Feeding the Hungry Around the World

Another use of social networking is to make us aware on a very personal level, of what is happening in other countries. The Globe and Mail's headliners over that last few days concerning the devastating drought and famine in southern Somalia is extremely upsetting. It is unfathomable that militants are refusing to let international aid organizations help.

In discussing this with friends at the gym yesterday morning I learned of a group called Ontario Christian Gleaners who have been assisting countries around the work since 2008. I checked their website and their youtube video once I got home to learn more. Within ten minutes I was "up to speed" on an organization that had been helping countries around the world for three years.

OCG is a non-denominational church organization. Through volunteers and donations they take vegetables and other foods that are not suitable for our "pristine" market places, cut out the spots and other "blips" in the vegetables, chop them up, put them through a drying process and package it all. Viola! You've now got a dried healthy soup to ship to starving people around the world.

Next Tuesday I plan to attend a tour of their location to learn more. There is probably not much I can personally do to replace the militant forces in Somalia with a humane government. However, volunteering one morning a week to chop veggies for starving people who can be reached by aid organizations seems to be the least I could do.

Watch the video for more information. 

Ontario Christian Gleaners

Bruce Trail or Bust

Rickard Louv and others have given us insights into how important it is to be out in nature for both our mental and physical health. The exercise, the improvement in brain function from using all our senses to ensure we don't go tumbling over cliffs (my words, not his) and the therapeutic values are so vital.

But there are many more reasons to step outside...

A good friend of mine has recently been interviewed by the local newspaper. As you read the article you will realize why I feel so honoured to be considered one of her friends.

Bruce Trail or Bust 

This is the kind of person you may be fortunate to meet along the Bruce Trail.

Task #3
After attending the Drop In session and getting lots of help from LL I was able to access the Diigo program both in the lab and surprisingly!!! it worked from my home computer as well. I have bookmarked the site above as well as an interesting article in the Globe and Mail by Margaret Wente.

As far as tags go, it was interesting to see how the oh-so-clever computer suggested very appropriate tags itself. I added some more personal ones myself. I used the highlighter pen to test it out with my friend's article in the Burlington Post. When I inserted it onto this post, the highlighting disappeared so I went back to the Home Page Diigo site to find out why. Under the SEND option, I was told to choose ANNOTATED TEXT and when I did it seemed to work. For now anyway.

I think this is a good program especially for people working in two or more different environments and with more than one computer. I plan to suggest it to my kids and to my granddaughter in high school. As for me, since I'm generally on only one computer the flexibility that this program offers is not all that relevant although I do like the highlighting and capturing options.

My understanding is that Diigo stores your bookmarks and special effects (highlighting, tagging etc) on their server, thus making it possible for the user to move to different computers and Ipads etc. While this means great flexiblity (gosh, you can even bookmark an article, save it and then read it later on your IPAD while you're waiting in line at the supermarket!! Yikes!). However, for a website that contained information that was really important for me, I'd still prefer to cut and past it into a Word document and save it on my home computer. I guess this is like keeping your money in a sock under the bed, but at least I always know where my computer is... should the Diigo site suddenly disappear somewhere in cyberspace.

WOW!

Social Media Revolution

At our introductory get together for this course LL presented this most interesting video to get us all started. It's such an eye opener that I thought I'd post it here as well. I think the message runs the whole gamut from exciting to scary! .

Keeping Our Perspective

Last Child in the Woods

This new technology is fascinating. I'm glad to be a part of this group and learning along the way. As with anything new it's so important to keep perspective. I chose this You Tube video (see Last Child in the Woods above) because it emphasizes that we need to make sure the things that we value aren't lost. Being outdoors in nature is good not only for our physical health in terms of exercise but equally important (as research is showing i.e. Attention Deficit Disorder) for our mental health and brain power.

Using You Tube is an interesting experience. It's incredible how many videos are out there and you can certainly spend a lot of time finding what you are looking for. With the combination of sound and video it is much more effective to watch than reading text so I can see why it has become so popular. I will continue to make cautionary use of it.

Thank you

Hats off to the Burlington Library for once again providing the community with another exceptional program. Great introduction to the Betty Blogger program! And our Library Lady bakes delicious chocolate cake. 

Social networking has become such a big factor in our lives. Up until now I've been limited to emailing friends and family so I guess that puts me in the web2.huh? category, closer to the 1 than the 10 on the knowledge scale. It will be great to gain more insight into some of the pros and cons of all this new technology and learning along with others. 

Looking forward to the weeks ahead. 
hikingram