Ramjan’s  “The Spiritual Education of Children & Junior Youth” presents us with an admirable commentary on some of the Baha’i perspectives of what is required in such a process. Much of his information is gleaned from documents from the International Teaching Centre, and more specifically from a recent talk by Counselor Stephen Hall.

OneCountry, an online newsletter of the Baha’i International Community, provides us with an inspirational story of an educational program “UPLIFT” in Uganda that focuses on Literacy for Transformation.

A Baha’i Youth gives a details of her Youth Year of Service at the Allen Baha’i Primary School in Swaziland. Very sweet.

Julia shares her excitement with the Ruhi process…

The Ruhi process is amazing…It seems to remove the distinctions between people, namely, the us and them phenomenon, and makes “becoming a Bahá’í,” if even an issue at all, not an event but a life-long process. The Ruhi sequence of courses puts people from all walks of life into contact with the Word of God for this Day and accompanies them in service to humanity so that they are assisted in remaining on the path towards God for all of eternity.

And finally, how two Baha’is who are trained as teachers became inspired to run a Youth Summer Camp.

Image Source: maiamily

The Baha’i Junior Youth Empowerment Campaign is about giving the Junior Youth spiritual skills, values and knowledge as world citizens. To complement this, and in the spirit of ‘walking the spiritual path with practical feet’ here are some of my favourite personal productivity articles. In many cases, I have given specific links to the actual blogs themselves as I they are also my favourite blogs:

1. Why are we happy? Why are we not happy? ‘challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want.‘ via TED
2. Things I wish I’d known when I was younger ‘Most people learn over time, but often learning comes too late to be fully useful. There are certainly many things that I know now that would have been extremely useful to me earlier in my life; things that could have saved me from many of the mistakes and hurts I suffered over the years‘ via LifeHack
3. Power Napping - Improved mental and physical performance ‘A power nap, says Mednick, simply maximizes these benefits by getting the sleeper into and out of rejuvenative sleep as fast as possible.‘ via the  Ririan Project
   
4. Best 50 Hacks for your Life ‘the best 50 life hacks of the year, based on their popularity and contents in different categories’ via Lifehack
   
5. How to save time in the long term via Life Optimizer ‘how to live life to the fullest through personal growth
6. The Expert Mind ‘Studies of the mental processes of chess grandmasters have revealed clues to how people become experts in other fields as well‘ via Scientific American
7. How to stay motivated ‘the key to successfully accomplishing one goal after another is staying motivated….Here are just a few ideas you can try:‘ via LifeHack
8. 10 Ways to instantly build Self-confidence ‘Self confidence is the difference between feeling unstoppable and feeling scared out of your wits…. Although many of the factors affecting self confidence are beyond your control, there are a number of things you can consciously do to build self confidence.‘ via PickTheBrain
9. 7 Ways to help yourself recognize opportunity ‘One of most powerful ways to change your life and the lives of others is by spotting opportunities for improvement. Opportunity is in front of your eyes – right now – and you don’t see it. So how do you open your eyes wider? How do you see the hidden opportunity that exists everywhere in your environment?‘ via Steve-olson
10. How to create a technical presentation that makes Steve Jobs green with envy via The Public Speaking Blog ‘is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your customers, employers and investors through public speaking.‘
11. Six Principles of Change ”Do you believe in change? Believing you can change encourages commitment to the process and enhances the likelihood of success.‘ via Psychology Today
    
12. Forgiveness: how to let fo of grudges and bitterness ‘Nearly everyone has been hurt by the actions or words of another….But when you don’t practice forgiveness, you may be the one who pays most dearly…. in general, forgiveness is a decision to let go of resentments and thoughts of revenge. Forgiveness is the act of untying yourself from thoughts and feelings that bind you to the offense committed against you.‘ via MayoClinic
13. How to build intimacy in any relationship ‘You know how things can get so busy sometimes, that not only do we forget to connect with ourselves, but also forget to connect with the people we love most?… We often tell ourselves that we can make it up to them once our busy schedule slows down. Funny thing is, our schedule never slows down. We really have to schedule our most important priorities first ‘ via Think Simple Now.
14. Some Great Thoughts by Great People ‘Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.‘ via Amazing Posts
15. Speed-Reading Techniques ‘when I wound up in graduate school at Princeton Seminary and several Profs. expected me to read several thousand pages of collateral along with the five or six textbooks. That’s when I got serious about speed reading.‘ via RockTown
16. mnemonics and memory improvment. ‘mnemonics and memory improvement systems that are outlined in this site, are surprisingly straight-forward, and should not take you more than a relatively short period of time to fully master.‘ via Build Your Memory

