How many languages do you want to learn before you die? #bucketlist

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Via: Voxy Blog” alt=”Hardest languages to learn” />

Make movies to make a difference: United Way Care to Change video competition – Vancouver

If you’re located in south-west British Columbia, the United Way of the Lower Mainland invites you to make an inspiring video showing how caring for others can change lives.

The focus of your video can be based on issues such as bullying/ poverty/ loneliness/ vulnerability/ isolation that children or seniors in BC may face, and address ways to overcome them. They seek videos that answer the question: What does one of these issues mean to me and how should we care to change it?

Submit a 5-minute maximum Care to Change video by June 15, 2011.

Start your film-making journey here: video ideas and how to enter.  You can also win prizes.

They’re also offering to help participants learn how to shoot and edit a video via a 3-day video production program in Vancouver, from May 20-22. No equipment or experience necessary.  Sign up for that here.    Limited spaces available.

Anthology “Media & Glocal Change” now open-access

The full text of the fascinating anthology ‘Media & Glocal Change: Rethinking Communication for Development’ (edited by Denmark’s Thomas Tufte and Sweden’s Oscar Hemer) is now accessible (and can be read for free) online:

Open data at the intersection of environment & human health

A listserve post this week from inside the EPA indicates that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is trying to encourage software developers to use its data to make useful applications about the environment and human health.

The U.S is farther ahead than Canada on open government and open data.   South of the border, the Open Government Initiative encourages federal agencies to make data more accessible so it can be used in innovative and helpful ways. EPA makes a lot of its original data more accessible via this site, but many software developers who create innovative open-access applications for the public out of public data don’t even know it exists. They also don’t know that agencies encourage this kind of activity.

Other agencies, like the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, have made their data available and done a great job of building awareness about their data (see the Community Health Data Initiative and the Health Data Community). The U.S. Department of Agriculture sponsored a challenge called Apps for Healthy Kids that encouraged developers to make apps to keep kids healthy.

The Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S. wants ideas for how they can better reach software developers and the people who would use these applications.

North of the border we need to be pressuring Canadian government to open up more of our data to the citizens who pay for it, and to better use our tax dollars by connecting with altruistic open data developers who are ready and willing to create applications for the public good.

Under 18? Enviro-journalism contest – just two more days

Canada’s Next Green Journalist — just two more days to cram in your creativity and submit.  Pass on the link to any students you know who you think may be interested.  The deadline is almost upon them!