This interactive Genealogy of Influence Touchgraph website shows in a clever graphic form how the things we do affect and influence others. It will take a minute to load so be patient. It would be a wonderful tool to show children with a little snippet of knowledge thrown in. Click on one person and the web links change to show who they were influenced by. The kids in my class sometimes think of that as cheating- I call it learning from each other!

I chose the screen capture as it links to our guy, Sir Ernest Rutherford, who first split the atom in 1917. Rutherford was born about ten kilometres from Appleby School. Did you know that? The father of the nuclear age was born in Nelson! Even then he was worried that his discovery might be used for purposes that would not best serve mankind.

I liken it also to the forms of communication we are capable of when using Web2.0 tools. The resolution of the uploaded graphic is not great but if you click on it you get the enlared version and can see in visual form the inter-relatedness of human thought.

P.S. As I had this photo in my Flickr account, Mike Love, the creator of the web site, left a comment on my Flickr photo. How cool is that!!! From his comment you can read more from his blog. To add your own comment click on the picture which will take you to my Flickr photo. That is incredible. I am blown away by the power of RSS.