Image Source: TED

• Love me, that I may love thee
• Learning In Action
• Spiritual Group empowers Carrboro Youth
• Inspiration for Baha’i Teaching give the story ‘An American gentleman opened his door. Surprised to see the team, he asked what they wanted. Hearing the explanation, he said, “I am leaving now. Could you meet me in ten minutes at the pool?”’ Read the rest of the article to see how the story finishes! 
• Junior Youth for Change is ‘about how we junior-youth are changing the world with the help of youth… help us know, understand and respond to the world around us.‘
• ‘Thoughts on animating a Junior Youth Group‘
• A new video on Transforming Neighbourhoods: ‘Youth Learn Together‘
• This blog is by a sweet, dedicated and friendly Australian Baha’i couple, and although not focused on Baha’i Youth or children, has a few very sweet posts such as this: ‘Playing for change: sound around the world‘

Resources for curriculum design and lesson planning:

• At the international education conference, for which Dr Farzam Arbab, member of the Universal of Justice was the keynote speaker, Sona Arbab also gave a talk specifically on ‘Programs for the Spiritual Empowerment of Junior Youth‘ (PDF)
• A compilation of writings used for activities described in building a strong Baha’i identity in Young Children (PDF)
  
• Some Quotes from the Baha’i Writings relating to Moral Education (PDF)
  
• Inspiring Quotes for teachers and parents (PDF)
• The Peacemaker: ‘challenges you to succeed as a leader where other have failed. Experience the joy of bringing peace to the Middle Eat or the agony of plunging the region into disaster. Peacemaker will test your skills, assumptions and prior knowledege. Play it and you will never read the news the same way again.‘

MultiFaith resources

• The Big Religion chart is ‘an attempt to summarize all the complexities of religions and belief systems into tiny little boxes on a single, quick-reference comparison chart.‘
• WorldPrayers is great resource of ‘adorations, celebrations ,invocations and meditations‘ for activities such as Devotional meetings.
• Maps of War gives a comprehensive and yet concise, simple and yet effective ‘visual history of ‘who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history‘.
• Although I have mentioned it before, I am still surprised by our signifcant mention in the Huffington Post ‘Baha’i: The ultimate global religion?‘

Funny YouTube videos on the Core activities

Finally, an amusing list of Baha’i related YouTube videos that range from humourous to hilarious:

• The masses are waiting
  
• Chidlren are our future
• The Essence of Our Faith: (my favourite,as it is based on Jet Li’s ‘HERO’)

LIKEWISE, HeiferVillage is a Serious Game created by Heifer International, and BeaconFire they hope to educate players about real world conditions of poverty, and how communities can create sustainable solutions to this plight via the ‘innovative and proven method to reduce poverty and hunger around the world: they give families living in poverty a gift of a goat, chicken, sheep, or other farm animal, along with training of sustainable farming methods.

GET ideas (Global Education Transformation) is an amazing site for all those wishing to gain solid pedagogy ideas and resources on global education for the 21st Century,

Get a sneak preview of ServiceNation’s Summit, ‘where 500 leaders of all ages from every sector of American life — from universities and foundations, to business and politics, to celebrate the power and potential of citizen service, and lay out a bold policy blueprint for addressing America’s greatest social challenges through expanded opportunities for volunteer and national service‘. Although this is very American-focused, I have included it because I think that the solutions to their social challenges are applicable to many, if not all, countries around the world.

In the spirit of ‘Think Global. Act local’, I close with an article ‘Make Youth Neighbourhood Nicer… in 11 easy steps‘  as found by a very good site by Kevin Harris aptly named ‘Neighbourhoods‘.

Finally, I end with a slightly tangential resource: ‘Great Speeches of the 2oth Centruy‘, part of the Guardian.co.uk’s website, including very well-known ones such as Churchill’s ‘We shall fight on the beaches’, JFK’s ‘Ask not what your country can do for you’ and Mandela’s ‘An ideal for which I am prepared to die for.’

