Albino Murders in Tanzania: 21st Century Witchcraft

In Tanzania, albinos are being murdered for their body parts, believed to have magical powers.

In this article from The New York Times, the "witch doctors" are marketing albino skin, hair, and bones as ingredients that will make people rich. According to a statistic in this article, 1 in 3,000 people in Tanzania are albino (which, compared to US figures for albinism at 1 in 20,000, is pretty impressive).

This article claims that 1 in 5,000 people in Tanzania are albino, and that the Lake Victoria region has the largest concentrated population of albinos in the world due to minerals from a native fish (according to legend).

This article from BBC News says that there are 4,000 "registered" albinos in Tanzania, but there could be as many as 173,000. Some are powerful female government figures...

Albino killings for body parts have been reported by the BBC since 2007.

The Red Cross has set up a sanctuary for albino infants, toddlers, children, and teenagers at a school for the disabled. You can see their photos here. They are in desperate need of sunscreen, which is very expensive in Africa as elsewhere around the world.

The albino killings are giving witchcraft a bad name in Tanzania. The licenses of all traditional healers in Tanzania have been revoked in the attempt to put an end to the murders, but the black market trade in albino parts is still thriving outside of Tanzania. Arms, legs, hands, genitals, and entire heads are sent to the Congo and Nigeria.

I want to know how this "tradition" got started, and why no one in the West had heard about it until two years ago. While I keep fact finding, please pass this story around. Innocent people are being murdered for profit, at the expense of what remains of the true pagan religions of the region.

Thing 38: Screencasting

I used Jing and SnagIt to show you my Google home page.
We often use SnagIt at work to take screenshots for library instruction or to show technical support or systems what is going wrong with our various services. It is a helpful tool in that sense. It also allows you to save images in a lighter file format than JPG.

Thing 46: Web Junction Minnesota

I am surprised that more librarians are not signed up to Web Junction Minnesota. It provides an excellent social networking opportunity for librarians all over the state. We also can have the opportunity to share resources with each other by uploading documents for members to see.

In the future, I may use the discussion boards if more people sign up.

It would be great to have links to all of the Minnesota library websites on Web Junction. Videos and photos of other peoples' libraries, library events, library instruction, etc. would also be nice to have.

Thing 45: Cloud Computing

What do you see as the advantages of joining “the cloud” by using a Web OS? Disadvantages?
Being able to access your personalized desktop and working files from anywhere is extremely convenient. At the same time, the security of a network can be compromised at any time, or a web service can go out of business or start charging fees, and so you cannot depend on the Internet for everything!

Do you currently do any computing in “the cloud” (i.e. GoogleDocs, Zoho, etc)? What do you think? Has it helped your productivity?
Currently I am not using any cloud computing tools. I am able to achieve a great deal through my email service and other current Internet services.

What other cloud applications are you using or planning to investigate?
At work we are investigating wiki applications for institutional use. Some of those have multiple features like Google Docs or Zoho.

Thing 44: The Economy

Although I do many things online, I am hesitant to provide a great deal of financial information through untested financial websites. I looked over the features for the Banking 2.0 websites, and thought Mint.com would be the most useful for me. I looked over their Privacy and Security page, was satisfied with what I saw, and decided to go for it.


I liked the Mint.com website because it could turn your incoming earnings and monthly expenditures into a pie chart to show how much you spent of your earnings, and how much you really saved. This will help you to budget your money better, especially if you plan on making a significant purchase, or if you are planning for retirement. You can also track your expenditures by month so that you can calculate how much you spend and save each year. Based on your spending/saving patterns and credit history, they will reccommend the best credit cards for your spending habits, as well as reccommendations for bank accounts, CDs, and brokerage firms.

Some of my favorte money management/money saving/shopping tips:

1. If you must drink more than one cup of coffee per day, bring a travel mug with you. If you need to refill at a coffee place or a gas station, quite often you will get your coffee for the refill price rather than the original price.

