Work Around the World

John Zogby, pollster and co-author of The First Globals: Understanding, Managing, and Unleashing Our First Millennial Generation, has proposed formation of a Technology Corps, along the lines of the Peace Corps formed by the Kennedy Administration. Like Doctors Without Borders, such an International Technology Corps could even include experts from a variety of countries.

     Since Zogby's polls have uncovered a craving for technology training, mentoring, internships, and practical experience by young people throughout the world, he sees an opportunity for mobile, tech-savvy cohorts to see the world and help provide their new contacts with a business profession at the same time.

     In England, without waiting for an International Technology Corps to take off, the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry (mosi) sponsors "iTech: design your future," an event that inspires students at a young age to begin thinking about careers that involve creative, digital, and other modern technologies. Information about the event is available from ambassadors@mosi.org.uk.

     Students aged 13 to 18, who already know a thing or two about what technology can do, might like to enter this year's Google Science Fair by going to googlesciencefair.com. Submissions are due by May 12, 2014.

    For other ideas about job opportunities around the world, see the earlier blog post, "What Do You Want to Be?"

New World's Resolutions

As 2014 begins, children, parents, students, and teachers have an opportunity to find new opportunities for international, and even out-of-this-world, involvement. Here are some suggestions. (In parenthesis, there are references to related, earlier blog posts.)

     1. Prepare for the Winter Olympics, February 7-23, by going to a map or Russia to locate Sochi, where the winter games will be held. ("Wide World of Sports")

     2. Name a new doll, action figure, or plushie toy for an international icon, such as Malala or Mandela. ("What's in a Name?")

     3. Find an outgrown clothing item to pin or tape to the country on a wall map of the world where the item was made. ("Fashion Forward")

     4. Get ready to give children coins in red envelopes in honor of the cheerful and exciting Chinese Year of the Horse, which begins on January 31. ("Go Holiday Globe (S)hopping")

     5. Mark the end of September on your calendar to remember to learn if a space probe sends information back from Mars, when it lands on or comes near the planet. ("Space Explorers")

     6. Make a contribution to or plan a fundraiser for an international cause, such as Kids in Need of Desks at unicefusa.org or Operation International Children at operationinternationalchildren.com. ("Hope for the Future")

     7. Go to ePals.com to find a joint project to work on with a class in a foreign country. ("Getting to Know You")

     8. Read a book with an international theme. ("Talk With the Animals," "This We Believe," "Travel the World with Summer Reading")

     9. Get in touch with the world's environment by planting a tree. ("A Healthy Environment")

    10. Learn a few words in a foreign language. Say "Thank you" in German, danke; or greet friends in Japanese, konichiwa." By December 25, 2014, you'll be wishing everyone Milad Said (Mee-LAHD Sah-EED) in Arabic. ("How Do You Say?")

   

Santa's Checking His List Twice

In preparation for the holiday gift-giving season last year, I wrote the blog post, "Go Holiday Globe (S)hopping." Many of the gift suggestions in that post are still available. UNICEF (unicefusa.org/shop) and SERRV (serrv.org) again offer Advent calendars. For children who celebrate Hanukkah, SERRV also sells Kosher certified dark and milk chocolate foil-wrapped coins from the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative in Ghana, Africa.

     This year, there are gifts that enable youngsters to sample the world's latest technologies. Using a LED touchscreen, kids can change patterns on Barbie's new "Digital Dress." A variety of robot toys are sold at YoungExplorers.com, mindware.com, Museumtour.com, and shopng.org. Since the American Red Cross Field Radio and Phone Charger from shopng.org uses both solar power or hand cranking to recharge, it can go high tech or low.

     A variety of approaches to geography update a familiar subject. Maps, a new book by Aleksandra and Daniel Mezielinska, associates fascinating facts with illustrations of every region of the world. By touching one of 39 sections on the "Global Glowball" from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art store (store.metmuseum.org), children can activate a song from that part of the world. Based on the latest facts about every country in the world, the geography game, "Where in the World?" from Museumtour.com is fun for 2 to 6 players 8 years of age or older. Using pieces shaped like countries, children over 4 also can put together a "World GeoPuzzle" from Museumtour and those 12 years of age and up can build Museumtour's 4D puzzles of Berlin, Hong Kong, London, Osaka, Paris, Rome, Shanghai, St. Petersburg, Sydney, Tokyo, or Toronto. For free, go to "google maps" and introduce children to the way they can use a computer to tour countries, such as France, and cities, such as Nairobi, Kenya.