Image:www.holymeatballs.org

1. Get Global: ‘Information, support, and ideas for developing a Global Citizenship approach in your school‘ by Oxfam.
2. Free the Children: Find your gift. Find your passion! Put them together, ‘and you will change the world. It only takes one small act to make a difference.‘
3. The United Nations for Kids, Youth and Educators. A better world starts here ‘It starts in our homes. In our schools and communities. In our country. It starts with you.‘
4. Shaping Youth ‘a forum about media and marketing’s influence on kids‘
5. Girls for a Change - ‘empowers thousands of teen girls to create and lead social changes. GFC provides girls with professional female models, leadership training and the inspiration to work together in teams to solve persistent societal problems in their communities‘
6. GlobalEducation: ‘to increase the amound and quality of teaching of global ecuation in Australian Primary and secondary schools…. aims to raise awareness and understanding amoung Australian school students of international issues, development and poverty, and to prepare them to live in an increasingly globalised world and to be active citizens shaping better futures‘.
7. Girls Scouts‘  Challenge and Change which ‘teaches teen girls how to identify and solve community problems with lasting, innovative solutions‘.
8. Empowering Youth: ‘How to encourage Young Leaders to Do Great Things’ is a site focused on answering this question. ‘It’s a hands on guide to developing what is best in young people: their vision crative power, and drive to make the world an inclusive, sustainable place for themselves and future generations.‘
9. Cool planet ‘We live in an amazing world. But what do you really know about the world that you inhabit‘
10. The Youth Empowerment Project: ‘…of youth, by youth, for youth‘ aims to ‘foster, develop and support youth initiative, and a strong representational youth voice in the service and decision-making life of our community, and to engage youth as resources on a county, state-wide, national and international basis.‘
    
11. Youth Empowerment Alliance: ‘Dream. Build. Soar‘ creates strategic partnerships with people and organizations committed to assisting youth in finding and harnessing their potential so they can positively impact the world around them.’
12. Youth Empowerment Scheme (YES) is ‘a children’s charity that provides a weekly mentoring service for young people aged 11-14 years old from diverse backgrounds though Belfast…an organisation run by young people for young people providing a fresh and dynamic environment for participants and volunteers. We are also the only charity that promotes social inclusion amongst children of diverse backgrounds.‘
13. YouThink! …but do you know? ‘gives you information about global issues you said matter to you. Check out the research, knowledge and experience gathered by World Bank experts on international development…. Share with us what you see…. Figure out what you can do to make your community and this world a better places…. People say if a butterfly flutters its winds in one place, a storm gathers halfway around the world. The world functions like that Everything is linked — education, employment, health, trade, conflict, etc. Sometimes these connections may be hard to see, but they exist, and their consequences affect us all regardless of where you live. You are the present. You are inheriting the future.‘
14. Neo ‘Concerned about the future? Declare yourself and let the world bear witness to your stand!’
15. Hopeworks ‘Expanding the Futures of Youth‘ ‘enhancing the ives of inner-city Camde nyouth by expanding the learning opportunities available to them, pointing the way to a future full of hope and working together to create that future.’‘
16. ruMAD? (Are You making a difference?) is a values-focused, student-led, and inquiry-based curriculum framework that encourages students to make a difference!…to inpsire and challenge students in schools across Australia.’ (see also a Tasmanian Centre for Global Learning)
17. OneWorld: ‘Discover your power - Power to know, to speak, to make a difference‘. ‘An online hub publishing news on global issues and providing support to nonprofits helping to create a better world.‘
18. Teaching Tolerance: ‘to support young people who wanted to create change and started Mix It Up….believes in the power of youth to create and sustain real change‘. A project of the southern poverty law center ‘
19. Learn and Serve Clearinghouse ‘America’s most comprehensive service-learning resource‘
20. National Service-Learning partnership ‘A nationwide network of members advancing service-learning as a core part of every young person’s life and education.‘

credits: image source

Leader Talk offers some interesting insights into ‘Protect or Prepare: Which is better for Children?‘ Also, Thoma at OpenEducation discusses the premise ‘To Raise Smart and Successful Children focus on a Work Ethic‘, whilst “One positive relationship can make a huge difference for ‘at risk’ students” where a teacher recounts ‘I’ve found that students learn best for me when I’ve been able to develop a positive relationship with them. That’s why I take the time to do that.‘

‘Do shock Ads deter Youth?‘ briefly talks about some confrontational media campaigns aimed at stopping destructive behaviours such as binge drinking. Whilst Joanne in ‘Eco-kids socializing parents‘, raises the discussion of environmental educators wanting children to use ‘pester power’ to socialize their parents.

‘Children are naturally prone to be empathetic and moral‘ is the title of a recent research that shows ‘Children between the ages of seven and 12 appear to be naturally inclined to feel empathy for others in pain, according to researchers at the University of Chicago, who used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans to study responses in children.‘

Steve writes ‘the most important thing children need to understand is that they own the power of their decisions‘ which sparked a very interesting discussion on the issue of how to, and how much, decision-making children should be allowed to make on their own, and the role of the parents in this process.

