Making a Difference

I posted this on my blog, and thought I would share it as a discussion. What do you do in your digital classroom to promote Social Responsibility/World Issues?

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Here is a great thing to do with your online students: Donate Free Rice to help end world hunger... (and improve their vocabulary while you are at it!)

Free Rice Screenshot (Main Page)

Here is a news article about it, in case you would like to use it for current events.

Free Rice Screenshot sycophant

Advertising at the bottom of the screen changes with every question to promote the companies that donate the rice.

Level 50 is all but impossible to get to without a dictionary, which I encourage... After all, what is the harm in having students looking up words in the dictionary? This is also a good time to introduce using Google as a dictionary.

Google as Dictionary

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On a similar (Social Responsibility) topic, check this out:

"Make Your Difference is a contest to empower youth to impact the world through creating a new possibility in their school, community, city and beyond into positively impacting the world."

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We really can make a difference, especially if we help our students recognize that they can make a difference!

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Permalink Reply by Connie Weber on November 14, 2007 at 5:23am

Hi David,
Nel Noddings, professor at Stanford, has a lot to say on the topic. She writes particularly about the ethics of care. Of particular note to the teachers who have been reading and discussing this issue in our area: Educating Moral People: A Caring Alternative to Character Education, and Educating Citizens for Global Awareness These books are provoking a lot of interest and philosophical thought. Noddings has a way of getting right to the core of it all.

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Permalink Reply by Connie Weber on November 14, 2007 at 9:16am

Here are some more ideas:
Sustainability Education (lots of references on Sustainability are available, this is just one)
and Jane Goodall's site, Roots and Shoots.

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Permalink Reply by James Dykstra on November 14, 2007 at 1:17pm

Goodsearch.com could be considered socially responsible. By using their site (which uses Yahoo Search), the charity you pick will receive a small amount of money. Now per search, that charity is probably getting about a penny, but if 50,000 people who supported the charity each used GoodSearch three times per day, then that charity would be starting to get some serious support and quite painlessly, too.

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Permalink Reply by David Truss on November 14, 2007 at 1:43pm

Connie,
You have given me so much to look into... Thank You!

James,
I am hooked on Google Search, using firefox, with the wikipedia extention

It would be hard for me to search elsewhere right now:-/

It is great to see so many companies doing globally conscientious things these days. I've noticed quite a few adverts on tv recently that highlight a companies values rather than their product. Here is one of my favorites!