The week is coming to an end and with the final ceremonies the conferences was able to reflect on the past week. The closing ceremonies started off with the final flashmob dance, the songs lyrics "one people" was symbolic to the end result from a week long life changing conferences. There were many people to thank from the TakingITGlobal team, mentors, Mali and Jim and everyone who participated and helped organize the amazing youth summit. The presenters where also thanked for their hard work and teaching everyone about their interesting topics. Students have said their expectations where excessed, more than they could image! Everyone had gained from the conference and the people they have met! The finished art miles mural project was displayed forever one to see. The beautiful expression of peace from the students was incredible and inspirational! One presenter was the first man to climb Mount Everest from Oman! His climb was extremely symbolic for how with hard work anyone can complete their dreams. " The challenges in life are like the ridges in the mountains,"- you can get over them if you try! Mike Furdyk from TakingITGlobal presented gifts to the winners of the virtual conference contest. TalkingITGlobal connects the world and changes the world at the same time. Finally the location of the conferences for 2011 was announced; Taiwan! Representatives from iEARN Taiwan has invited everyone to join the iEARN 2010 Conference; Green Tech, Green Life, Great Ear! Though it will be hard to beat this years conferences, 2011 conferences sounds fun and exciting and I would love to attended!

With four days of iEARN completed, it was very interesting to see how much more interactive the workshops had become. I remember clearly on Monday that most of the youth were very apprehensive in participating and it's just amazing that everyone has become so much more open with each other. The workshop on Communicating Effectively Across Cultures focused on helping realize the differences in cultures and understand that not all things are universal. Substituting paper clips for money and following some instructions for behaviour, the group was split into two and were assigned completely different cultures. They then played a game where the objective was to collect as much money as possible to see how hard it really is to communicate with other cultures.

Then we made our way to paint the mural which was lots of fun and filled with deep meaning. Stephen from Taiwan stressed the symbolism of bananas as a universal fruit and being synonymous to the "dream". And to "catch it" we must go step by step on the "banana leaves" to face and overcome the challenges that life throws at us. The mural indeed is a very universal representation of the global perspectives that have gathered here at iEARN and it has been really successful.

The Social Networking workshop began with two videos, both with a focus to engage their audiences into social consciousness and change. Presented by the organization Free the Children, the workshop covered the importance of conveying messages of change using mediums of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. In educating the youth with tools of how to use social media we can facilitate the direction of spreading messages of change. The workshop then split the students into groups for discussion and brainstorming on how they can take on issues they feel passionate about and create change through using accessible technology. I feel the most profound message the students can take away from this workshop is being able to take their passions and communicate them using these mediums. The groups came up with ideas such as a website to empower women, called Sister-Sister, another group dedicated to saving the whales and cleaning the polluted waters, as well as a movie about the detrimental effects of climate change.
One of the short movies shown at the beginning (called ‘We’re All In This Together’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4NlyZqJhwk) used conflicting images and contrast to evoke our social conscious, leaving us with the “Perhaps the only fair thing to say is, if we forsake the lives of other, we actually forsake our own.”

Hey everyone,

So after enjoying two workshops and currently sitting in my third I am totally blown away by the importance of social media, social networking and their relevance in everyday life.

A lot of the participants I am surrounded by are already very aware of the type of social medias out there. From Facebook to Twitter all of these participants knew how to use these medias and when asked if their parents had access to Facebook accounts, very few raised their hands. It was evident that today we are faced with a huge generation gap in respect to the type of technology we have access to and how we choose to use this media, while our parents do not make use of this technology in the same manner.

It is amazing how "we" can use these social medias to "our" advantage to really spread "our" message, because at the end of the day all of "us" are here because "we" want to make a difference for "our" world and in that way "we" are alike :)

Now I am going to leave all of you with a very clever quote that the Free the Children presenter said from the workshop "Social Networking: A Means to Change".


"Facebook and Youtube is like the Jeans and T-shirts of the digital world. Email is like the suit and a tie of the digital world & Twitter is like the shorts, cause it's short!"

Blog soon :)

W.A.K.E- worthy argument, attach people emotionally, know your audience, effective imagery! The workshop Action Planning W.A.K.E: The Four Pillars of Awareness, Free the Children was about cause marketing campaigns and how reach and the effect people take away from social visual imagines. The workshop went through a series of social and environmental campaigns. The women running the workshop would go through images and ask the students what they felt the message meant. It required the students to pay attention to small details and think about the real message behind the image. The session finished with a game of taboo; which demonstrated word associations with different problems around the world. The workshop was fun and enlightening!