Finally, ‘Empowerment: some nuances‘ reminds us that empowerment plans are most effective if they do not focuses too much on imposing government views on the communities, but rather consider how people want to be engaged.’ and later ‘ and ‘most people just want to have a say or to know they can influence things if they choose to. But low levels of motivation could at least partly be explained by the fact that most of us have grown up with habitual detached indifference on the part of authorities towards us - indeed systematised discouragement of seeking to influence.‘

credits: Image source

ON THE MIND of every Baha’i around the world are the Regional Baha’i conferences that are happening all around the world.The official reports of the Regional Conferences as they come in, can be found here. You can also find Online videos of various Baha’i Regional Conferences:(Manila, Lumbashi, Bangalore, Johnannesburg, New Delhi, Atlanta, Anotfagusta, and more) as well as the classic source of YouTube videos on the Regional confereences.

For two of many touching personal recollections and reflections: one from the Baha’i Conference for the NorthEastern States (USA) and another from the Central Regional Baha’i Conference (Chicago) titled ‘I can do that too!‘

On the topic of delightful stories, ‘Study Circle gives power to make change‘ makes an enjoyable read. Similarly, here are two personal reflections on passages from the Writings of Baha’ullah and ‘Abdu’l-Baha: ‘One family‘ and ‘And as ye have faith‘ as well as a touching historical story of the Commander of the Guard Colonel Ahmad-i-Jarrah, ‘A family history of sevice to Baha’u'llah‘.

For the visual learners, here is an excellent screenshot of a presentation about the principles that the Beloved Guardian enunciated for the Baha’i community: ‘netiher overstress nor whittle down the truth that you champion‘.

I leave you with a very novel and sweet idea (as reported by one of Australia’s leading newspapers):

THE adage don’t judge a book by its cover has taken on a different meaning on the North Coast.

Instead of borrowing literature at the library, book lovers can now take out a person - a new venture started at Lismore Library that is to become Australia-wide.

“I have 50 to 100 conversations a day saying hi, goodbye and about the weather and this is a good chance to get to know each other’s life out of everyday conversation,” Amelia Hosseini said, who is one of the “books” taking part in Lismore’s Living Library.

Titled Baha’i Youth, the 17-year-old can be borrowed for 30 minutes on the first Friday of the month where she tells lenders about her background, religion and life. READ MORE

• What are you known for?‘ (via Performancing)
• Who inspires you to be better at what you do?‘ (Jim Kukral)
• You don’t have to love your job to find fulfillment (Dumb Little Man)
• How do you find purpose in your work? (Caroline Middlebrook)
• How to find work that you love (Get Rich Slowly)

i read the post ‘Fifity habits of the highly successful‘ where there are some very good ones. Of the list, my favourites are:

1. They look for and find opportunities where others see nothing.
2. They consciously and methodically create their own success, while others hope success will find them.
3. They ask the right questions - the ones which put them in a productive, creative, positive mindset and emotional state.
4. They rarely complain (waste of energy). All complaining does is put the complainer in a negative and unproductive state.
5. They don’t blame (what’s the point?). They take complete responsibility for their actions and outcomes (or lack thereof).
6. While they are not necessarily more talented than the majority, they always find a way to maximise their potential. They get more out of themselves. They use what they have more effectively.
7. They are life-long learners. They constantly work at educating themselves, either formally (academically), informally (watching, listening, asking, reading, student of life) or experientially (doing, trying)… or all three.
8. They have a plan for their life and they work methodically at turning that plan into a reality. Their life is not a clumsy series of unplanned events and outcomes.
9. They are resilient. When most would throw in the towel, they’re just warming up.
10. They don’t invest time or emotional energy into things which they have no control of.

One of my favourite sites is ‘Chief Happiness Officer‘, and one of his gems is ‘Work is love made visible‘ as well as ‘Happiness in achievement‘

The Positivity blog reminds us of Dale Carnegie’s Top 10 Tips for Improving Your Social Skills which includes:

• If you want to be enththusiastic, act enthusiastic
• When dealing with people, remember that you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion
• Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain, but it takes character and self-control to be understandign and forgiving
• The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about hte things he treasures most
• Instead of worrying about what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they will admire

In terms of training yourself

• ‘It is possible to train a mind to be happy‘
• ‘10 Fail proof ways for delivering a powerful speech‘ (Dumb Little Man)
• How to build confidence (Steve Olsen)
• Discover Your Character Strenghts in 15 minutes (PsyBlog)
• How to bring people closer and restore kindness (Zen Habits)

Finally, on a lighter note, 40 inspirational speeches in 2 minutes

‘…too many people bury themselves in their own work, and then when it comes down to needing a supportive community to grow their service, they find a lot of tumbleweed blowing through their social graph.  Don’t expect to disappear on your friends and fellow entrepreneurs for months on and and then expect the cavalry to arrive when you need a Digg.

