to the video page:
http://www.childfriendly.org.au/streaming1.htm

Hi everybody! Just to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a great 2007!!!

Here's two great Christmas songs (the first one in 3 different versions to fit all tastes :-)  

Cheers :-)

It's in Portuguese, but it's so important and so related to what we're studying in the 11th grade that I decided to post the link to the news piece in "Público". If any of you thought these matters had no interest to us here's the answer :-)

http://www.publico.clix.pt/shownews.asp?id=1274982&idCanal=96

Take care