Sites We Love: The Dodo

The Dodo is a website all about animals and the protection of animals.  The most recent post, “The Day a Dozen Parents and Children Killed a Baby Shark for a Selfie” tells the horrible yet revealing story about how our vanity is getting in the way of our relationship with nature.  Today’s children are not understanding how they are apart of nature but that they are somehow above it.  Here is a teaser of the story…

The man maintained a grip on the tail. The boy squirmed up next to the shark, smacked a hand on his side in a declaration of ownership, and extended his other hand gripping an iPhone to snap a selfie.

“Shouldn’t you put the shark back in the water?” I asked. My voice was swallowed in the murmurs of excitement. I asked louder, “Shouldn’t you put it back?”

Panic arose from the circle. “No, I didn’t get a photo with it yet!” “It’s my turn first!” A group of kids and adults alike began more desperately clambering for a grip of the shark.

For the entire story and the Dodo website, click here.

Post From Light of Love-LA

I recently contributed to the fantastic new organization Light of Love-LA.  Right now it is mostly an online spiritual community but is growing quickly.  It is a place for people to get a dose of spirituality when we need it or want to just relate to another through communion.  I am just posting an exert but you can read the entire article here on Light of Love-LA.

Believing in an unknown infinite power is frightening, so there needs to be something to comfort that fear.  Through my conversations and observations in the past five years, I have seen the growing need for human connection.  With the technological revolution, we have become more involved and informed in each other’s lives but we are still missing that face to face connection.  With the global interface of correspondence that we have access to, we have an obligation to strengthen those relationships not only in our physical address communities, but in all the communities that we find ourselves involved in.  We will never know what this greater force is that conducts us, but we do have one another whom have the same needs to answer the great questions like why are we here? How did we get here?  What is the meaning of life?  Is organic truly organic? We have one another and therefore we need to find communion with one another in any way we can.  Communion can be church, over a beer, a campfire, a walk, over coffee, on a boat or in the car on a trip. While communing, any topics of discussion can be incorporated; Love, faith, politics, fashion, sex, food, family, the sky color, music, power tools, hunting.  It is completely about being with another person and enjoying that unknown beast that connects all of us.  Despite our lack of understanding of an infinite power, I believe we need to be globally responsible for one another.  This can only be done through human connection.

Looking Back: Stacy’s Class

I met Stacy in Tampa. She came highly recommended from my friends Tara so I knew I had to make sure I got a chance to see her. Her background is amazing from all of her education to completing time in the Peace Corps in Bulgaria. She happens to be somewhat of an education-aholic, but her true love lies in the English language. As a young, yet seasoned English professor, she is getting a firsthand look at how the technology is adding to the teaching experience as well as adding obstacles in the classroom. This shows just a small part of what we talked about when we met. Stacy definitely is working on utilizing students new forms of technology in her classroom so that their daily lives are influenced by her class.

A Years End And A Final Request

For the last month, I am completely locked in on staying in the state of Wisconsin.  I would like to reach my hands out into the world of technology and hear from as many people as possible in this last month.  How you ask?  With an email, a video, or just a simple facebook or twitter message. 

The largest part of my wanting to create Project Kinect was to explore connecting in this technological age.  In this, how do we still fulfill that human connection that we need when we aren’t necessarily physically face to face.  Through the exploration of connecting, are we really getting to know each other?  Over the last year, I have gotten the chance to see some really extraordinary ways we are connecting.  One of my favorites was in Austin with the Skype play, “You Don’t Know Her, She Lives in London: You Don’t Know Him, He Lives in Austin”, produced by the Hidden Room Theatre.  This play used Skype to share the experience of two characters in two different apartments in two opposite parts of the world. 

In this last month, I want to hear from you.  With the help of technology, I would like to get as many people as possible to connect in one forum.  I ask that each person that this post comes across takes a look at the questions and in a response to me via email (gregg@projectkinect.com), facebook, twitter, or a video , answers as many of the questions as they would like.  In the response, please tell me your name, age, where you’re from, what you do, and any other information you would like to share about yourself.  Please also add whether you would mind me sharing the basics of your input with the followers of Project Kinect.  I look forward to hearing and reading all about the lives and stories of everyone.

I do have one last request.  After you are done reading this post, whether or not you respond to it, please share it with your communities so that for this last month, I can truly hear from the largest group of people possible. 

Thank you for your involvement to an extraordinary year!

Sincerely,

Gregg Potter

How do you define community?

Where does your inspiration come from?

How much time do you give selflessly?

