TODAY, everybody is talking about global warming and is quite panicky. Of course, it must be taken seriously. As one Australian futurist would grimly put it, we are in the brink of another Ice Age. China and the rest of Southeast Asia will be submerged in water. And everybody will have to move somewhere in Norway, Greenland, Iceland the rest of the Scandinavian region because by that time, the glaciers in northern Europe will have melted. And all of that will supposedly occur in the next 40 years or so. If that will be true, then definitely that will not be a long time from now. That’s why everybody must be ready. However, no one is heeding the warning of the Australian futurist seriously. Still, there is some hope.

Today’s educational degrees taken in college are geared towards environmental concerns. It’s not just climatology which is involved but every aspect of education. Environmental concerns must be touched in every aspect of education known to mankind. Let’s start with agriculture. There must be constant studies on how to have organic agriculture. In the United States and in certain farms in Israel, there is what is called as extreme organic agriculture. They’re practicing not just organic agriculture, it’s beyond that actually. In extreme organic agriculture, they use composting or filling in carcasses of dead animals to be used as fertilizer. Now that is recycling in the truest sense of the word.

Now let’s cross to another educational field – journalism. In developing countries, they have this tertiary program called development education. It is geared towards guiding impoverished communities towards development and progress using any means of communication. Now development communication may be practiced in the First World as well. The concepts are basically similar but we with one goal – the survival of humankind. That may be stuff presented in late 90s disaster movies such as Armageddon and Deep Impact but with the impending and very grim result of global warming that we all dreadfully wait, this is one thing for real of course. Communication with an environmental awareness twist has already been practiced by such Hollywood actresses as Hayden Panettiere who defied Japanese laws and evaded arrest, leaving back to the United States unscathed, by penetrating the facility of a Japanese whaling firm and vandalizing it. It is the stuff that Greenpeace is made of.

If you want to help, you can take the less violent approach. In the United States, there is a group of geneticists who are now studying on how to create genes that will steer the mass production of biofuels. They are in essence playing God but for me, they are just divine instruments who are used by a Higher Being so we can offset what we can to minimize the effects of global warming around us. Craig Venter’s effort is highly laudable and it is the kind of spirit that we must get involved in.

STUDENTS who are taking courses online vary on the level of programs they are taking. For example, there are online programs intended for high school students. There are also online programs leading to bachelor, masteral and even doctoral degrees. But then again, there are also online classes only leading to associate degrees and these are usually offered by vocational schools and community colleges in areas where the demand for jobs is high. And then there are also short courses for professionals and these are in turn classified into two – courses intended to update the students in their professional field and short term courses.

One example of the former is if you are a specialist in infectious diseases working in South Africa. If you want to know updates of Ebola and mad cow disease that have already been researched by your colleagues in France or CDC in Atlanta for example, you may want to take up a short course online. And since it is Christmas time and you are in Johannesburg and the course that you are taking up is online, you can definitely have between your Christmas break and between taking exams online.

Johannesburg can be one pretty jolly place to celebrate New Year. Of course, fireworks are a must but there are lots of indigenous celebrations here that are worth drooling. For example, restaurants here serve a special menu and course during New Year’s Eve. You can have a choice of roasted tomatoes, a concoction of shrimps, scallops, avocado, tomato, popcorn and coriander broth, vegetable puree (now this one is really amazing), black cod deep-fried in olive oil and cap everything else with orange parfait or chocolate mousse. All New Year celebrations in South Africa are not complete without the obligatory wine. For those who do not know how South Africa looks like, then you may want to watch the movie Blood Diamond. Leonardo di Caprio’s character there is South African.

Or if you want, you can go to the city of Joburg where an ala-Brazilian carnival ushers in New Year’s Eve. The Rose Parade in Pasadena pales in comparison the Joburg carnival which is held every New Year. Aside from the usual dancing with elaborate skimpy costumes, there are eating binges everywhere as well as dozens of other activities such as horseback riding and golfing. South Africa is also one place in the world where the party never stops. There are various New Year parties everywhere including the rural areas as well as in urban places like Cape Town and Johannesburg of course.

But so much for South Africa. Let’s have another example. If you are from Salamanca and you are taking up an online course on how to be a spa therapist, the course just take five months to finish. If one of the months covered in the course happens to be in December, then why not be an intern at one of the spas in Salamanca and have a fulfilling Christmas?

AS espoused in the preceding article below, online education is indeed a beauty. You can log in and enroll anytime and it doesn’t follow the timeline of an academic semester. Of course, you will still get that elusive college degree in four years time but it doesn’t necessarily follow that you will have to take the first semester by September.

In an online college, there are no classmates, only student partners. That means I can enroll in a program by January and I don’t have any competition whom I must outwit more. My competition is myself. Motivation is definitely not a problem in online education anyway as most of the students are voluntarily enrolling themselves to grab that promotion.

Yeah, that’s about it – that’s the motivation that runs in each bloodline of students in an online college. I mean, students do not have the stomach to pay for an online course if they have not been promised a promotion by their employers. That’s the hard reality of it.

Online education is not just for people who are getting degrees. There are lots of short courses in online education. Since you don’t have classmates, you have to log in to your student’s account every day. It doesn’t mean though that you’ll be going at your own pace. You still have to log in to your student’s account daily because quizzes are electronically retrieved daily and those who cannot pass the quizzes and ultimately fail in the course doesn’t get a certificate.

Some employers are the ones who finance their employees for online education. If the student fails in the entire program, then the employers will make them pay for their tuition. That’s the hard gist of it. And perhaps that can be a motivation as well. However, there are exceptional people who still want to proceed learning fields online even though they have not been promised juicy offers after graduating so to speak.

These people are entrepreneurs who may want to learn more about the fields of business that they have entered into. Consider yourself a real estate businessman and your company has blossomed into a conglomerate. You are now not just selling pieces of land but pieces of GI sheets and corrugated steel as well. Thus, you have to study a crash course all about these stuff. You cannot just delegate your business to a materials engineer. In short, money is still a motivation to study in an online college.

Still, other people venture into online studying to learn a new language. Those who are non-English people such as the Japanese and the French are keen on this scheme. They want to study English so they can better deal with English-speaking clients from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada directly rather than speaking through a translator which is undeniably a hassle for both sides. Again, I’m talking here about money is the motivation. And the beauty of this scheme is that these online schools are available for student enrollment all year round whether it’s January or November.