It’s amazing, when you meet a head of state and you say, “What is your most precious natural resource?” — they will not say children at first. And then when you say children, they will pretty quickly agree with you.

(Video): We’re traveling today with the Minister of Defense of Colombia, head of the army and the head of the police, and we’re dropping off 650 laptops today to children who have no television, no telephone and have been in a community cut off from the rest of the world for the past 40 years.

The importance of delivering laptops to this region is connecting kids who have otherwise been unconnected because of the FARC, the guerrillas that started off 40 years ago as a political movement and then became a drug movement. There are one billion children in the world, and 50 percent of them don’t have electricity at home or at school. And in some countries — let me pick Afghanistan — 75 percent of the little girls don’t go to school. And I don’t mean that they drop out of school in the third or fourth grade — they don’t go.

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Technorati Tags: Colombia, educación, education, laptops, Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC, TEDTalks

Image by Jhayne

Almost a year ago I wrote an article on my experience as an immigrant in New Zealand, in particular as an IT professional. That post has been since its publication among the most popular of CodeSpanish.com.

When I created my website, the design included a forum to discuss this and many other topics. Unfortunately the forum hasn’t been as successful as I expected. As a result a discussion on resources to find jobs in New Zealand has been often overlooked.  To compensate for this, I decided to republish the list under my lists series, and at the same time, updating the original list.

The following is a list of jobs search websites:

• http://www.immigration.govt.nz: yes, I know. This is not a job search website. Nevertheless, it is the first place you should look to know if you will be allowed to work in New Zealand.
• http://www.seek.co.nz: by far the most popular job search engine of New Zealand (UK and Australia). It includes a specific section for IT professionals that can be accessed through http://seek.co.nz/it-jobs/. It also provides access to a wealth of online resources and tools to upgrade your skills.
• http://www.trademe.co.nz/Trade-me-jobs: trademe is the local equivalent to eBay. This website created a lock-in effect thanks to being the first popular online auction website in New Zealand. Since then, they have added other services to the system, one of them is their job search. Trademe.co.nz is the most visited website after Google.co.nz in New Zealand. Most employers publish their classifieds in trademe and seek.
• http://myjobspace.co.nz: similar to seek, but not as popular.

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Technorati Tags: Find Jobs, immigration, Job Search, Jobs In New Zealand, Jobs Search, Jobs Websites, Nz Jobs, Online Resources, Sitios de búsqueda de empleo, Trabajos en Nueva Zelanda

Image by Ludwig Gatzke

I always find lists useful. They allow me to have access to resources that others found useful, therefore saving hours of research. So I thought, why not start my own series of lists?

I won’t be able to write as many lists as I would like, as fast as I would like to write them.  I will do it monthly to make sure that they are seriously useful to you.

I will add links to all the lists that I’ll publish on this post for future reference.

CodeSpanish monthly lists:

• Websites to find IT jobs in New Zealand

Technorati Tags: listas, lists, Reference, Sitios Web, Websites