Blog Action Day: Poverty

How appropriate that today would be Blog Action Day and Focus on Poverty. Based on a recommendation by Dennis Richards I just finished reading Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. The book itself is a biography of Dr. Paul Farmer and his lifelong crusade to cure the world of illness by setting the example in the world's most diseased locales in the wost conditions (Haiti, Peru, Russia) but it is really a cry out against those that are blessed that are turning their eyes away from the poor. After reading it I believe that what Dr. Farmer is trying to point out is that poverty is the root of the cause of what ills the world - not just sickness.

So what is the connection here to my edtech blog? Simply this - our world is now open to the eyes of our students. Technology makes it possible to with a couple of clicks able to read about poverty, TB, or AIDS which is faster access to print resources than we have ever had. It also allows us to make it more powerful through images or video. It even allows us to find great organizations that our kids can help support like XDRTB.org.

More importantly we need our kids to learn how to use the tools around them to act as change agents to make their world a better place.


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