Easily Amazed

Here’s a peek at my internet life over the last few weeks. These are all the tabs open in my browser right now. Some are pages I want to go back to, others I have yet to explore, some are open as references for current projects I am engaged in, and a few I just wanted to share with you! Enjoy and please do tell me if something catches your attention.

Happiness, Well-being, Inspiration

• 10 Things Science Says will Make You Happy:
  #1 Savor Everyday Moments – Pause now and then to smell a rose or watch children at play. Study participants who took time to “savor” ordinary events that they normally hurried through, or to think back on pleasant moments from their day, “showed significant increases in happiness and reductions in depression,” says psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky.

• Happiness Can Spread Among People Like a Contagion, Study Indicates:
  The study of more than 4,700 people who were followed over 20 years found that people who are happy or become happy boost the chances that someone they know will be happy. The power of happiness, moreover, can span another degree of separation, elevating the mood of that person’s husband, wife, brother, sister, friend or next-door neighbor.

  Experts praised the study as a landmark in the growing body of evidence documenting the influence of personal connections and the importance of positive emotions…. The implications are you can’t look at individuals as little entities devoid of their social context.”

  “For a long time, we measured the health of a country by looking at its gross domestic product,” said Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego who co-authored the study. “But our work shows that whether a friend’s friend is happy has more influence than a $5,000 raise. So at a time when we’re facing such economic difficulties, the message could be, ‘Hang in there. You still have your friends and family, and these are the people to rely on to be happy.’ “

  “Laughter and singing and smiling tune the group emotionally,” Seligman said. “They get them on the same wavelength so they can work together more effectively as group.”

• This song ignites a wave of singing, dancing and smiling through me Michael Franti and Spearhead: Say Hey Music Video

• Benefits of Busy Parents Practicing Self-Care:
  What is involved in self-care? It is useful to look at four dimensions of people’s lives in thinking about our range of needs, as well as some activities or techniques that may be readily available for replenishing ourselves. The group was asked to think about people’s intellectual, spiritual, emotional/social, and physical needs and to generate ways people might care for themselves with respect to those needs.

  The intellectual dimension is defined as the need to expand one’s mind. Spirituality includes uplifting or inspirational aspects of one’s life including those that relate to the core value system. The emotional/social aspect involves learning about oneself, especially through relating to others. The physical dimension is concerned with taking care of one’s body. According to Ms. Reeves, it is essential to renew ourselves in these four realms, and each person is responsible for self-renewal.

• Would You Guys Just Knock It Off? 10 Steps to Peace in Your Household from the magazine Half Full: Science for Raising Happy Kids:
  Positive conflict resolution is pretty simple, but unless you are a lot smarter than me (entirely possible) you might need to reference this list a few times to get the hang of it.

  Each time we take kids through those 10 steps, they learn that they can solve problems in ways that make them feel competent and effective. They’ve increased their ability to cooperate, to empathize, and to build strong relationships. So conflict really is a good thing. And so are fights between friends. Why? Conflict provides the fuel for growth we all need to become healthy, happy, and resilient adults.

• Imogen Heap kept a video blog, i-Blog, while working on her most recent album. I’m slowly making my way through her videos. I’ve fallen in love with her (I was a fan of her music… but now it’s grown to her person!). Her creativity and bubbling enthusiasm are highly contagious and inspirational for me!

• 10-Minute Practices to Reconnect with Spirit.
  Roger Walsh, the author of Essential Spirituality, was a guest teacher at Integral Institute’s Integral Leadership seminars, where he presented the seven essential practices of the world’s great Wisdom Traditions. Here is a selection of the experiential exercises led by Roger at those seminars. Each clip is 10-15 minutes long, and is a quick and easy way to recontact the sacred dimensions of this and every moment. Just sit back, relax, and let the next eight minutes be devoted to your higher Self….Experiential exercises led by Roger Walsh

• Danah Boyd shares a tip for how to deal with your email inbox while on vacation Warning: Email Sabbatical is Imminent:

  No email will be received by danah’s ornery INBOX between December 11 and January 19!

  For those who are unaware of my approach to vacation… I believe that email eradicates any benefits gained from taking a vacation by collecting mold and spitting it back out at you the moment you return. As such, I’ve trained my beloved INBOX to reject all email during vacation. I give it a little help in the form of a .procmail file that sends everything directly to /dev/null. The effect is very simple. You cannot put anything in my queue while I’m away (however lovingly you intend it) and I come home to a clean INBOX. Don’t worry… if you forget, you’ll get a nice note from my INBOX telling you to shove off, respect danah’s deeply needed vacation time, and try again after January 19.

Youth and Education Related

• Ron Clark Academy, A Different Way to Teach: With music and dancing, the kids find a more fun way to learn.

• Mighty Writers 2008-2009. Students blog their thoughts about why their school, Arbor Heights, should be kept open (and not closed as has been proposed by Seattle Schools).

