Earth Hour 2008 (Or have you been doing it already?)

I just learned about Earth Hour 2008 about 20 minutes ago (through Google's blackout notification), but it reminded me of something I've wanted to share for a few weeks now. Here are my Green Habits, and how I've contagiously started to spread them to my family, friends, and students.
First off, I live in a studio apartment (460sq feet) by myself. My electric bill per month averages $50 ALL YEAR. I have not done anything drastic to save the Earth...yet, so everything I share, is easily copyable by all of you reading!

• I use CFL (compact fluorescent bulbs) in all but my bedroom light (which is the apt's globe light that I never use. I even got 2 free CFLs by doing a Electricity Audit of my apartment!
  
• I use power strips with on/off switches. When I'm not charging cellphone/iPod/Nintendo DS/Laptops, the powerstrip with all the power adapters is turned OFF. Believe it or not, leaving those adapters plugged in still drains electricity!!!
  
• My heat (this apartment uses electric radiant heat, kinda like a giant toaster-oven) is set at 65 degrees Fahrenheit. I tried to go below that, but my cat started having issues. Set your's as low as you can stand and use lots of blankets.
  
• Tide Coldwater Works perfectly, clothes should last longer, and not only am I being "Green" with this small step, I'm saving the apartment complex money on water heating expenses. (Whether I'll ever see those savings remains to be seen. (-:)
  
• I use reusable, canvas (they happen to be green) bags for all my grocery shopping. They were 99cents/each at Weis (where I also walk to work every weekend). They're stronger, hold more items per bag, and I get a small discount at every checkout for using them instead of plastic.
  

Now, my students know I'm a fan of Green living, LifeHacker and TreeHugger blogs, and sharing my tips with everyone, so they've started to adopt simple things too. Turning out my classroom lights whenever we aren't in the orchestra room was an obvious one that apparently nobody else in the district thought of!
So, tonight at 8pm, turn your lights off! In fact, turn everything off, grab your iPod, and take a night walk around your neighborhood (or ditch the iPod and walk with a friend). Let me know in comments if you've planned any fun "no light" activities in the comments!

Mobility.

For those of you not in Second Life or on Twitter, you may not have known that I was in Philly all last week for the holiday break. I did have my laptop and wireless router with me, but I used that as a "backup". Interestingly, this was a test of my reliance of cloudware apps in lieu of downloaded software.
90% of my time online, I am logged into iGoogle (which includes my GMail, Google Reader, Remember the Milk, and Jott plugins among others), Twitter, and Pidgin (for IM). When I'm away from my laptop, I can easily replace Pidgin with Meebo for all my instant messaging needs.
Work-wise, the only things I'd really be without would be audio and image-editing apps. I have lived without Microsoft Office for over 6 years now, when I made the switch to Open Office. while I'm away, I go one step further and rely solely on Google Docs, which limits me only in page formatting options.
I'm trying to learn from people like Dave Warlick and Steve Dembo about mobility, so lets hear in the comments: "What other cloudware apps do you rely on?"

p.s. This is the start of a small personal project so I can avoid lugging my personal laptop with me to Disney in March. I'd rather not bring it if I have the choice, but ignoring email, RSS, and more for that week would just drain me, I think.

Better Current Events Assignments?

You all remember "current events" assignments, right? Dig through your dad's day-old paper, find an article that sounds interesting, read it, and write a summary on it. We've all done 'em, and most of us complained about them every time. We may have asked, "What's the point? We all know how to read the newspaper." We may have wondered if the process of searching was of any importance to the assignment.
Today, after reading Ionut Alex Chitu's Google Operating System blog, I found some new ways to use the Google News.
My favorite is the NewsMap visualization.
Or the Google News Cloud.
Imagine pointing students to the NewsMap with some specific topics (health, for example), and have them find an article, print it (or better yet, link to it and cite it correctly in their summary), and write up the current event either on paper, (or better yet, in Google Docs or a Blog post).
I'd love to keep NewsMap up all day, just to see what shows up in the feed. I need to find a way to incorporate more of these cool things into my orchestra program, maybe something like this article, perhaps?