2. Tea is cheaper than coffee. If you have a hot/cold water dispenser at work, a tea bag can make at least three rounds.

3. If you need a fancy coffee from Starbucks or Caribou, save on the goodie. I get my goodies from the supermarket and always bring them along with me. A muffin from the supermarket ends up being half the price as a muffin at a fancy coffee place.

4. Buy groceries on special, and don't fool yourself into buying healthy food that you will not eat.

5. Bag lunch.

6. Crock pot meals are economical and delicious.

7. Reuse lunch bags, or get a reusable insulated lunch bag.

8. Carpool, take public transportation, or walk.

9. Walk if where you need to go is a mile or less away.

10. The public library is my best friend for home entertainment. I get movies, music, and of course all of my books from there.

Thing 43: Online TV and Video

I do not own a television set or a DVD player; I watch all of my TV and movies through the computer, so I am always searching for free television and movie sites. I have not used Hulu before, though, so I signed up for an account.

Hulu is going to keep me aware of the new television shows that come out so that I can get a taste of them. I was happy to see that there is a new "Welcome Back Kotter"-inspired show out called "Yo Teach!"; I put some clips in my queue and asked Hulu to send me email notifications when they had episodes available to watch.

Having on-demand access to TV shows and movies on the Internet has changed my viewing behavior a great deal. For one thing, like I said, I do not own a television. Second, I am less likely to go to a movie theater now that there are sites like The Only Device out there, where I can watch brand new movies like "Up" or "Star Trek"...for free...

For people who watch a lot of television or like the experience of going to a movie theater, I do not think that free Internet video entertainment will impact them much. I think people like the experience of "flipping through the channels". Traditional television as we know it will stay in business because many Internet/Cable/Phone providers now bundle their services, forcing you to pay for basic cable even if you do not own a television.

The biggest impact that free Internet video entertainment has had on my partner and I is that we share a lot more video links with each other to brighten each others' day; we also put the laptop on the kitchen table while we are cooking together.

Thing 42: Music 2.0

I had a Pandora account for a while on my old computer. Pandora gives you the opportunity to "create your own radio station". The way it works is that you tell Pandora what groups/artists/songs/musical pieces you like, and Pandora will not only try to locate what you requested in its database, but it will also try to find music in its database with a similar sound to what you enjoy. I did not ressurect my Pandora account because the variety of music was very limited, and the tracks that Pandora had from famous artists were rarely the hits. One could argue what I expect for free, and the truth is...I expect a lot!

Today I created a last.fm account and profile. I like the layout of last.fm much better than Pandora. I did a search for "Hans Zimmer", and not only received a brief bio of the artist, but right off the bat a list of free tracks available for download into my music library, as well as comments ("shouts") as to which tracks were good, and recommendations from Last.fm on similar artists. Also fun was watching a slideshow of Hans Zimmer photos while listening to the music. So I started to create a library, and discovered that I can also add tracks from other sources to this library as well. I will have fun playing with this new toy for a while!

Some music from my youth...

Bronski Beat

Erasure

Ofra Haza

It is amazing what you will find there!

I also took a look at blip.fm. You can send music recommendations to your Twitter or LiveJournal account from blip, but you have to upload your own music from publicly hosted mp3s over the Internet. To be honest, this is a pain! I am surprised that blip does not allow you to send music or videos to Facebook, but if you have a Ping.fm account linked to Facebook, that trumps all.

Thing 41:Mashup Your Life

Exactly what I need--a website that combines the content from all of my web services in one location. By using Ping.fm to post, this seems like it would be an ultra-efficient system. Unfortunately, very few of the personal mashups include all of the services that I use (LiveJournal is an oldie but goodie--I will be running for a LiveJournal Advisory Committee position, BTW-post coming soon), and not all of them allow for additional social networking. Some of the mashups are also quite new and not well-known, so most of my friends or professional contacts have yet to discover them.

