This past weekend, fans of Dr. Seuss recognized what would have been the 106th birthday of the children's literary icon. In honor of the great author who has influenced millions of people's lives at an early age, a series of iPhone apps were released that allow users to enjoy his work on-the-go.
Though the cost of the apps usually varies from $2.99 to $3.99, they're currently on sale for only $.99 each in honor of his birthday!
Are you fed up with the way your school is wasting energy? Have some brilliant ideas about how you could be a lot greener? Nick Cannon has partnered up with Do Something to encourage America's students to take action and become a bigger part of the green movement. Increase Your Green is a campaign to empower students to create plans to make their schools greener.
It's easy to get involved, and if your ideas are good (and we know they are), you could win some very cool prizes for yourself and your school.
A panel of expert judges will review how well you reduced waste, saved energy, got creative, and used technology to go green. Winning schools will receive up to $5,000 in environmental funding plus sweet HP computers!
Listen to Nick as he explains the campaign in the PSA below.
Increase Your Green is a national campaign launched by HP, the National Grid Foundation and DoSomething.org, who you can support here on SocialVibe.
With all the smart cookies we've got reading this blog right now, we're sure there are a ton of great ideas out there for making your school greener. Why not put those ideas into writing and submit your school? You never know, you could walk away with a brand new computer and major moolah to fund your plans!
A group of celebrities have partnered up with non-profit organization Artists for Peace and Justice to announce a plan for long-term support for school children in Haiti. Stars like Jackson Browne, Gerard Butler, Daniel Craig, Russell Crowe, Penelope Cruz, Clint Eastwood, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, Sean Penn and more have committed to making annual donations of $50,000 for the next five years (that's $250,000 total from each). The funds will be used to build and sustain street schools in the earthquake-stricken area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, providing not only food, water and medical supplies for local school children, but educational materials as well.
For kids in the region, getting back into school is one of the best tracks to recovering from the disaster. School is one of the few places where children will have access to clean drinking water, food for the day, medical attention, clothing, hope and community.
“Emergency relief is still very important — with the help of Operation USA, last week we trucked in another $150,000 in food and supplies to sustain the St. Luke’s program and the children and families of the slums that rely upon its outreach programs,” says Paul Haggis, Founder of APJ. Schools right now might not seem like the most important thing to reestablish but it just isn’t true. The children may not be in urgent need of an education, but they desperately need physical and psychological support. They need a daily meal and water and medical care that comes with our schools. These thousands of children need a safe place to gather, where they can find hope, and even joy and beauty. The issues on the rise right now are gangs, violent crime, prostitution and child slavery. Schools are more important now than ever."
APJ is dedicated to bringing long-term support to earthquake victims in the area, especially children. Even before the devastating earthquake last month, APJ has been sponsoring schools in Haiti and supporting the work of Father Rick Frechette, a community organizer and doctor at Port-au-Prince's St Damiens Pediatric Hospital, the only free pediatric hospital in the country.
You may not have the same kind of ability to give as much as these stars, but even your small donations to APJ will go a long way in providing a speedy and peaceful recovery for young people in Haiti.
Apparently not everyone is a fan of Keep A Breast's iconic "I Heart Boobies" rubber bracelets! According to many a news source, schools around the country have begun banning the bracelets after receiving complaints from parents, despite the positive message the bracelets send about educating young girls about the importance of early detection and prevention of breast cancer.
13 year-old Sarah Garaci of Santa Clara, CA received one of the KAB bracelets as a Christmas gift and has not taken it off since. Despite the positive message, Garaci's teachers think it is an inappropriate choice for school and have asked her to stop wearing it.
"One of my other teachers, I asked her, 'What do you think of the bracelet?' She told me it was demeaning and offensive, and people were making fun of breast cancer," Garaci says.
According to school administrators, male students are beginning to harass female students over the bracelet's message (I <3 Boobies - Keep A Breast).
School board member Andrew Ratermann said, "We would be fully supportive of the concept of wanting to do something about breast cancer. But, I think the makers of the bracelets chose intentionally to start a controversy because of the words they used."
"I thought it was a fun message and I thought it would get the awareness out in an easy way," Karen Garaci says. "Instead of saying, 'Look, breast cancer's going to kill you. Do your exams.' Here, I love boobies. Let's save them and make it approachable for her age group," says Sarah's mom Karen Garaci. "I completely support it. I don't want my daughter to die of breast cancer."
A portion of the sale of each bracelet, sold in stores and on the KAB website, goes to breast cancer education and research. Sarah plans on continuing the wear the bracelet because, her words, "it actually has a good cause to it. It has good meaning."
Keep A Breast stands by their message and has taken to their blog to defend themselves and tell supporters how important an opportunity they have to make some noise about the cause:
"The entire idea of the campaign is to take this serious horrible subject, break the ice, and make it easy to talk about. We tell all the principals that this is actually their OPPORTUNITY, to talk to their students about an issue that effects them and is important to them, take this opportunity to educate your students on how they can prevent breast cancer."
J.D. Salinger, author of iconic novel Catcher in the Rye, died from natural causes today at the age of 91 in his home in Cornish, NH. For the past 50 years, Manhattan-born Salinger has chosen to live away from the fame and in near-isolation in New England.
In addition to gaining notoriety for his often-banned-from-schools novel about troubled teenager Holden Caulfield, Salinger also earned a reputation for turning down offer after offer from Hollywood executives who wanted to turn his classic novel into a movie. Salinger also authored other novels such as Franny and Zooey, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction and the collection Nine Stories.
