July 2022 Newsletter
Why are you a rock star? Because there’s only a select group of folks wise enough to pay attention to our little newsletter in July, and clearly, you’re one of them. If anyone disrespects you this month, send them our way. We’ve got your back.
Speaking of looking out for you, we’ve got a nice set of offerings this month, so feel free to dive in!
Ready-to-Go Activities
Starting in August last year, we began posting a little gift to our readers every week. They are the Next Vista Inspiring Video posts, and each one has a fascinating video from somewhere in the world you can use to launch discussions or writing activities with your students. Bonus points for realizing you can use these with your colleagues, as well!
You’ll find 42 of these cool and time-saving posts at this page, and we hope you’ll both enjoy the stories and bookmark the page, as we’ve got loads more ready to go for the coming year.
Contests for You
This fall, we’ll run another short video contest. In it, we’ll ask students to creatively explain anything one might encounter in school in 90 seconds or less. Looking for some examples of what’s been submitted before? Here are a few winners from our past contests:
How mRNA Vaccines Work: Coronavirus Edition
from the Creative Recovery ’21 contest
Photosynthesis From Stop Motion
from the Creative Bridge ’19 contest
Paragraph Pirates
from the Creative Fire ’17 contest
Kindergarten Solar System
from the Soaring Creativity ’16 contest
Even better, we’re willing to run a contest specifically for your students for free. You read that right. We want great content, and your kids enjoy getting certificates and prizes. Win-win! To make this happen, though, you need to reach out to us directly. Do so on our Contact Us page, and let us know you’re interested in having kids do a contest. We’ll find a time to Zoom with you to discuss our rules and how to help the kids make the strongest videos they can.
Super Sips
A big Woohoo! goes out to Kaelyn Bullock and Melanie Cochrill for winning the Starbucks cards via last month’s drawing. This month, we’ll give away two more (if we get at least five entries), and possibly three (if we get at least ten). Your odds are very good, compared to most giveaways, so we encourage you to take a moment to enter.
How does one do that, you ask? This month, take a look at the NVIV page, choose one of the 42 posts offered, and use our Contact Us page to tell us what you thought of the one you watched. Let us know you shared that link with at least one other colleague, and we’ll put your email address in the hat twice.
Such a deal, this is.
image by Fahmi Fakhrudin from Unsplash (license)
Learning Like Wildfire
Our little save-the-world nonprofit landed a grant this spring that we will use over the next three years to help students create videos helping others learn more about wildfires and how to prevent them. If this sounds fascinating to you, then (a) you’re cool, and (b) contact us to find out how you and your students can be involved. We’d love to help you help your students help others through a project like this. That’s a lot of help going on, there.
image by Tengyart from Unsplash (license)
First Finish
A big request for you, I have. These newsletters are designed to find you all sorts of coolness you can use to inspire yourself and your students. Please let us know – are they helpful? Are there sections that you particularly like or don’t like? Do you have any suggestions for how to improve what we offer in the newsletter?
I hope to hear from you. May you inspire, and be inspired, each and every day!
Rushton and the Next Vista team
Rushton Hurley (@rushtonh)
Next Vista for Learning (@nextvista)
Muchas Freebies
We love sharing cool free stuff, and invite you to help us out. You can find the best of what we’ve gathered over the years on the Next Vista Resources pages, but if there is something free and powerful you love that you don’t find there, let us know about it using our resources submission form.
Images in the freebies section are screenshots from videos or web pages unless otherwise noted.
Worth the Watch
* This story is a powerful one for teachers, but think very carefully before showing it to your students. While there are schools where the concerning bits wouldn’t be an issue, this TED talk may be a better tool for teachers to remind themselves of the complexities in those we encounter, and the beauty of hope in the art of the work we do. The piece is about the work of the artist JR and a particular project he did in a California prison. It’s funny, fascinating, and very moving. (16:48)
* Also in the intersection of art and teaching, perhaps this video, called See a NASA Physicist’s Incredible Origami, is a good one for inspiring teachers to use their mid-year vacations to explore the creative sides of themselves. (3:00)
* As the story goes, when we think of the Sahara, we think of expanses of sand, perhaps camels, but probably not…plastic. The organization Precious Plastic decided they could do something to help refugees in the Western Sahara by also doing something about plastic, and in this clever story of a video, you can learn how they work to make a difference. (8:37)
* An organization called Pique Action publishes newsletters and videos about creative approaches to improving the environment, and in this video, they highlight Cruz Foam, a company that creates bioplastics using chitin. What’s chitin? Here’s one definition: “the major constituent in the exoskeleton of arthropods and the cell walls of fungi.” Science coolness, this. (3:47)
* In this story from GeoBeats, a wild crow visits a woman daily to play games. She talks about how impressed she is with the bird, and what it can do. Can people develop the kind of relationship with a crow that they do with cats and dogs? You be the judge. Thanks to my friend Shags for sharing this one. (6:01)
* Back in 1906, someone took some footage from the front of a street car in San Francisco. Much more recently, the folks at NASS took this footage from the Prelinger Archives and added color and sound in a way that opens a fascinating window on the past. Follow the link above or click on the image below to give it a look. Don’t wait for narration or a story; this video is simply an experience. (11:38)
* There are many organizations doing good in the world, but not all of them make simple videos telling the stories of that work in order to inspire others. This story, called La Pitilla School Impact, is part of an effort by The Global Uplift Project (TGUP), which itself is an interesting model for taking service projects to another level. The picture below is the school in the village of La Pitilla before TGUP and its partners began working with them. (4:08)
Worth the Read
* This post collects what it describes as, “the most magnificent green buildings around the world.” It’s a set of architects’ thoughts and plans, though you’ll have to be disciplined not to simply go from fascinating picture to fascinating picture.
* This EdSurge article shares four charts from College Scorecard, a resource from the U.S. Department of Education. In the charts, you’ll see colleges ranked by the earnings and debt of their graduates. This is an interesting read on its own, but also an intriguing point of departure for discussions of what the college experience is considered to be, and perhaps what it should be.
Worth the Try
* If you’re up for a little geography quiz, take a look at Worldle. It presents the outline of a country, and you guess (using a dropdown with all countries listed) which it might be. It will then tell you how far the country you guessed is from the country pictured, and which direction you’d go to get to it. You can see those pieces in the screenshot below. I’m proud to say I got it on the third guess!
* Curious how much bigger Earth is than Mars, or the local cluster of galaxies is to various nebulae? In this visualization, Neal Agarwal allows you to right-arrow (or swipe left) your way from an astronaut to the expanse of the known universe.
* Chromebooks have a new screencasting app, and Eric Curts’ tutorial on the tool provides a great overview of its strengths and weaknesses. Give the 14-minute video a look, then fire up your Chromebook and give it a try.
* I normally put posts from Michael Linsin in the Worth the Read section, but his annual classroom management report card template for teachers is a more active item, and worth putting yourself through some good thought regarding what you are doing well and what might be improved.
Recent Newsletters
Missed a recent issue? Here you go:
Was this shared with you, and now you want to sign up, too? We’re certainly happy to have you do so! It’s all free, and if you ever get tired of it, you can unsubscribe or let us know to remove you, with no offense taken.
Last Bit
Why would I choose a winter scene for this month’s cool image? One reason is that many of the recipients of the newsletter are in the southern hemisphere, and this honors them. Another is that much of the U.S. is dealing with a really nasty heat wave, and this is a reminder that it won’t last forever. A third is that the lighting is really cool. Enjoy!
photo
by Timothy Eberly
from Unsplash (license)
See you next month!
###