Changing the World

Just finished listening to Episode #6 of Foreword Thinking: the Business and Motivational Book Review Podcast that's hosted by Mitch Joel.

His guest in this episode is John Wood, author of the memoir Leaving Microsoft to Change the World and founder of Room to Read, a non-profit organization that establishes schools, libraries, and other educational infrastructure in developing nations.

I was moved by the idea that this man would feel compelled to dedicate the best years of his life to battling illiteracy in countries so far from his own home. It's humbling because I live in a developing country, see poverty and the effects of a deteriorating educational system on a daily basis, and yet I don't do enough to help.

Below are a few of the quotes from the podcast which really struck me [minutes into the podcast]:

• The Tyranny of Or. Sometimes there's this thing -- Steve Ballmer calls it the "Tyranny of Or" where everything's an Either-Or thing [7:26]
• On over-thinking. In a certain sense, I'm glad I didn't over-think it, because I could have talked myself out of it very easily. There's no shortage of people who would tell me exactly why this is a bad idea, or why this wouldn't work, or how difficult it would be. And I think at a certain point, you just have to ignore those voices and dive into what you're passionate about. So looking at it now, where I am today 8 years later, if I'd over-thought it I probably wouldn't have done it and I'd probably still be at a desk at Microsoft or some other technology company [8:05]
• Keeping Things Tangible. It's hard to be cynical about charity if you know exactly where the money is going to: you see a photograph of the finished school; you see a dedication plaque; it's very tangible for people. In this day and age when communication is ubiquitous, it's not difficult to raise money to do one project in the developing world. [15:42]
• Education as Key to Personal Success. All of us who have done well in life, we have education to thank for our success in life. The fact that there are almost 1 billion people in the world today who are illiterate is a damning indictment on our world. How can we ever break the cycle of poverty for these kids if they don't go to school? It is impossible. [17:37]
• Education affects Entire Countries. The United Nations has statistics where you can graph amazing things against the literacy rate. The most literate countries have the highest life expectancy; the most uneducated countries have the lowest life expectancy. Maternal death during childbirth: low literacy countries are losing 15 times as many women to death during childbirth as in an educated society like Iceland, or Norway, or Sweden. [18:05]
  
• Education is not a hand-out, it's a hand-up. You're giving people the skills they need to break the cycle of poverty themselves. [18:55]
• It is solvable; you don't need millions of dollars. We can build a school library and support it for the first three years and train a librarian and fill it with books for US$3000. We can put a girl on scholarship and keep her on scholarship and have a strong female mentor who looks after her, and pay her school fees, and give her a bicycle and pay for her school supplies and pay for her healthcare -- all of that is Cdn $275 a year. It's less than a $1 a day to put a girl in school and keep her in school [19:32]
• Literate women and girls will educate the next generation. The statistic that I think is most depressing and most damning is that two-thirds of the people who are illiterate in the world today are women and girls. And if we don't educate the girls, we don't educate the next generation. That to me is one of the most important things in the world -- to get girls in school, keep them in school, they will break the cycle of poverty for their family. An educated mother -- I know from my own background; my grandmother and my mother were both educated and they both read to me. If they had been illiterate, my life would be very different today. [20:04]
• Keep the solutions simple. Sometimes in the charity world, people make things overly complicated. I have people who say -- I want to help you plunk down a solar-powered, satellite enabled, remote learning station... and I'm like -- Oh, my God. Let's just build a library and put some books in the hands of kids and start with the basics. [20:48]

The hardcover edition of the book came out in 2006. The paperback edition was released in September 2007.

Did You Know?

Found an interesting video today via Yvonne Divita's Lipstick Marketing Blog. She called it "Shift Happens."

I think it has the ability to make any educator and any parent stop and think (and yes, worry) about their kids. I've embedded a copy of the video below.

While I was watching the video for the first time, I found myself hoping that it would end with a URL where people can get more information about the statistics that were cited, especially since the video was saying things that can generate a lot of hype.

I was really quite disappointed when there was nothing at the end. And if yesterday had not been a holiday here, I would probably have left it at that.

* * *

But since yesterday was a holiday, a series of Google searches led me to the blog of Karl Fisch (the man who came up with the original powerpoint presentation and video) and to Scott McLeod (who morphed Karl's work into the more generic video that's making the rounds on video sharing sites).

Karl explains the context for his original presentation, which I learned is actually entitled "Did You Know?"

MD's Note: These are excerpts only.

My administration asked me if I wanted to speak at one of our beginning of the year faculty meetings. I often provide updates on what's new and different with technology in our building and what teachers need to know to get the year started.

I put together a PowerPoint presentation with some (hopefully) thought-provoking ideas. I was hoping by telling some of these "stories" to our faculty, I could get them thinking about - and discussing with each other - the world our students are entering. To get them to really think about what our students are going to need to be successful in the 21st century, and then how that might impact what they do in their classrooms. It would also help the faculty that are not currently participating in my staff development join the conversation.

I told them that even though I would usually argue that just showing something and not discussing it afterward was a bad idea, that this time - since a meaningful conversation at the end of a long faculty meeting was unlikely - that's what I was going to do. But that I wanted them to hopefully think about this for their own classrooms, and then hold the conversation with each other over the next few days (and hopefully weeks and months and...).

To my delight, Karl's blog entry also offers a list of sources for the statistics cited in the video, although he admits that he had to modify some of the slides when he couldn't find all of his original sources. I only wish I had enough time to go through them all.

In his sources document, he also credits the video music to a mix of tracks from The Last of the Mohicans.

And so, with the context now properly established, here is "Did You Know" by Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod.



You can also find a link to the text-only version in Karl's original blog entry.

A final note: my Google search also led me to the website of James Feldman. Turns out that "Shift Happens" is a registered trademark and James Feldman owns it. I can only speculate that the phrase later became linked to the video because of comments people left in Karl Fisch's original blog entry.

Quest for Perfection

Read a very long but interesting article on the life story of Sergey Brin, one of Google's co-founders, on Moment Magazine's website.

Couldn't help but laugh when I got near the end of the article, which recounts a speech that Sergey delivered to a high school for gifted math students near Tel Aviv, in Israel:

"I have standard Russian-Jewish parents," he then continued in English. "My dad is a math professor. They have a certain attitude about studies. And I think I can relate that here, because I was told that your school recently got seven out of the top 10 places in a math competition throughout all Israel."

The students applauded their achievement and the recognition from Sergey, unaware that he was setting up a joke. "What I have to say," he continued, "is in the words of my father: ‘What about the other three?’"

By golly, that's just exactly what my mother would say!

In fact, she said something almost exactly like that to my sister many years ago, when she came home from school with an exam score of 98. Mom's question was -- "what happened to the other two points?" haha!

Pamana

One of my former college professors, Dr. Pablo Manalastas (aka "Doc Mana") is retiring after 30 years of service at my alma mater.

A fund is being set up in his name, according to an email that I received last week.

I had such a hard time passing his probability and statistics class! But I do remember him as a patient teacher... with occassional off-color jokes. haha!

I hope they throw him a really wonderful retirement party. Heck, if they decide to allow alumni to attend, I will go.