We are very sad to see such an extraordinary talent go. Salinger left quite a large imprint on the world and will not soon be forgotten. May he rest in peace.
Is Catcher in the Rye one of your favorite books? Would you like to see a film version of the story, or is it best kept in the literary world?
How would you like to learn your entire high school curriculum by playing video games? Sounds like a dream come true, doesn't it? For 72 sixth-grade students in New York City, that dream is a reality. The Quest to Learn School is an experimental approach to learning that prepares students for high-tech careers by educating nearly entirely through video games.
"This year’s 72-student class is split into four groups that rotate through five courses during the day: Codeworlds (math/English), Being, Space and Place (social studies/English), The Way Things Work (math/science), Sports for the Mind (game design), and Wellness (health/PE). Instead of slogging through problem sets, students learn collaboratively in group projects that require an understanding of subjects in the New York State curriculum. The school’s model draws on 30 years of research showing that people learn best when they’re in a social context that puts new knowledge to use. Kids learn more by, say, pretending to be Spartan spies gathering intel on Athens than by memorizing facts about ancient Greece."
The unique learning style keeps students engaged and combines current technology and media with the basic fundamentals of learning.
"Most sixth-graders don’t expect to ever need to identify integers, but at Quest, it’s the key to a code-breaking game. In another class, when creatures called Troggles needed help moving heavy objects, the class made a video instructing how long a ramp they should build to minimize the force they needed to apply. “They’re picking concepts up as well as, if not better than, at other schools,” says Quest’s math and science teacher Ameer Mourad."
The students enter as sixth-graders and at the end of each school year will have to pass the standardized tests to keep the school open. Quest administrators hope for this current class to continue learning via video game through graduation, each year admitting a new class of sixth graders.
“We need new ways to create a passion for learning,” says Gregg Betheil, a New York City Department of Education director who helped Quest’s application. “The planning has been extremely thoughtful. It seemed like a chance worth taking.”
Could this be the future of American education? We can only imagine what the wait list must be like!
Since 2005, non-profit One Laptop Per Child has been providing underprivileged children in developing countries with efficient yet inexpensive laptops to fuel education. Though a bit bulky (and pedal-powered), these laptops are more than adequate at getting the job done. Now, OLPC is stepping up their game and introducing the conceptual designs of their new XO-3 model - a super-thin, energy efficient and inexpensive alternative.
The third generation computer, designed by Yves Behar, is thinner than an iPhone and contains enough features to make even the average American consumer jealous - waterproof, semi-flexible 8.5" by 11" touchscreen (optimized for both indoor and outdoor use), wireless induction charging, and energy consumption under one watt. Best of all, it only costs $75, $25 less than the $100 price tag on earlier model.
This is all just speculation, at this point - the XO-3 isn't due out until 2012, which gives them more than enough time to find some snags in the plan. The technology the XO-3 offers at such a low price point is making several technology writers raise their eyebrows in speculation, but only time will tell.
OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte hopes the cheaper cost and increased energy efficiency will spark a flurry of popularity in third world nations who are eager to take advantage of new technologies.
If OLPC's mission is one you feel inspired by, choose them as your Cause on SocialVibe. Each sponsored activity you complete on SocialVibe will result in a micro-donation to OLPC.
Getting ready for your first year at college and stuck on what major to pick? Maybe you're in need of something new and are thinking of switching job fields. Choose wisely, as not all jobs are created equal - especially in this faltering economy. Huffington Post recently listed off the top 10 industries that will lose the most jobs in the next decade. In other words, steer clear, or beware.
10. The Bureau of Labor Statistic predicts that the wired telecommunications industry, which provided 666,000 jobs in 2008, will lose 11% of its employment opportunities by the end of the next decade.
9. By 2018, the number of gas station industry jobs, which in 2008 stood at 843,000, is likely to be cut by 9%, according to the government report.
8. The Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts that around 23% of the jobs in the mining support industry -- which as of 2008 sustained around 328,000 jobs -- will be lost by 2018.
7. Think the worst is over for print media? The government estimates that within the decade that number will dwindle by nearly 25%, to 245,000.
6. Despite widespread outsourcing to overseas manufacturers, in 2008 there were only 155,000 jobs in cut and sew apparel manufacturing in the United States -- the industry with the fewest jobs on this list. The Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates that the industry will lose 89,000 jobs -- 57% -- by 2018.
5. Whither Kinko's? The printing industry provided 594,000 jobs in 2008, of which the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates it will lose about 16%, bringing the number down to just under 500,000.
4. The postal service employed 748,000 people in 2008, but the government anticipates the number will fall 13% over the next decade to 650,000.
3. The auto parts industry contributed about 544,000 jobs to the U.S. economy in 2008. Despite massive bailouts of the Detroit automakers last year, the government predicts the industry that serves those companies will lose almost 19% of its jobs.
2. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the semiconductor manufacturing industry will lose almost 34% of its jobs by 2018. That would bring the industry's total jobs down to 287,000 from the 432,000 jobs the industry supported in 2008.
1. In 2008, there were 1,557,000 jobs in department stores -- more than any other industry on this list. But the government forecasts the industry will lose 159,000 of them -- more than 10% -- over the next ten years.
Some of these are no-brainers, but we hope this provides some insight on what to focus on when you're planning the next steps in your education and career.