What great accomplishments have any of the communities that you’re involved with completed?

What have you been a part of in your life that absolutely amazes you?

What is something about yourself that you have always wanted to share but haven’t?

If you have hesitated from doing what you want, did fear or money scare you most?

When have you been motivated to get involved with politics?

What is the last great face to face conversation that you have had?

What was the last big risk you took?

 

Our School System

A few days ago I was talking with one of the women whom I’ve worked with all summer and we got into a conversation about how she is losing one of her students for this upcoming school year.  Daisy is a teacher and as she spoke of the pride, compassion and effort she put into this one particular student, her story got sad because now, in a new school district, she doesn’t know if he will be guided in the same direction of greatness that he was headed toward. 

I asked her if she has an opportunity to have a meeting with the new teacher, or if there is any recommendation process that schools take when transferring a student, especially when that are handicapped such as this one, and she said, “no, there wasn’t”.  She just put a note in his file letting the new teacher know that they can call her whenever. 

This conversation got me thinking back to corporate America and how, in Starbuck for example, when I would transfer a partner from my store to a new store or vice versa, there was a complete step by step format that was done to make sure that this new employee was set up for success.  Maybe there is something there about looking at the direction in our public school system?

This morning when I was finished with my hike, I came across a wallet that was on the ground, lost, waiting to find it’s owner.  When I opened the wallet, I saw that the drivers license as well as the school identification card were local and belonged to a student at the Wisconsin Dells High School.  I figured I would just run by the school to drop it off being that it was close by.  Knowing that I haven’t been in a high school in almost a decade, I thought I would be highly shocked.  Surprisingly, I wasn’t.

When I walked in, I felt that I could have easily been placed in that same scene with the same understanding that I had at age sixteen.  Despite the look though, and the feeling that it hasn’t changed that much, it has drastically. Technology is now the most important part in an education and it is seeding into school districts more and more every day.  We can definitely see evidence of that after Apple donating Ipad 2s to all of those kindergarten classes this past year and into this fall.

Today, high school isn’t just in the school, it is online, at home or in charter schools that are growing quickly with popularity.  Just today in the New York Times, there are two different stories on public schools looking in how they run their schools and how they can foster better atmospheres for their students.  One article is how Houston public schools are mimicking their local charter schools and the other article is on how a New York schools are looking at changing their admissions policies.  As the documentary “Waiting for Superman” stated, we all want to make education better but we haven’t found the right equation. 

Despite all the options for school, and what level of education our new generations are receiving, and what they are doing with it once they are finished, the one fact remains that it needs to be one of our largest priorities.  So, the next time you happen to walk into a high school, or even an elementary school, take a close look to see how things are going. The initial feelings you have will be nostalgic, and you will momentarily remember your time at that age and smile, but remember it is nothing like it was when you were there.  That difference is the heavy weight that is on our youth and will determine the direction of our community called the United States of America. We Are All Involved!!!

One Fish, Two Fish, eBook, No Book

Have you noticed lately that your bookstores are disappearing?  A couple months ago Borders announced that it was going bankrupt and that there was a thirty/sixty/ninety day plan in place to close the majority of their stores.  Now that I am back in Los Angeles for a few days, I see the reality of this business’ demise. 

My entire twenties were spent in Border’s bookstores throughout the country.  At college in Eau Claire, WI, I would escape campus and go the twenty minutes to Borders to free myself of the academia atmosphere.  Once I moved to Los Vegas, I found refuge at the Borders at Rainbow and Lake Mead.  It was where I went to write, meet new people and take a moment to find my center. Here in L.A. it turned into my Saturday morning ritual: Coffee and then an early morning movie at the Arclight.  Now, I see, “everything must go” signs on its windows and that saddens me.

How did we get to the point where a predominant book store is closing?  One might say that it is the economy.  Others can scream technology and the introduction of the eBook.  For whatever reason, we are now in an age that grabbing your coffee, flipping through magazines while hanging out with a friend or finding a corner on the floor with a new book is becoming a fading memory.  To me, this is extreme sadness that deserves a little more pomp and circumstance than it is receiving.