I tested Superglu. Great for reading your own blog posts, but not so great for social networking or Twittering. I also tested FriendFeed, as this would allow me to create a site where a select group of people could read and comment on my posts from one location, but none of my friends have a FriendFeed account, and I am not sure how many would want one. Profilactic also looks like a good site for the same reason. I will have to advertise these sites to my friends and professional contacts and see which one they like best...that will be the best way to decide which mashup I should use and promote.

Thing 40: Mashup the Web

I love these mashups that include searching capabilities. LibWorm is going to be a BIG help to me for current library-related research. Ping.fm will also be a major time saver for posting news to all of my social networks and blog sites. What is good about Ping.fm is that you can customize the connections to your social networks and blog sites by limiting what type of posts you want sent there (status updates, microblogging, and blogging). I will be able to post to Facebook and Twitter at the same time using Ping.fm, thus bringing my Twitter account back to life. :)

I was amused but confused by Visual Headlines. The site advertises that it can retrieve photos that accompanied major news headlines. Instead, it retrieves some pretty useless photos that may share the same keywords as the news headlines--not actual photos of world events or people featured in the news. This site needs a lot of work--Social Studies teachers, beware.

Another site that irritated me was Polyvore. Having no interest in piling a collage of clothes together, I wanted to create something in the field of "Art and Expression", but that function was not available for mere mortals with a free account. Unless you do a lot of online shopping and want to share photos of items with mall buddies, I don't really see much use of this tool in the library; Google Images can achieve the same results if someone is looking for a cardigan sweater or sandals.

I discovered a site called Webmashup.com, where you can search for mashups that people find, post, and review. There are some great mashups here. BreakingNewsMap, for example, allows you to find out where a news story took place on a large Google map. You can search for news articles on any topic, and the mashup will bring you to the city/country on the map, provide a hyperlinked caption to the news article, as well as photos of the event or featured person. Much more useful than "Visual Headlines".

Thing 39: Digital Storytelling

http://voicethread.com/share/539708/

Can you see a use for VoiceThread in your library? At home?
I can definitely see VoiceThread as a teaching tool to discuss different topics presented by using images. I am not sure how I would use it at home, though.

VoiceThread worked pretty smoothly for me, although I did not use the voice function because I was at work!

Thing 37: Photo Tales

I finally figured out how to use the camera on my cell phone, and decided to use the photos of my old man to test different online photo sharing websites.

Here is a brief slide show from BubbleShare.com:

BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing


Although BubbleShare is easy to navigate and setting up an album is a snap, they had a link for audio and gadgets on only one page, which you need to leave as you follow the steps to upload photos and create your album. I couldn't find that link again once I left it!

The old man said I should make a photo album with music. So I tried Animoto, which claims to allow you to "make music videos in minutes" with your photos...they were right to an extent, although you have to pay in order to create a full-length video...the free version only allows you to make a 30 second version:

Take it away, Elvis!

Any photo album tool would be excellent for libraries who want to show off photos of events, book displays, or staff parties on their website or blog. Plus they are a lot of fun.

Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Program

Currently I am doing research on EBooks, and tracing the history of how EBooks and Ereaders were invented. It really is fascinating. The person who invented the first EBook had no intention of doing it for personal gain or profit...he simply wanted people to get information for free. The person who thought up the prototype for a laptop/tablet PC had no intention of doing it for personal gain or profit...he simply wanted children to have an educational tool where they could learn problem solving and critical thinking skills through digital media.

If only these men knew how the educational technology industry boomed, and if only they knew that there is no tangible proof that electronic resources have any pedagogical value beyond traditional teaching strategies and materials. This is what I am really trying to find out--if EBooks have any pedagogical value beyond traditional print books, and if reading from an EBook affects reading comprehension and retention.

In any case, this EBook research has caused me to take a hiatus from 23 More Things on a Stick. In the next few days, I will get a taste of my last ten Web 2.0 things and make the June 20th deadline. :)