Kwout

I'm just testing a new website that I heard about called kwout....this is a screen shot of Yahoo's front page today:

Yahoo! via kwout

It's a nice little web tool to allow you to grab and embed screen shots. Visit kwout and try it out!

kwout | A brilliant way to quote via kwout

(Thanks to Alec, for the link :)

Holiday Links

Recently, my posts have been more philosophical in nature, but sometimes it is nice to just share fun links with each other. And, since it is the time of year to give, here are my three favorite sites for the season:

1. Make Your Own Snowflake - This site allows you to cut-out a snowflake online. Then, you can save your snowflake to have on your computer or print at a later time. I have done this site with my own 3 and 5 year old boys and then we cut-out real paper snowflakes together. This is a site that kids and adults can enjoy!

Link: http://snowflakes.lookandfeel.com/

2. Elf Snowball Fight - This site is from the Elf movie with Will Ferrell and Bob Newhart. You can throw snowballs at any of the elves, but be careful not to hit Santa! Again, a nice activity for everyone of all ages!

Link: http://www.elfmovie.com/swf/snowball_fight/index.html


3. Elf Yourself - or someone you know! This is a cute site for adults that allows you to turn yourself, or someone you know, into an elf. You can upload as many as four faces, record voices and send your dancing elves to all of your friends! Moms and Dads can have fun with the whole family choosing pics of each other and watching the end result. Here is my family doin' a dance!

Link: http://www.elfyourself.com/

So...hope you enjoy some of my favorite holiday sites this year! If you have any, I'd love to see them!

Some Things Can't Be Tested

Today I read about a girl with a passion to change the world, one day at a time. Her name is Laura and she has decided to dedicate the first 25 days of December to helping people. Each day she will be doing something different in helping people in her community and around the world, and she is posting her daily adventures on her blog.

In the about section of her blog, she writes about her grandfather who passed away two years ago and his influence on her as a person. She was inspired by the way her grandfather lived his life and support her in hers.

Now, it is great that a girl wants to change the world, but what stands out to me with this mission is that Laura is only 10 years old! Here is a child who has taken on a project to make a difference, and in turn, has influenced the lives of thousands of people around the world.

By blogging about her actions, she has made her mission public, a has made a challenge of sorts for everyone who reads it. Not even halfway through her mission as of today (12/11), there have been over 10,000 hits on her blog and it has been viewed all over the world! Now, instead of a 10 year old girl raising a few hundred dollars for a charity in her small town, she has utilized the power of a network to have multiple matching funds offers and thousands of dollars raised!

This is not as much a story of a 10 year old blogger (although there is surely help from her parents, the blog posts and ideas, etc. are seemingly hers), but about what a 10 year old child can do in the world when given a voice and the encouragement to use it. The blog gave her a voice to share her vision...her goal...her mission. Five years ago, the technology wasn't even there to support her in that. Her parents and grandfather taught her that she was capable of making a difference. And now, after reading her blog, I will be sharing this story with as many folks as I can, because Laura has taught me that we can all make a difference.

Show me a test that can assess that....