What’s happening in the library?

The activities of the United Nations are necessarily of interest to us at UWC — so I thought you might like to know two ways to keep up-to-date with their news.

1) Subscribe to the daily e-mail update from UN Wire

2) Read their blog — UN Dispatch: Posts on the UN – which you can subscribe to — either sign-up to receive updates via e-mail or use their RSS feed to receive updates via an RSS reader (e.g., GoogleReader or Bloglines).

This is one of the news items that landed in my in-box last week, thanks to UN Wire:

UNAIDS to adjust worldwide HIV/AIDS numbers

The United Nations’ AIDS agency released a report Tuesday stating it has systematically overestimated the number of HIV/AIDS cases worldwide since the 1990s. Methodology used to conduct surveys and compile data caused the discrepancy, which will see UNAIDS drop its estimate of the number of cases worldwide from 39.5 million to 33.2 million. Read UNAIDS’ press release and view the report. The New York Times (11/20)

There’s a TED talk (see my previous posting on some of my favorites) which deals with this very issue — which might be of interest to anyone teaching economics or working with AIDS as a global concern. It’s a wonderful example of how research (information plus critical thinking) can help us decide — as a society, as activists, as policy makers — how best to address problems such as AIDS.

TED Talk: Emily Oster — What do we really know about the spread of AIDS?

Here’s her biographical blurb off the TED website (it’s pretty impressive for someone 26 years old):

Her Harvard doctoral thesis took on famed economist Amartya Sen and his claim that 100 million women were statistically missing from the developing world. He blamed misogynist medical care and outright sex-selective abortion for the gap, but Oster pointed to data indicating that in countries where Hepetitis B infections were higher, more boys were born. Through her unorthodox analysis of medical data, she accounted for 50% of the missing girls.

She’s also investigated the role of bad weather in the rise in witchcraft trials in Medieval Europe and what drives people to play the Powerball lottery. Her latest target: busting assumptions on HIV in Africa.

I’m sure some of our students will end up as TED speakers some day.

Did you know the latest Man Booker Prize winner is a UWC graduate? (Pearson College)  And one of Anne Enright’s former Pearson classmates wrote an article in The Telegraph (Calcutta, India) about how one English teacher from those long ago days might be responsible in part for Enright’s success…

Thanks to Angela Turner for her presentation on education and creativity during our inset on Friday. I was pleased to see her using Sir Ken Robinson’s talk — as I had heard it before on one of my favorite websites, TED Talks.

TED stands for Technology, Education, Design – and since 1984 the annual conference has been bringing together “the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes)”. Over 150 talks are now available online. Yes, you’ll find famous names like Al Gore and Jane Goodall, but also talks by people famous only in their own field.

Try some of these TED talks:

• Toys that Make World – Will Wright, the creator of video games such as The Sims and SimCity, demonstrates his latest evolutionary game, Spore, and “shares his thoughts on Montessori schools, Darwinian theory and long-term thinking, emphasizing, throughout, that Spore is not so much a game as an opportunity for discovery — an imagination amplifier.”
• Cultures at the Far Edge of the World — ” With stunning photos and stories, National Geographic Explorer Wade Davis celebrates the diversity of the world’s indigenous cultures, now disappearing from the planet at an alarming rate.”
• How does Technology Evolve? Like We Did — “Kevin Kelly uses evolutionary theory to discuss the purpose and value of technology. By asking, “What does technology want?” he shows that its movement toward ubiquity and complexity is much like the evolution of life.”
• Debunking Third-World Myths with the Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen – by Swedish Professor of International health, Hans Rosling. In his hands, “global trends — life expectancy, child mortality, poverty rates — become clear, intuitive and even playful.” (I just love the man’s passion for the data and what it reveals…)
• New Insights on Poverty and Life Around the World - a follow-up talk by Hans Rosling, speaking about global poverty, HIV, and carbon dioxide emissions in a developing world — utilizing amazing graphical analysis.

Going back to the subject of creativity… if you haven’t come across the book “A Whole New Mind: why right-brainers will rule the future” by Daniel Pink, you might want to get your hands on it. (Yes, it will be in the library shortly!)

Daniel Pink argues that because of 3 As

• Asia (or the outsourcing of ‘good jobs’ overseas)
• Abundance (or rising affluence)
• Automation (the computerization of our lives)

we are shifting from the 20th century “information age” to the 21st century “conceptual age”. He claims the winners in the future will be those who use both sides of their brains and recommends attention to six senses:

• Not just function, but also DESIGN
• Not just argument, but also STORY
• Not just focus, but also SYMPHONY
• Not just logic, but also EMPATHY
• Not just seriousness, but also PLAY
• Not just accumulation, but also MEANING

It fits right in with the need to encourage creativity, identified by Ken Robinson.

p.s. By searching the Internet to see if Robinson has published that book he mentioned he was writing (no, he hasn’t — we need to wait until early 2009 for “Element”), I came across an interview in which he mentions some work he did for the Singapore government:

My relationship with Singapore was that they had determined a few years before to develop themselves as the creative hub of Southeast Asia. Their deputy prime minister put this forward as a plan; and they had created a strategy called Creative Singapore. So, as you said, I and three other people were brought out a couple of times to meet the key players there to look at the strategy. To look at the institutions there and to advice them on how they might move forward with it.

Susan Bratton: Did they act on it?

Sir Ken Robinson: Well, I wouldn’t like to say that people always do as I tell them to do, though I would like to think they do. I think they did, I thought they found the advice helpful and the strategies that we provided were useful. Of course, it’s a complex process.

Want some books related to Green Week? See the display in the library. If you’re looking for a picture book to read, I recommend:

• The Wump World / by Bill Peet
• Dinosaurs and All That Rubbish / by Michael Foreman
• The Last Nut / by Gavin Coates
• One World / by Michael Foreman
• Dear Greenpeace / by Simon James
• The Lorax / by Dr. Seuss

Want some images to help explain the need to be green? See:

• Award-winning posters about environmental damage — from Good 50×70
• Theme blog of videos on the Environment and Conservation — compliments of the Shambles website
• The photographs of Chris Jordan — which visually represent the statistics of our consumption and the waste we produce. Take a look at American Numbers and scroll down through the photos to Cans Seurat, 2007, which depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds, as well as Plastic Bags, 2007, which depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds. The set Intolerable Beauty is also stunning. Every photograph is shown magnified — so you can understand what object is making up the image.
• For extra fun, watch Chris Jordan being interviewed by the comedian Stephen Colbert

Want some good websites to expand your own “green” knowledge? Try these:

• World Changing: change your thinking / “WorldChanging.com works from a simple premise: that the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us.”
• Treehugger / “TreeHugger is the leading media outlet dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream. Partial to a modern aesthetic, we strive to be a one-stop shop for green news, solutions, and product information.”

If you remember, one of the books Bonnie Campbell Hill waved at us with an enthusiastic recommendation was John Wood’s Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: One Entrepreneur’s Odyssey to Educate the World’s Children.

Just in case you wanted to know more about his project of building libraries in areas like Nepal and Vietnam, but you don’t have the time to read his book, then perhaps you’d be interested in a couple of interviews (in the NewYork Times and on the DesignShare website) as well as the Room to Read website. NB: the book is available in the Singapore National Library (just search for it on their online catalog).

I know we have a lot of good Global Concerns already going on in the school, but if I had to choose a new one, it would be this.