The following are some "best of the best" resource recommendations that have greatly influenced our training courses for educators and students around the world. For anyone involved in learning and positive change--these are MUST reads. Browse the links and enjoy!

Veiled Courage: Inside the Afghan Women's ResistanceCheryl Benard's amazing report of how women secretly educated their daughters--which was forbidden under the Taliban---risking death to give their daughters the skills of reading, writing, and basic numeracy. Saddening, maddening, but ultimately inspiring. Our own work in the middle east confirms the hunger for education and the progress being made. (For more on this, click to read our blog and our Dubai Women's College case study).

The Next Sustainability Wave : Building Boardroom Buy-in (Conscientious Commerce)
When a guy with 35 years with IBM makes the business case for building sustainable products and services, new doors open. This book lays out the "perfect storm" of threats businesses face and the benefits, challenges, counter-arguments, and case studies to support adopting sustainability practices. Required knowledge for 21st century educators, leaders, and students in any field. Our professional development offerings use many examples from this book...

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is one of the most knowledgable sources of world trends and in this book he tackles "globalization" and what it means to people affected by it--and that includes (or soon will include) just about everyone. This is not an academic treaty--it's the result of hundreds of visits to countries and personal interviews with those on the leading edge of change. If education is preparation for the "real world" this MUST be included.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Exceptional products . Below are links we've found to products on the leading edge of change in education, sustainability, and personal growth. This month we feature "fmyi" and "grokker." Let us know what you think...

---------------------------------------------------------------------

We spoke with founder Justin Yuen about his vision for his Portland, Oregon based company and found his vision compelling and unique. Justin was a Senior Manager in Corporate Sustainable Development at Nike, Inc. His accomplishments included creating innovative organizational change programs, rolling out collaboration tools, building the business case for sustainability, and managing global employee training. We think this is the type of company that can lead real change within the business community. From the website:

"FMYI Interact is online collaboration software that is powered by human energy.™ It enables your organization to share stories, manage projects, and gather resources in a single location. It improves team dynamics and creates a community around your content. FMYI Interact puts you in control of your information through friendly, intuitive design over a foundation of smart technology that recommends content to users based on their interests."

Check them out... http://www.fmyi.com/index.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Grokker makes a very cool, visual search tool that catagorizes results in a way that can be customized by teams, integrated with data bases, and best of all you can try it free and see for yourself. This is search technology with a lot of very interesting potential for students and researchers of all kinds. Below is an image of how information and search results are displayed:

You've got to try it... http://www.groxis.com/service/grokker/education.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------

...and now for some inspiring news stories--the GREEN BUZZ...