     Several new gifts provide the kind of indoor activities youngsters need to amuse themselves during the winter. Games, stencils, stickers, and crafts come with The National Geographic Kids: Animal Creativity Book. In Dawn Casey's book, The Barefoot Book of Earth Tales, stories from around the world are coupled with related activities. In the virtual world, students can build the world's landmarks with the Swedish video game, Minecraft. Or they can paint Paris and London in watercolors with Ravensburger's Aquarille World Cities Arts and Crafts Kit, which comes with all needed art supplies and instructions for different painting techniques.

     Paris seems to be a popular destination this holiday season. Chavonne, the African-American "Journey" doll at Toys R Us, is about to travel to Paris. Madeline is already there in her new book, Madeline and the Old House in Paris.  In Paris! Recipe for Adventure, a book by Giada DeLaurentiis, Zia Donatella takes a brother and sister to a French cooking school to show them home-cooked meals are better than fast food. (The same author also visits Naples! Recipe for Adventure.)  Students can build Paris' Eiffel Tower with National Geographic's 3-D puzzle or the more difficult to construct 5-foot tall model that uses the same engineering principles as the real landmark. (At shop.nationalgeographic.com, National Geographic also offers a 3-D puzzle of Big Ben and a 4-D Cityscape puzzle of London.)

     For teen age girls who want gifts with a touch of Parisian glamour, artisans around the world are creating original jewelry just for them. The SERRV website (serrv.org) and Shop For Social (shopforsocial.com) provide many options.

     What would be the ultimate gift? Book an international family vacation with AdventuresByDisney.com, journeys.travel, AAA.com/ExploreMore, worldwildlife.org/travel, or hfholidays.co.uk.

    Best wishes for peace and joy throughout the world in this holiday season and every day in 2014!

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.

The Write Help

Similar to the way Kids for Kids uses children's art from India to raise money for children's causes there (See the earlier post, "Global Drawing Power.") CAB (Conversations Across Borders) Magazine publishes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by an international roster of authors to fund international schools and literacy projects.

Recipients can use CAB Magazine donations any way they want. Grand Ntumwa school in Uganda bought school supplies and paid teacher salaries. An orphanage for Kenyan children who lost parents to AIDS is using CAB Magazine money to build a high school

Diverse authors express various points of view. Bolivian author, Daniela Cortes del Castillo, contributed a story about a girl who outwitted male repression. According to Dennis Vannatta's essay, "we are the sum of our prejudices." Other authors have submitted works from Mexico, Odessa, Honduras, and the United States.

CAB Magazine is a quarterly. Full issues sell for $10; online pieces are $2 each. Information about applying for funds and submitting works is available at conversationsacrossborders.org.

Star-struck Realities

What dancers, singers, and actors have in common is the opportunity to perform anywhere in the world. Since producers, agents, managers, and casting companies around the world can watch YouTube videos, singers, songwriters, musicians, bands, and actors in every country have a global platform for discovery, record deals, films, TV shows, advertising projects, and tour engagements.

     Books about an eighth grader who makes it to Broadway, Tim Federle's Better Nate Than Ever and Five, Six, Seven, Nate, can inspire young performers, but competition is intense. For evidence, consider the number of young people who try out for TV shows devoted to dance: Dance Moms, So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing with the Stars, Breaking Pointe, Bun Heads; for TV shows devoted to singers: Glee, American Idol, The Voice, X Factor; and for professional and amateur performances around the world. The little girl at the right is performing in a play in Montevideo, Uruguay.

     The audition is all important, when it comes to being discovered. What goes into this little showcase is the choice of a perfect performance piece that highlights your talent without boring the "judges." Hunting for new audition material is a necessity throughout a career. A middle school student who wowed the audience playing Miss Hannigan in Annie cannot use a song or monologue from that role to audition for an age appropriate part in the real world. Young performers also need to seek out  honest appraisals of their talent from others than Aunt Gertrude.

     Looks matter. Yes, Danny DeVito and Dustin Hoffman made it, but tall guys like Ben Affleck and George Clooney always will be the most desirable leading men and country western singers. A stage actor may be able to get away with less than perfect skin but a film star can't. What does Sofia Vergara have that you don't? A hair style like "the Rachel" may set you apart the same way Barbra Streisand's nose does. But how many roles are there for other chubbies like Rebel Wilson and Gabourey Sidibe?

     One piece of advice I heard given to a young performer merits repeating. If you see a long line of actors in front of you, start trying to find a shorter line. That may lead you to form your own garage band or to develop original material, like a Taylor Swift or Tina Fey. Original YouTube performances have launched careers the way Meagan Cignoli's six-second Vines have launched hers. In her book, Pamela D. Pollack asks and answers the question, Who Is George Lucas? Reading about the creator of Star Wars is a sure way to inspire creative youngsters to consider their own new ways to develop special sound and visual effects and even to become film producers, screenwriters, and directors.