‘A lot of people cling to startups who seem to be on the rise, but fail to be there for others when things aren’t going so well.  Helping someone who is down and out in a difficult time is not only severely needed, because the ups and downs of the startup world can be difficult, but can also put you in the right place at the right time when companies start scuttling themselves.’

Here are some of my other favourite posts on what startups and entrepreneurs should be reading, thinking about, learning and doing:

Starting and Assessing your company

• Your company: what are your core values?
• Startup business strategy
• 5 things you need to do to turn a napkin into a company
• 10 Ways to verify your startup assumptions, and its sequel
• 11 Favourite articles on startups for 2007
• Startup Lessons Everyone Should Read

Marketing your company

• 7 things entrepreneurs should know about marketing
• 5 marketing tools every startup should use

Learning from other people’s failures

• 5 Ways to Make Sure your Project Fails
• 3 Lessons from a web idea that didn’t go anywhere
• 5 mistakes new developers often make

Other interesting topics

• Can your project pass this simple test?
• Splitting Equity between partners
• How to find a badass co-founder
• When do I launch?

Online Utility offers us the following:

• Readability Test and Improve : Calculate and print various readability tests, for your students to find sentences which they could consider rewriting to improve the text’s readability
• Learn to Read English : Get tooltips with synonyms and links to dictionaries for each complicated word in your text
• Vocabularly builder : generate vocabulary lists for arbitray English language texts
• Filtered Word Frequencies : Find uncommon words in any English text or web page
• Usage of Words: Find example senteces for arbitray words
• Detector of Comication vocab: Find words in an English Text which are not conisdrered simple or basic.
• Understand Foreign Language Text : Enter arbitray text, and it it put links to the appropriate language dictionary under each word!
• Misspellizer : Automatically creates spellnng mistake! Great fro testing people’s ability to spell check and proof read!

SpellingCity, on online spelling program features eight games powered by over 35,000 spelling words; a real person’s voice for audio and thousands of free spelling lists.

‘The Word and the World:Technology aids Engish-Language learners‘ is a moderately in-depth post about the use of technologies to effective pedagogically-sound langauge learning.

The  English Teacher Blog writes that the best wat to teach vocabulary is to pul unfamiliar words from student reading. To this end, Laying the Foudnation offers lists of SAT-level vobulary words drawn from 131 school-level novels and works of Shakespeare. Each packet inclused a list of wrods, synonmys, anotnyms, a quick quiz and other practice items.

Story Nory, addresses the question ‘What to do when your students love stories, but hate reading?’. A source of many audio stories for kids, and many more are added each week. Excellent way to combine literacy with entertainment. TeachingProfessor addresses a similar question from a different perspective in his article ‘Getting students to read‘.

Kevin Jarrett’s articles ‘Tikatok: imagine a story. Create a Book. Inspire a kid!” is a review of Tikatok — a website that makes it really easy for kids to write, ullastrate and publish their won books. Kevin continues by saying that he thinks this company is one of the few websites that really ‘get it’ about enhancing kids’ educations, and praises their driving philosphy as well as their end-product.

On the topic of lesson activities, don’t miss Teaching Parts of Speech through song as a means for teaching kids about grammatical elements.

For those of you of haven’t heard, Simple English Wikipedia makes the super useful Wikipedia suitable for young children or English language learners. It’s pretty much what it sounds like — all articles are written in simple English words and grammar, and the sentences are short for easier comprehension.

Continuiing the reference materials link, definr is a funky and very fast method of finding the definitions and meanings of words.

I leave you with articles, resources and thoughts on one of the ultimate forms of literacy: story-telling!

• eLearnSpace tells us ‘the secret of story telling: Why we all love a good yarn‘
• Seth Godin writes about ‘Creating stories that resonate‘
• Buzzmchine gvies us ‘Extreme story telling‘  where he writes:

Go right now to see Jonathan Harris’ experiment in storytelling: an Alaskan whale hunt. Jonathan took photos at least every 5 minutes for the week of the tale, which itself is a unique means of using the camera to capture the story, freeze-drying moments instead of memories. Then he returned and created a stunning interface to display his 3,214 photos — many of them stunning — enabling you to explore by time, by image, by adrenalin (how many photos he took in a given scene, mimicking his heartbeat), by characters, and by concept tags (for example, blood). I dabbled at first, poking my head into the story here and there, randomly or by tags. But then I had to watch the whole thing. So I recommend heartily that you go over and explore yourself.

