Carrie Bartkowiak v. 5.0

If you’ve taken my advice and watched any of the TEDtalks, you’ll already know they’re definitely not crap. But this week we get a new take on the subject!

In this release of presentations, you’ll spend a mere 9 minutes watching 3 different speakers. Yep, I didn’t have a typo there… 3 speakers in the time it usually takes to watch one presentation.

First up is Richard St. John, who gives us the magical 8 keys to success. He also explains what CRAP is:
Criticism
Rejection
Assholes
Pressure
This is a great lively little presentation with some really cute visual aids.

The second is by spoken artist Rives, who tells us how the internet would be if he owned… ruled… was emperor of… even god of it. Fantastic spoken poetry in this one; listen closely or you’ll miss something. Rives will also be speaking again at TED in ‘07, and he has a neat blog and bookstore (he writes children’s books) at his website ShopliftWindchimes.

Finally, Dean Ornish gives a fast-paced presentation on the “Globalization of Illness”. The rest of the world is starting to eat like Americans, drink like us, live like us… and they’re getting just as sick as we are. Rapidly. 70% of adults at age 30 now have diabetes, and 15% of children do. That’s damn scary. What we’re looking at right now is the first time in history where our children won’t live as long as we do. Watch this one.

TED has also announced its 2007 prize winners, which includes former President Bill Clinton. Watch the announcement here (Hint, when the music stops, don’t turn it off… it’s not finished).

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
All comments get link love here... I got rid of nofollow!

I’ve been browsing around some online science supply places for interesting things for the boys for Christmas.
Yeah, I’m a geeky homeschooling mom, sue me. When your kid is bored with his new electronic toy, send him over to my house and I’ll entertain him for hours with magnets, mmkay?

Anyhow, some things you glance over in the listings and they just make you stop and look again. Like this one: Solar powered flashlight.
Now, at first thought, you think: Flashlight… dark. Solar-powered… but it’s dark. Ermmm…
Then your brain clicks in and you realize that the solar cell inside the flashlight actually charges up some nicad batteries that store the energy until it is dark. It’s not one of the other hundreds of solar-powered thingamabobs you’ve been looking at for the past 2 hours that use the energy right away.

Good for a laugh, though.

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
All comments get link love here... I got rid of nofollow!

I’ve always wanted one of those magnetic poetry kits that you stick on the fridge. Especially since we started homeschooling; I thought it would be great for the boys to play with while increasing their language skills. Being a tightwad though, I just couldn’t stand the thoughts of paying $15 for each kit - and there are a LOT of different ones!

One idea I had was to get a magnetic strip roll about 1″ or 3/4″ wide and write my own words on it with a Sharpie. That’s definitely one option, but good luck finding magnetic strip rolls that aren’t adhesive on one side. I did find one place at Amazon that sells them in 50-foot rolls, and they’re write-on/wipe-off to boot; but who the hell wants 50 feet of this stuff? Plus then you’ve got your handwriting to contend with. If it’s messy, forget it.

So I was looking around and found this great page. Their idea was to use the Avery magnetic sheets that you can run through your inkjet printer. (Mind you, these are NOT the ones with pre-cut business card shapes.) They give you a template to use to put your words on, and even a pre-made “kid’s words” template that you can use and alter to fit what you are trying to make. This is how I’m going to do it. Woohoo!

Now, want to make it even better?
Use the different font colors in Word to color-code your words. Nouns can be red, verbs can be green, adjectives can be blue, prepositional phrases can be orange… etc etc. You’ll end up with a very colorful and fun learning/teaching/playing activity, at much less than the cost of those pre-made kits. Plus you get to use your own words and put in as many “and”, “ed”, “ing”, and punctuation marks as you want.

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
All comments get link love here... I got rid of nofollow!