William Kamkwamba "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind"

I have been following William Kamkwamba's blog for about a year now and I received his book "The Boy that Harnessed the Wind" on Monday (finished it Tuesday). It was a fabulous read and helped put into perspective 3 main things:
  1. I am so blessed to have been provided the resources that I have been given for my entire life - I have really had it pretty easy.
  2. The problems I face on a daily basis can be difficult, but I am blessed that those are my only challenges.
  3. Overall, I (and the people around me) are pretty wasteful with our resources and our abilities.
For those of you that don't know William's story you can see him speak about it here at TED from July of 2009. He also appeared with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show last night. I have embedded it below and William talks about it himself here. My favorite part is the exchange between Stewart and William about him preparing to take his SAT's (at the 5:50 mark).

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
William Kamkwamba
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		Political HumorRon Paul Interview

This is one of the most inspiring stories I have ever read and I believe that William will continue to change the world we live in for the better.

His book would work perfectly as an authentic text for someone teaching Physics, engineering, or in a program like Project Lead the Way.

You can learn more about William at his blog and follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/wkamkwamba

More importantly you can donate to help his cause The Moving Windmills Project here. He has used his work to improve the lives of others and to help others attend school.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Embedding Google Calendar in Another Language

This question came up today in the Google Apps Certified Trainer Group.  It is actually pretty easy to do.  To make the change you add &hl=XX where XX is the   language code   to the embed code . So - this calendar With this embed code:  <iframe src=" http://www.google.com/ calendar/embed?src= jkloc408t9h5rdv686c8d567hs% 40group.calendar.google.com& ctz=America/Chicago " style="border: 0" width="400" height="200" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> Requires  a simple change to display in Spanish (&hl=es)   <iframe src=" http://www.google.com/ calendar/embed?src= jkloc408t9h5rdv686c8d567hs% 40group.calendar.google.com& ctz=America/Chicago &hl=es " style="border: 0" width="400" height="200" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> Pretty simple! Some of our ESL teachers are displaying their h...
Read more

Understanding the Superintendency - The Role of the School Board: A Basic Overview

Image
In recognition of School Board Member Appreciation Day last week, here is a primer on what it means to be a school board member. As a superintendent I have a single supervisor that consists of 7 people. These 7 volunteers are elected to serve as representatives of the community. As community members indicate they are interested in serving as Board members, before they run for a 4-year term, I share this document with them: “ What it Means to Serve on the Board ” that serves as an introduction to the role. I also meet with them and share my experiences as a superintendent, but also as a former board member. Most of this information I provide is from the Illinois Association of School Boards , the professional organization that supports school board members in Illinois. The IASB outlines 6 main responsibilities of a school board: Clarifies the district's purpose Connects with the community Employs a superintendent Delegates authority Monitors performance Takes respons...
Read more

Brain Research and Visual Learning

I had the opportunity to hear Wes Fryer keynote today at the 1-1 Laptop Conference in Chicago. He used a stat that I have heard before and have debated a little. The idea is: "What we see travels to the brain 60X faster than what we hear" We discussed it afterward because I have recently looked at that information for another presentation that I was working on. I think it should actually be: "At any one time 60X more information can travel to the brain from the eyes than from the ears" Did some research tonight to confirm my off the head numbers today and here is what I found... Optical nerve fibers = 1,200,000 Several spots on the web - here it is from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_nerve Auditory nerve fibers - 20,000 - 30,000 depending on the source wikipedia has it at 30K At 20K you get the 60X number 1,200,000/20,000 = 60 That would just impact the amount of information that could be carried at any one time. It is all electrical impulses trave...
Read more