Happy reading!

‘Hungry for Solutions: Can the Youth Fix the Future?‘ reports on the Portland Youth Summit as part of its Global Citizens Corps. THis report is packed full of quality resources on for helping and educating the youth on Global Change.

If you want to see the ingenuity of kids, try this team-building exercise as developed and practised by global Kids.

‘Million Futures‘ is a really nifty project that allows studetns to write their visions of the future on virtual airplaces, which then fly around the web site for others to read. Meanwhile, ‘10 Things I can do to help my world‘ is a book written for young children about practical things they can do around their home and life that can make this world a better place.

Generation Yes, which is a blog about empowering students with technology, is announcing grants for the Global Youth Service Day (GYSD), April 24-26 2009. This same blog has an interesting post on the One Laption Per Child (OLPC) project ‘Teach students that education can change the world‘. In a similar vein, LazosLearning has partnered with the Foundation for the Application and Teaching fo the Sciences, more commonly known as FUNDAEC to offer two online courses: A Discourse of Social Action, and Constructing a Conceptual Framework for Social Action.

Here’s a punchy article if ever i saw one from the Community Development Foundation titled “Community development and empowerment‘ :

Empowerment can reach higher into decision-making procedures: setting agendas, raising aspirations and ensuring that the channels for communication and influencing between community members and their representatives, even at the topmost tiers, are accessible and acknowledged as legitimate aspects of the democratic culture. Community development practice aims to embed these structures and understanding into everyday democracy so that everyone knows how they can influence decisions as individual citizens but, more importantly, through collective approaches involving learning, dialogue and negotiation.

Thanks to Neighbourhoods: a blog on neighbourhoods, neighbourlines, social captial and life at the local level’ for this find. On the topic of neighbourhoods, ‘the power of the neighbourhood‘, reminds us of the strength of empowering people.

I love this title: ‘On the true purpose of our global enterprise: To bind hearts together‘

OnStartups, takes ‘8 Startup Insights inspired by the mega mind of Seth Godin‘. These include: resist becoming average; let your users talk to each other; beware the need for for ciritical mass.  Various people offer practical experience and lessons — many of which they learnt the hard way!

• ‘3 Startup lessons I know now, but wish I’d known then‘ via Anita
• ‘Here’s how not to run a startup.‘ via BrassTack
• ‘Postmortems on two failed startups from their founders‘ via LightSpeed
• ‘7 Must reads for Developers turned Entrepreneurs‘ via Brian Haveri
• ‘What Startups can learn from Haruki Murakami via ReadWriteWeb
• ‘Sucess is easy‘ via TheFreeStyleEntrpreneur
• ‘Key actions steps to build a succesful internet startup‘ by Robin Good
• Startup Hacks: Seven Ideas for Building your team, via Mashable

Of course, no matter what your idea or strategy, you might not actually have the personal characteristics to run your own startup. So finally, I leave you with two links: ‘Are you entreprenuer material‘ and ‘Are you tough enough to make money online?’

EricaBiz, writes “It’s time to completely change your Marketing Strategy!“, speaks about the need for a fundamental change in marketing due to the financial crisis.

In terms of targeting your audiences, I have always liked the advice and content from “Work at home Moms” and given the billions of dollars spent each year by Moms, this free eBook ‘Marketing to Moms” is no exception.

Chris Anderson has been the expert in how companies can offer free products and still create viable business models and his articles “The three kinds of FREE‘ and ‘Pricing sweet spots: $0 and $Lots‘, and ‘14 Free business models‘, are good short reads.

On the topic of pricing, SmallBizTrends has ‘8 Pricing Strategies you can implement Right Now“, including the ‘nine-zero effect’, the ‘prestige pricing’, ‘quantity suggsestive pricing’, and lots lots more. Also from the same people is the interesting piece on “The Art of Pricing‘.

Rita McGrath from Harvard Business Publishing shows us how to ‘Unleash the Emotional Appeal of Your Product.

Finally, I leave you with something I had never thought about before with regards to marketing, but seems really quite a decent idea: “How Jenny Craig uses personas for successful marketing‘.

One of my pet peeves is that many educated people still do not know how to use apostrophes, know the difference between ‘which’ and ‘that’, and the difference between’good and ‘well’. Help has now arrived for via ‘Advanced English grfammar video lessons‘. Actually, their entire site, BusinessEnglishPod is well worth a browse.

