Cognitive Surplus

At first, i got confused with what Mr. Shriky was saying. But once i analized the video, it all made a lot more sense. It was really interesting, not only because of the reflectios he made, but for all the analisys that was made about the past, and that somehow lets us understand everything a little more.
It is true that all of us own a lot of potential, making us capable of performing many important things, but it is also true that most of our potential, is mostly wasted. Without knowing, we become only consumers and not producers. A lot of time we create this wonderful ideas that we tend to keep for ourselves, not letting anyone to find out about them, maybe beacuse of fear to cause rejection. However, Mr. Shirky taught me that the beginning of a change comes with sharing what we think. That will be a great start.
I consider myself as a not consumer at all. I think this because there are many things out there in the market that do not call my atention, not even a little. However, watching this video made me think about how i use my free time, and wether i use it for something that´s worth o not. I have always something to do, and because of my job and the social work i do i think i make a pretty good use of my time, i make a good use of this “cognitive surplus”. With this video i realized that because of my job that is involved with children, i somehow become part of the change, i am doing something to help improve our society.

another day, another experience!

We have been with the kids for a pretty good time now and this has helped us to generate a force of trust. Every weekend we learn something new because each kid has always something to tell us, some story to share with us.
For today´s class the subject that we decided to teach them was “Don´t do others what you wouldn´t want them to do to you”. We consider that it is important that kids know this in order to ask for respect and be respected. While we develop the class there were a few ideas that i thought were interesting. A kid sayd “ i don´t like to fight, but i always keep seeing people fighting so i guess it is normal”. Hearing this alows us to realize that adults are the ones determining what is or not good or bad, normal or not for children. We should be more aware of our actitudes in front of children.
After that, the kids had brakefast and had fun playing in the park. I have notices that thay realy like to play with puzzles.Today i learned that adult´s way of acting really influences the way kids act o think. Each day i realize how important it is to work under an ecologic point of view, in wich our interest comes not only to be the kid, but also its´s surrounding

Diet for a new America

This videos that we were sent to watch help us to get into the subject of the reading. I think that they act as a connection between reality and the reading.

As i said before, i think that the videos introduce us to the subject of the reading. It makes us realize how human beings, including myself, tend to act only when something interests us. I believe that the point of us reading this is to realize that most of the time we act without knowing the reality of things, therefore it teaches us to be informed and to find out how things really work in order to make any decission or act in any specific way .
These videos also show us how when we satisfact our necesities, we are also damaging mother nature. It teaches us how our eating habits are putting an end to any available resource there is.
To conclude, i should say that, both the reading and the videos are teaching us to find out what it is that we are getting wrong, and that if we want to change for good, we should start by our way of acting, bettering our habits and understanding that not always the most important thing is to satisfact ourselves.

These relationships imply that it is time to change our way of acting, not only for our own benefict, but for all of the people, even for the benefict of nature. I think that it all starts in each and everyone of us. If we start changing, soon evereyone will.
I am aware that changing is not as easy as it sounds, because we get so involved in things, that we get used to the system without noticing anything wrong. A simple example is our eating habits. Almost all of us are used to consume natural resources like water, trees-wood and animals, and we use this resources without any consideration or limit. We are forgetting that we can run out of them, therefore we should start taking care of all that. It is time to start being consious about our important roll in society, if we want keep living in it.