Unfortunately though, this is the truth and the only thing that we can truly do is go forward with this knowledge.  What exactly does going forward look like though? Does it mean that we will all get our e-readers and when we finally finish a book, we can throw the hard copy onto the top of the fire?  Maybe, we can find some use to turning all these old books into a new energy source. “Coal is so out these days, our new natural resource is that old Encyclopedia Britannica we bought when the kids were eight in 1991”. Or possibly, there will be a huge fad of collecting books which will inspire the opening of Half Priced Books and used book stores all over the world.  Perhaps, Sally Struthers will ask us to donate our books to poor underprivileged children throughout the world?  I know I am being extremely sarcastic but really, what are we going to eventually do with all of these poor dead trees that will be lining book shelves that are also trees that had to die to hold their brothers and sisters together?

Again, I know I am coming off sarcastic, but space is a constant issue to all of us and conservancy is even more important than that.  EBooks, the internet and all of the virtual ways to do research are helping us to cut down on our paper usage and that puts smiles on almost all of our faces; well maybe except for people who work in publishing.  While we are cutting down though on that paper resource, what happens to all the resources that have been used to make what we already have?  My friends, we are on the road to the extinction of the book.  That means, in the next twenty years or so, we need to find good use to the books we have, and that also means, we will have to start being selective on the books that we save.  I know, I know, this sounds extremely farfetched, as well as further down the road than we think, but in the next five years, when the kindergartners that are currently using ipads are in fifth grade with only eBooks for their classes, what is going to happen to those books in that elementary library? 

My reasoning, which has no scientific background at all, is that there is greatness to being able to conserve the paper and resources with the evolution of technology.  While we are doing that though, we have to be conscious of what we already have literally on our shelves, making sure we do not just throw all these perfectly good books out to the curb.  This thought seems so far away but I would like to know the preparation for this because it will be an issue: Just ask the kindergartners.  So now I, even though fully supportive of the eBook, will now go back to reading my paperback.  Supportive doesn’t mean that I’m quite ready to give in just yet.

This article can also be found in DiGn2it Magazine

The Newest Generation

Last night, while the world was watching the news coverage of Osama bin Laden’s death, I got the luxury of getting away from the television and just visiting with two really close friends of mine.  As we sat there, and I kept having moments of extreme happiness because it was just conversation among friends with a bottle wine, it occured to me that my most fulfilled moments in life are when I am in that zone with loved ones.  Other examples of this would be when I am home for Christmas and the family is all around the table, after dinner, playing games or sitting up late at night while in college on the floor of the hallway, chatting about whatever came to mind with my roommates.  Those moments, the ones where true human connection is happening, are the best moments of my life.

It seems hard today to picture people still able to actually forget about their phones and get caught up in the conversations that they’re having but it still does happen.  People need that human connection and I fear for the younger generation known as the Millennial Generation.  Friends of mine that work on campuses throughout the country have been telling me how college freshman now need to be taught how to hold conversations with each other.  Specific classes are created to not only teach them how to study, research, and be a college student but also how to approach there professors, resolve issues with their roommates and how to get involved on campus by meeting people.  I heard a story about two dorm mates that weren’t getting along and they wouldn’t address each other face to face.  Instead, were facebooking one another and texting, while they were both in the room!  This is where we have gotten to on the college campus.  These young people will be our neighbors, our doctors, our government officials and they aren’t able to hold a simple conversation with the people around them.

I do feel that this isn’t a problem that can’t be fixed; I just worry that we have began tackling it a little late.  The solution I think, just starts with getting involved with this generation’s life while they’re learning what they missed because of technology.  They just need more practice being in conversation and if we enroll them in our conversations, then they will hopefully fall into a trend where they do the same thing.  We may even learn something about them through this.  We don’t know what is going to happen with this Millennial Generation and those to come, but if we are involved in their lives though, then we can at least continue in a forward direction with them, knowing who they are.

If you want to read more about this generation, here is the Wikipedia link.  Since I’ve been on Project Kinect, and have met many different younger college students, I have heard a lot about communism.  Something interesting with this generation is that they don’t have any knowledge of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall falling or the breaking up of the USSR, so communism is a brand new concept to them.  In the Wikipedia link, they mention that.  I just find this interesting, with no significance other than I’m happy that there is still free thought happening in their heads.

Stacy’s Class

I met Stacy in Tampa.  She came highly recommended from my friends Tara so I knew I had to make sure I got a chance to see her.  Her background is amazing from all of her education to completing time in the Peace Corps in Bulgaria.  She happens to be somewhat of an education-aholic, but her true love lies in the English language.  As a young, yet seasoned English professor, she is getting a firsthand look at how the technology is adding to the teaching experience as well as adding obstacles in the classroom. This shows just a small part of what we talked about when we met.  Stacy definitely is working on utilizing students new forms of technology in her classroom so that their daily lives are influenced by her class.