Love Tetris. Then you’ll love WordConnect. Don’t be fooled by its simplicity. This is an amazing educational game. Instead of falling pieces you have falling letters, and then whenever a word is completed is disapperas.

Some meta-resources are available through the interview ‘Learning the language‘ by Mary Ann Zehr.

60-second Shakespeare is one of those really cool ideas, that once you see it/hear of it, you say to yourself ‘why didn’t any thing of this before.’ It is a project from the BBC to create their own imaginative/creative tabloid article on a Shakespearean play. ef ‘Tragi double teen death’. Even though the project has officially ended this is one of those ideas that is great for a classroom. Likewise, PoetryVisualized is a beautiful site for all the senses.

For the poetry lovers out there, you will love Poetry 180. Offered by Billy Collins, poet laureate of the United States. it is ‘designed to make it easy for students to hear or read a poem on each of the 180 days of school.‘

Teen Literacy Tips akss ‘Can you write a story without using the letter E?‘. A fun way to engage students in writing.

Finally, I leave you with a really inspirational teacher who is using lots of small whiteboards to do highly-interactive literacy lessons.

Isn’t it time you talked to your Neighbour? A recent survey on Neighbourhoods by Full of Life, shows what I think is a very worrying trend (though hardly unexpected).

• 8% of people don’t their neighbour’s name
• 20% have hardly ever spoken to their neighbours,
• 58% think that neighbor are becoming more distant

However, in contrast to the ever-constant barrage of bad news these days, Baha’i Perspectives reminds us that Baha’u'llah had not only foretold of times like this, but had given us a blueprint for a global solution.  The Univesal House of Justice, in 1985 reminded us of this in their statement “The Promise of World Peace”. They have another excellent article on the latent perfections of youth. I have said it many times before, but anyone who has an interest in seeing the potential of kids to be global citizens should visit the Global Kids’ Digital Media Initiative, whether it be to see what inspirational things kids are doing around the world, or as a resource repository for ideas for your students, this is the place to visit.

Talking about the new generation, I think that this post is interesting, not for the politics per se, but the more overriding question it asks: ‘Is Gen-Y then first post-racial generation?‘ On the topic of political commentators raising the topic of religion, we note that the Baha’i Faith was discussed by no less than the Huffington Post as the ultimate Global religion.

Likewise, it is heartening to know that the idea of researchers are showing the the idea of compassion, is not just a U ideal, but rather compassion is hard-wired into our brain.

If you are looking for a book with a title like no other, go no further than “Fire department religion“. In their words ‘Fire Department Religion demonstrates that if the world’s religions adopted fire service customer service principles, religion would finally bring people together, promote universal human rights, create opportunities for world peace, and ultimately lead to a validation of the One God whose voice we all hear in equally beautiful ways.‘ Available from Borders, Amazon and the likes.

In terms of service it there are two tiny gems. One by the Montreal Baha’is ““It seems that whatever service project that you do, even a small one that doesn’t quite work out, is better than not doing anything at all, because when you act, the ‘failure’ of your service project turns into a learning victory, whereas doing nothing is, in itself, a failure.”, the other is by a media and marketing lady (isn’t is a good reminder that gems can come from so many different and varying sources!) where she succintly says “Make good work, Do good deeds. Be awesome…life now has a tagline.’

Finally on the topic of ‘Do good deeds, and be awesome’, I close with four video interviews from the ‘Transforming neighbourhoods site  Knights in Pajamas, Empowering Junior Youth in East Vancouver Neighbourhood, Thomas’ Reflections‘, and ‘France and Friends‘.

credits: image source:

On the topic of math instruction via video, Dan Meyer finds a gem for us when he tells how Marianne Smith shows the draws attention to the tale of two approaches: one video ‘Math education: An onconvenient Truth“, with is posihed to a shine and represents procedural fluency, and contrasts it to “A parent’s guide to Math Education in Today’s Classroom‘, which is a classic example of conceptual fluency. It is a good reminder that there are many successful ways to produce educational videos. Then of course, there are videos like this, that are show that you can have fun even teaching Pythagoras’ theorem.

Here is another classic way that video can enhance the education of very abstract and tough concepts — such as the fourth dimensions. These are very impressive videos both in terms of presentation and educational content. And for the brace here is a video (from a different author) on the tenth dimension. On a related note, here isn article on how different people rotate maps in their heads.

EducationWeek then draws us to a recent study that suggests one of the better ways to teach science is through the use of everyday English (ass opposed to strict scientific terminology).

