Travel Tip Reminders

Even though airlines are allowed to offer short times to make connections with different flights, travel experts recommend allowing  two hours between domestic flight connections and three hours to make connections with international flights.

A US friend who broke a foot in Spain found out Medicare does not cover medical expenses outside the US.

Since poachers use social media photo tags to locate rare animals, safari travelers are advised to disable geotag functions on smartphones.

Might be a good idea to discourage a culture of begging by not handing out cash or goods while on vacation.

On a trip to a park where wild animals run free, stay in vehicles. Don't get out to take pictures like one visitor who was saved from attack when a friend called out to tell her a bear was approaching.

Be aware of surroundings when taking all photos. On trips, I've seen someone back up without noticing he was getting too close to the edge of a cliff, a giant wave knock down and swamp a couple, and a child about to step off a board walk into a volcano's flowing lava.

Globalization Deniers

Will low-skilled workers in developed countries ever again be able to enter a plant and find a high-paying union job? Even if blocking trade pacts and immigrants provides a temporary fix, reality requires preparing for a much different future. Looking at mass communication, air and space travel, and artificial intelligence, Villanova Professor Ilia Delio suggests we need political structures and public policies that support human socialization in the world's new phase of global life.

     Some jobs always will stay close to home: police officers, firefighters, even food trucks. But using cameras to improve police work in one country (by eliminating bribes and beatings, for example) is an idea that can translate to other countries the same way training practices that improve the performance of firefighters and new spices that jazz up menus can spread benefits around the world. Resisting the changes caused by globalization does no one a favor.

     The trick is to look to the future and to anticipate the needs and wants that men, women, and children everywhere still need and want to fill. I find it useful to enter two keywords: ted talks and trendwatching, into my computer from time to time to check the discoveries of those who think about the future all the time. Before mapping out paths on a college campus, for example, Tom Hulme told how it made sense to watch what paths students and professors actually took. I was reminded of the story of how the construction company hired to build a highway over a mountain in Saudi Arabia pushed a donkey over the edge of the mountain and watched the route it took picking its way down before imitating the donkey's route with a highway.

     Photos provide an excellent way for students around the world to get to know how each other live. Stephen Wilkes used the photos he took day and night at one location, not to map out a design for a road, but to make art. By combining all the photos into composites, he showed day and night life on a river in one photo and daily life at an animals' watering hole in another. Believe it or not, there are lots of people in the world who have no idea of what our home towns look like, just as I didn't know what a town in Syria looked like after it was bombed until  I saw a photo a drone took of the devastation. Students and teachers can go to ePals.com to find classrooms throughout the world that can exchange photos of their cities.

     The International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) is sponsoring a contest to select digital format photos from around the world that show scenes and individuals that demonstrate four themes:

• Youth who are active community leaders and informed citizens that provide future opportunities and positive change.
• Diverse leaders who serve others and change every level of society for the better.
• Institutions that build just, prosperous societies by engaging communities, accountability, and responsive governance.
• Quality education, independent media, and new technologies that provide information and foster civic engagement in communities.

There is a $250 prize for the winning photo in each of the four categories. The deadline for submitting photos is April 25, 2016. Additional details are at irex.org/photocontest.

     With predictions that millions of people around the world will be hungry in the future, photos of young people using new farming practices might be a winning way to show the promise of globalization.

Picture the Continents

Over a year ago, I wrote the blog post, "Picture the World," to suggest how young people could begin to see what the world looked like and how people around the world lived. While I was thinking about how writers put together ideas for a TV show or a book by arranging notes on a cork board or wall, it occurred to me that blocks of space for continents could be assigned on a wall at home or on a black board at school. Pictures from various countries could then be placed in the correct continents to not only help kids visualize the world but also start some of them thinking about becoming foreign news, fashion, travel, or nature photographers.

With the Winter Olympics coming up early next year in Sochi, Russia, there soon will be a lot of photos to put under a wall's European heading. Blank spaces under other continents will motivate kids to scour publications for photos from around the world. Many used book stores have old copies of National Geographic that are a prime source of international photos. But any magazine, newspaper, alumni publication, brochure from a travel agency, or corporate annual report is a likely resource.

I have noticed more and more art museums are mounting exhibits of photographs. The Corcoran Art Museum in Washington, D.C. has an extensive collection of photographs, some of which are printed on postcards that could be used in a young person's own continental wall exhibit. Perhaps kids also could use photo copies of pictures from Home Truths: Photography, Motherhood and Identity, the collection of Susan Bright's non-traditional pictures of motherhood around the world, which was displayed at an art museum in London and is now a book.

Of course, children also should be encouraged to ask relatives and friends who travel to foreign countries to send them postcards and to take pictures that they can post in their panorama of the world. Should they be the lucky ones to travel to a different country, they should not only post their photos at home or school, but they should ask their parents and/or teachers to visit ngkidsmyshot.com to get information about how to submit their photos for possible publication in National Geographic Kids. Such an opportunity may be the beginning of a career that takes them around the globe.