     The need to stand out could lead to crazy stunts, like twerking, tongue-flapping by Miley Cyrus or outrageous costume-wearing by Elton John, that may or may not get the kind of attention you want. At one audition, a singer got rid of a long line by lying to those waiting. He said he had been asked to tell them there wouldn't be any more auditions that afternoon, because the pianist had another engagement.

     Performers need to beware of scams. When its performances were canceled, a Russia ballet company ended up in the U.S. State of Delaware with no way to get home. Always make sure to get round trip tickets (and don't surrender your passport to anyone) before leaving on a foreign, or even a domestic, tour.

     Change is rapid in all fields of business these days and the business of show business is no different. When my daughter was a child actor, we co-wrote the book, Stars in Your Eyes...Feet on the Ground: A Practical Guide for Teenage Actors (and their Parents!). It is one of many books that gives advice to young actors. But just like diet and self-help books, one "size" does not fit all. Each performer has to craft together bits and pieces of advice and, most of all, hope for a lucky break. It helps to understand the business of show business, too. Sweden's Academy of Music and Business is a model for other schools that could teach performers how to turn their talent into a career.

Climate Control

One of the most surprising things I learned about Thomas Jefferson, when I visited his historic home near Charlottesville, Virginia, was his interest in weather. He kept a daily diary of weather conditions, a practice every student could imitate. By keeping such an annual diary, for example, students could check the dates when they see the first robin. Are northern migrations getting earlier each year? Could this be an indication of global warming?

     Although an individual's record of temperature changes over a lifetime cannot predict a long-term climate trend, an interest in weather has a wide variety of global applications. Young people already are interested in weather and its many facets according to the number of children's books on sun; clouds, storms, lightning, and hurricanes; wind and tornadoes; winter and snow; global warming and climate change; how to dress for the weather; and weather experiments. When my granddaughter was younger, she put snow in a jar, measured it, let it melt, and compared how much "rain" made how much snow. Children also can monitor the direction of wind using weather vanes, windsocks, and flags and record how the temperature changes or a storm develops after wind strengthens. In a trivia contest, I learned that the official measure of wind velocity is taken 33 feet above ground and that a flag flies straight out when wind is blowing at least 25 miles per hour.

     Of course, most students already know how Benjamin Franklin demonstrated that lightning was electricity. Lightning occurs when air can no longer prevent the attraction between oppositely charged drops of moisture in a cloud and the earth. Flying a kite tipped with a metal point into a thundercloud, Franklin watched a door key attract lightning's electric charge travel down the kite string. During a storm, since the static electricity discharge from a cloud seeks out the nearest points on earth, lightning strikes tall trees and buildings. As a practical application, Franklin suggested mounting a pointed metal rod, a lightning rod, on tall buildings to neutralize lightning's electrical charge and therefore prevent buildings from catching on fire.

     Weather has long played an important role in military maneuvers. Armies have attacked with the daily sunrise behind them in order to blind their enemies. Russia's winter defeated Napoleon, just as fog prevented him from knowing British Admiral Lord Nelson's navy had slipped between his fleet and his planned attack on Egypt.

     According to the Bible, even God has worked His will with weather. In the story of Noah and the Ark, God showed His displeasure with man's evil deeds by causing a flood that destroyed everything on earth. After the waters subsided, God said that a rainbow would be a sign that He would never again use a flood to destroy the earth. Some Czech citizens still honor Our Lady of Hostyn and the Christ Child in gratitude for the fierce lightning sent in response to prayers for prevention from a Mongol attack in 1241.

     In her book, Weather of the Future, Heidi Cullen tells how an ambulance driver named Lewis Fry Richardson set out to forecast battlefield weather conditions in World War I. He used values for the atmosphere's pressure, temperature, density, water content, and east, north, and up wind in 12,000 columns (3 degrees east-west and 125 miles north-south) in Central Europe. Without a computer, however, his calculations required too much time to be of any use for generals, and the data he used were too incomplete. Nonetheless, his book, Weather Prediction by Numerical Process, made a groundbreaking contribution to meteorology. Students like Richardson, who develop an interest in predicting the weather, might get a start on a career by reading Instant Weather Forecasting by Alan Watts. Using pictures of various skies, he explains his technique for relying on cloud studies that are more accurate for countries in the temperate latitudes than in the interior of Africa and the Caribbean.

     Research by the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is raising major concerns about the effects of rising earth surface temperatures, higher sea levels, and decreasing glacier melt and snow cover. Methods for attacking these problems, which are attributed to the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, are suggested in the earlier blog post, "A Healthy Environment."