Enjoy!

In the day anad age of fiancial credit crises, it is worthy to mention that the well-reputed Caspian Learning, in partnership with Experian, have created ‘Creditability’, a performance simulation game for chldren to learn about money, borrowing and spending. In a similar, but different vein, the Economist news magazine ha san interesting piece on ‘Playing for profit‘ about using vbideo game technology to increase profit and productivity in the workplace.

Phaedrus Blog spends alittle time pondering the relationship and consequences of ‘Gamin and Education‘. For a less philosophical post, it is worth mentioning his brief comments on the game of FLOW.

Finally, now that we have further established the educational case for games (again), let’s raise the question ‘How do you know that your game is fun?‘, I was expecting Juuso from GameProducer to mention all the standard issues like beta-testing, sales, etc but he takes it from a developer’s point-of-view, citing such things as ‘Do you enjoy testing it?”, “Do you smile when you watch characters walking across the screen?”.  Obviously these questions are sufficient to guarantee success, however, I do think it reminds us that sometimes if we aren’t passionate about what we make, why should we expect others to be?

Another cool article by the same authors is “How to simplify persuasion with marketing Ju-Jitsu“. Here they use the image that just like in Ju-Jitsu where a smaller fighter can beat a stronger opponent by using the attacker’s against him, you too can market in the same space as companies with million-dollar budgets, through a combination of agile strategies and clever tactics.

Everybody should read 37Signals’ blog, and this related post on how they built buzz from day one, is no exception. Likewise, Ben talks about the “Big Bang Theory of Launching a Product“. Talking about launching your product, if you are considering using viral strategies and video campaigns, then it makes sense to combine them via a viral video campaign. Denise O’Berry, makes good case that we shouldn’t ask our friends what they think of our product.

In terms of strategic marketing, Harvard Business asks should startups focus on growth or profits, …or something else? And talking about semi-rhetorical questions, DailyBlogTips debates the question “What is more important to succeed online: Business or Technical skills?”

Moving from marketing and onto the sales end of your business, ‘the most expensive way to grow a business‘, via DuctTapeMaketing is a must read. Likewise, in this seemingly ceaseless trend of freemium and giveaway models, it is fascinating read about Bill’s real-life experience of how to sell your software for $20,000.

Finally, Andrew Chen of Futuristic Play fame, offers “50+ essays on viral marketing, social network monetization, product design, and more“.

For those people who want to get into game design, Ralph Koster , game-designer guru, offers a brief comment on “A game designer’s core skills“. I can certainly appreciate his view that the key ability for lead-developers is when they view a ‘bare-bones’ software prototype they can accurately extrapolate in their mind what it will look like when the product much more developed. It seems to be the the typical person can only have intellignet conversations on things that they can actually see, and not things that are more abstract or implied. Credit to Koster for pointing this out in the context of game design. Talking about abstract, the GameProducer forums offers the challenge to: define ‘game’. Needless to say, an interesting discussion has ensued.

Of course, the quesiton of funding arises, and VentureBeats ponders whether Google’s attempt of “AdSense for Games” might be an viable and serious option. Whilst DiscoverGames offers a portal to the business-side of game design.

Finally, if you are needing some overview of why game development is potentially so big in the field of education, read Massively’s “Games and Virtual World teach better than teachers“, and the Chronicle’s “Playing the Science Game“.

SANGONet, is the portal for NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in South Africa offers “Changing the interface of education“. Their entire site is certainly worth a browse.

On a similar, but different strand, Wired campus talks about a move of taking open education beyond merely posting course materials online. This is worth a read for two reasons. First, is that it is educationally sound. Educators have been saying foever that placing course materials online does not imrpove the educational value of a course, merely it increases accessibility. For the sheer majority of students, the only way real, deep and long-lasting learning occurs, is through active participation. This might be in the form of doing exercises, discussing, questioning, analysing or experimenting. Either way, merely offering course materials for people to read, is hardly a meaningful way to educate someone.

Secondly, his phrase “knowledge is free, the qualification will cost you”. Think about it. This is huge. I would expect that in the near future this will be the standard for Education 2.0. Is it not already the implied standard. At many of the prestigious universities in the U.S and around the world, you may not be able to argue that their content and/or delivery is worth the increased fees, especially given the availability of information nowadays, however, the qualification you get at the end: “I graduated from Oxford University” is worth much more than saying you graduated from your local unknown university.

Finally, Sue Waters, in the context of online learning, asks “Can you help me inspire our future teachers?”