Globalization!?*__

Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents would say, "eat your food, there kids starving in India and China."  Well, Thomas Friedman, the author of "The World is Flat" would say to tell your kids, "eat your food so you can grow to be strong and healthy because there are kids in India and China who are starving to take your job when you grow older."  Yikes!

When I read "The World is Flat" I was stunned at just how quickly our world has become integrated, mainly due to cable fiber optics and globalization.  However, I just don't think I realize how much this change was going to directly effect me or my children.  I tell you what, go out and read this book and then plan a career path for your child that will make him "untouchable" and thus employable in the next decades to come.

I like that Mr. Friedman points out all the issues, pros and cons, of this new globalization because in most cases, we (Americans) have greatly benefitted.  However, with a workforce that is growing larger and smarter in other parts of the world, we have to redefine what we view of "value added" skill.  As you know now, many jobs and skills are being outsourced to India and China, as well as everywhere else on the globe.  This trend will only get bigger with more and more skills being considered doable outside of the United States.  At least we can sigh with relief that dental hygiene can never be done through an Internet cable.  Ha ha, but what about our kids.  They better not want to do entry or even midlevel accounting, financing, research, etc. because those tasks will be taken care of in developing countries while we sleep.  We must be creative in the future and define new roles and occupations for tomorrow.

My Website and List of Bloggers

I have to say that recently I toured a few blogs and was stunned to count up just how many of us dental hygienist's are blogging.  Our numbers are bigger than they were two years ago.  I have developed a way for the dental hygiene students to gain access to each others blog addresses, but that resource is password protected and registered hygienist's can't post on the student blogs.  This is a sad outcome, because I really value and so do the students the communication that the students get from registered hygienists.  Also, I needed to aggregate a way that I can link to all those who have a blog.  So, I decided to fire up my website again, faculty.weber.edu/khanson4,  to list all of the bloggers, you know who you are, so that we can all have a place to go to find each other.  Yeah!  

Actually, I don't have everyone's address and Melissa (not Leger) has become elitist and will not let just anyone read her blog.  I can guess the impetus for this move but do not know for sure (mystery).  Anyway, let me know if you do not want to be list on this aggregated list.  Moreover, let me know of anyone that you know of who is blogging that I have not listed.  Also, as soon as I get permission from the students at the beginning of next semester, I will add their urls as well.

Also, on my site I have listed current research projects, presentations and a "what's new" section.  The students and I have had fun with mashups and podcasting and now you can too.  How exciting!  However, the last two podcasts are still being edited so are not linked to the site yet.  Please check back.

I would like to make my website a place that has interesting and pertinent information.  Please give me any ideas that I need to include.  Be patient, I meant to have it published tonight but then I ran into a hyperlink situation and so my developed pages aren't linked and the template pages (that are written in greek) still are.  So, don't be confused.  By tomorrow or the next day, I will be done.

In addition, I would like to revisit the dental hygiene community of practice research dealing with online blogs.  Let me know if your interested.  This would be the continuation of the research that Melissa and Ashley helped me with that they presented on at the ADHA meeting.