An update for the week

As a throw back to last week’s post, it looks like Reading Rainbow is up to ~$3.5mil of their new $5mil goal. How incredible is that? I think this is so wonderful and exciting. It’s great to see “Reading Rainbow 2.0” in the works to help bolster a love of reading in today’s kids. I think this is especially important because it seems like today is so noisy. Constant status updates on social media with small character limitations practically trains young minds to stop after the first paragraph.

But the first paragraph is only an introduction! All the good stuff doesn’t happen until you read all the subsequent paragraphs! /newparagraphonpurpose

---

On this week’s social radar I came across this lovely campaign:

http://www.foodrecoverynetwork.org/

The goal is to help coordinate donations of unused/leftover food. It looks like it’s not wholly unique: there is an app for a similar effort dedicated to San Francisco (disclaimer: I’m not in San Francisco):

http://feeding-forward-node.herokuapp.com/

I love this idea. I think it’s awful that so much food is wasted because it’s too close to the expiration, or it can’t be put out the next day (e.g. prepared food at college campuses or grocery stores that is never bought). I’m not sure if we have anything like this locally, but I think it would be a great thing to start if we don’t. I’ll look into it :D

---

In other news this week I started the first two classes of the R Signature Track by JHU on Coursera:

https://www.coursera.org/specialization/jhudatascience/1?utm_medium=courseDescripTop

So far, so good. It’s nice to ease into (especially since the first course is pretty dedicated to terminology and learning to use some well-known developer tools like git. The video lectures are very well done – clear, easy to understand, and captioned! So far the assignments have been on par with the course material – everything ties together nicely. 

This is one of those things where I’m really excited to be learning something new, but I’m not sure how it will apply to anything I’m working on (yet!). Of course, all that means is that I need to figure out a project to work on it with. I could always put some exercises up here once I get far enough along to do so. 

Which brings me to one of my main hopes for this blog: once I get into my “flow”, I really want to make this blog into an online tutorial of sorts. Basically: as I learn and grow as a programmer, I want to share the wealth. It will probably be a while before I start posting any exercises so I can get far enough into the course for the exercises to be useful, but hopefully they will make good references for others. Here’s to hoping!

 

Butterfly in the sky / I can go twice as high

Something fantastic is happening out there right now that I want to draw attention to. So much of our news lately has been in the negative: hateful words, hateful actions, hateful people.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like focusing so much on the negative. Our world CAN be a great place and it CAN be a place of wonder – all we have to do is remember how to make it that way! I remember when I first realized that the universe is awesome. I realized it when I was a little girl watching television.

Right around when I was born, Gene Roddenberry brought his iconic Star Trek series back to life with the Next Generation. It was something that was on frequently when I was small. I was completely and totally absorbed by the combination of sound and Captain Picard’s voice as the images panned and swirled out of our solar system toward the Enterprise. Basically, I literally started growing up on the wonder and optimism that fueled that show.

But I’m not here to talk about The Next Generation.

I’m here to talk about another show that taught me about wonder and amazement and filled my tiny, developing mind with ideas. A show that was intimately tied to The Next Generation by a fantastic man known as LeVar Burton, who has been imprinted on my mind as “Geordi La Forge with books”.

I had forgotten until this past week exactly how ingrained LeVar Burton’s show, Reading Rainbow, was in my very early years. Then I saw the tweets and the various social media statuses. And I remembered.

I remembered being shown amazing and real things on televised “field trips”. I remembered all those books and talking about them. I remembered how early I started reading and how I never, ever stopped – even to this day. I remembered that I still know every single word to “Butterfly in the sky …”

Right about now I bet you’re wondering where I’m going with this. Talking about past events, when I said something amazing was happening *right now*.

Well, on Wednesday, May 28 2014, Reading Rainbow launched a 35 day campaign in an attempt to raise $1mil to bring reading back to children – and bring it to them using the modern world’s technology. You may have already seen, but it took less than a day for the Reading Rainbow campaign to reach that goal. How? And why?

The answer to both is: because we love you Reading Rainbow. You helped raise and nurture 23 years of children (1983 – 2006). Some of those children are grown and have children of their own. Children who, especially in a modern world with such a negative focus, need to be taught beauty and wonder and hope. Yes, children have cartoons. But I’ve always said: Reality is better than fiction. (Disclaimer: I am also a HUGE fan of fiction.) Isn’t better to see wonder in our actual world than a boiling pot of negativity? To have those wonders explained to you in a way that you understand by a man with a calm voice and demeanor, who so obviously and sincerely loves what he is doing?

Now Reading Rainbow has a new goal – to raise $5mil. The additional funds will be used to reach more children in areas where hope and wonder are needed most. And I hope that they surpass even that goal. I hope they surpass it so far that words like “it’s not in the budget” are a distant memory. I want every child to see how beautiful our world is and can be when we work together to make something beautiful for them.

Please take a moment to contribute to Reading Rainbow’s campaign – every dollar and cent will be used to help our kids, our world, in the best way. Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it. :)