• Living and Learning with New Media: Findings from a 3-year Ethnographic Study of Digital Youth by danah boyd:
  This project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, brought together 28 different researchers to examine different aspects of American youth life. For years, we’ve been finding that youth do amazingly positive things with the technology that they use. Yet, during that time, we’ve watched as parents and news media continue to focus solely on what is negative. We’re hoping that this report will help adults get a decent sense of what’s going on.
  
  1. Two page summary (pdf)
  2. White Paper – Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project (pdf)
  3. Book – Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media

• International Mind, Brain, and Education Society Journals

• Learning and The Brain: Using Social Brain Research to Enhance Cognition and Achievement: A conference I hope to attend in February.

• The Guiding Lights Weekend: A playful, experiential conference on the art of mentoring where you will learn concrete ways to motivate, mentor and inspire. The Guiding Lights Weekend is a place to reflect, clarify values, try new things and imagine possibilities. You might just find (or become) the mentor you’ve been waiting for. Join me January 30th and 31st.

  Experiential workshops. Participatory panels. Talking Circles. Big-Idea Presentations. Community conversations. Awards. Performances. A few surprises and a lot of fun!

• Overcoming Dyslexia article

Social Change, Taking Action, Leadership

• The Girl Effect:The powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate in their society.

• Playing for Change: Playing for Change is a multi-media movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music.

• Best Buy @15 Challenge: 15 teams will wil $10,000 to change their communities. Every week, a voter between the ages of 13 and 20 has the chance to win $500 for a school or organization of their choice and an IPod shuffle for themself!

  I learned about this from the team Richards Rwanda: helping girls in Rwanda get an education. Richards Rwanda was created by Jessica Markowitz when she was in the 6th grade, shes now in eight grade. My family hosted a man named Richard who told me about the genocide hat occurred in 1994. Many children lost their parents and could no longer afford school. Richards Rwanda is an all girl group supporting girls in Rwanda to go to school. We hope to build a school or learning center for the girls we are supporting and the next generations.

• Charter for Compassion: By recognizing that the Golden Rule is fundamental to all world religions, the Charter for Compassion can inspire people to think differently about religion. This Charter is being created in a collaborative project by people from all over the world. It will be completed in 2009. Use this site to offer language you’d like to see included. Or inspire others by sharing your own story of compassion.

• Is compassion catching on? Tracing the impact of a historic event: An article in ParentMap Magazine and a little self promotion! “I think it’s a slow process,” says Roots instructor Ashley Cooper. “We have to touch people’s willingness to put compassion into action. In my school community, people are talking more spontaneously about empathy and compassion. To me, that’s a great outcome.

  “But I think it’s really important that we move beyond the Dalai Lama. It was fabulous that he was here, but I really feel like it’s up to us as ‘normal people.’ What are we going to do to make something different happen?

  “I feel hopeful, and I feel like Seattle has that capacity,” Cooper says. “It’s a matter of: How much do people want to do these things that are important — and what are we each willing to do to start making a difference?”

• Let’s Say Thanks In Support of Our Troops: This website gives you an opportunity to send a free printed postcard to U.S. military personnel stationed overseas showing your support and appreciation for their service to our country.

• Light Up the Night for Equality: On December 20th, we ask that you join us again for a nation-wide demonstration that will make an impact on the private sector. Candlelight vigils will be held at commercial centers in cities across the country in remembrance of the rights that once were for 18,000 marriages, and in honor of the rights that one day will be again – for EVERYONE.

• Diversitywork.org on A Framework for Transformation and Change: As simple as it may sound, the goal of social justice education is social justice and liberation. Liberation is defined in many ways: freedom, equality, fairness, equal access to resources, respectful treatment, living without the struggles, to name a few. Liberation means human kind will be closer to the achievement of unity. Our society must embark on a transformational process if we our to achieve this goal. Transformation means change, and this change will not come about from well-intentioned people simply wishing it so. Action has to be taken.

• Project Implicit:
  It is well known that people don’t always ‘speak their minds’, and it is suspected that people don’t always ‘know their minds’. Understanding such divergences is important to scientific psychology.

  This web site presents a method that demonstrates the conscious-unconscious divergences much more convincingly than has been possible with previous methods. This new method is called the Implicit Association Test, or IAT for short.

  We will ask you (optionally) to report your attitudes toward or beliefs about these topics, and provide some general information about yourself.

• The Moment of Leadership by Michael Herman: Harrison Owens says, “If you are going to talk about Leadership you have to talk a lot about caring, responsibility, and the point where they cross — which I call Nexus of Caring.” Michael’s response: “I think what Harrison is calling Nexus of Caring, I would call the Moment of Leadership. The crossing of caring and responsibility that is the cause for motion. And it’s just that small, a moment. Like an invitation…The practice of doing something about the thing you care about. Beginning. The nexus of caring and responsibility. The moment of leadership.”

• Change.gov: Building the community: A guide to comments:
  These online conversations are truly groundbreaking — no other transition team has ever opened these types of channels of communication with the American people. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished so far, and look forward to building this dialogue.

  We’ve read through the thousands of comments posted on Change.gov, and are excited by the volume of participation.