May 2022 Newsletter
A Merry May to all of you! Below you’ll find two free courses for improving your teaching and reshaping meetings, a free webinar coming up this afternoon (as I write), heaps-o-freebies, and much more. Like the theme?
Raising Your Game
Last month I shared a mini-course I designed for Warm Demanders called Reshaping Your Staff Meeting. Take seriously the word “mini” there, too, as you can get through all the content in less than a half hour. It will be free until the end of June, and you can click on the link above to register for it.
This month, I have another free mini-course for you called Little Things Make You Better. In this equally short course, you get advice and stories about simple approaches to making your teaching stronger. This one, too, is free until the end of June, so please check out the course and let me know what you think!
Both courses promote books I’ve written, but you don’t need to buy the book to learn cool bits and bobs to try out in your classroom.
Questions and Coolness
Today at 4p Eastern and 1p Pacific is this month’s Two EdTech Guys Take Questions (and Share Cool Stuff), and you are welcome to join in! Bring questions, or just a desire to have fun talking about what’s out there. Register for free on this page.
Powerful Prompts
Every week we post an intriguing video with questions as writing and discussion prompts, and the blurb you’ll see on our homepage for this week’s post reads, “Do jobs have life spans?”
It’s a story about a reindeer herding family in Mongolia, and the video is quite beautifully crafted. Enjoy!
Super Sips
As it is May, and the tail end of the school year for many on this list, we opted to draw not one, but two names for our Starbucks card giveaway. Congratulations go to Leona Blessing and Ashley Brown for the wins!
If you’d like to be in this month’s drawing, watch the video and read the prompts on this NVIV page, and let us know what you think. I’ll add this – there are months when very, very few people enter our drawing. May is one of them. That is to say, the math is your friend.
image by Fahmi Fakhrudin from Unsplash (license)
Launch Something
Your students’ ideas can launch community service projects around the world, and we’ve got a project to make it happen! How does it work? Get the details, some short video intros, and an example at our Improve the World page.
As with all our projects and contests, we can connect with you to help you adapt them for your class or school. No cost, for that, either – it’s part of the nonprofit’s mission. Feel free to reach out to learn more.
First Finish
Got a request for the summer editions? If so, let us know!
If this is the homestretch of your school year, we send good vibes your way that you can keep all the juggling balls in the air. We know how intense this time can be. And as we like to say every month: 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 combination of art, poetry, and environmental activism is called The Last Straw. The artist is Von Wang, and his team’s installation (“Strawpocalypse”) and the story surrounding it is captured compellingly in this short video. (2:27)
* Curious what a Tesla factory looks like? This drone footage video called Flying Through Giga Berlin will give you quite the view of all sorts of spaces in this massive complex. (2:57)
* As a point of comparison, you might watch this footage and interview from 1966, when GM’s Lordstown (Ohio) plant was kicking into gear. Note the things they say, the faces you see, the sounds in the space, and more. Rather different from the Tesla video, wouldn’t you say? A shout-out to my buddy Shags for the share! (5:02)
* Speaking of engineering, here’s a piece from Great Big Story about engineering the most annoying sound possible – all for your safety. What things in your life are designed to capture your attention? Do they? (2:11)
* Don’t be fooled by the screenshot below. The Top 100 3D Renders from the Internet’s Biggest CG Challenge | Infinite Journeys is a sometimes dark, always fascinating collection of the work of digital artists working on a theme of the journey. As with every video, watch this yourself before showing it in class. (9:11)
* This video is a trailer for a documentary about the people who have worked on board the International Space Station. Called The Wonderful, the trailer itself is a good launching pad for discussion about who we are and what we aspire to be. (3:10)
* Also in the off-the-planet realm, here’s a BBC piece about Felix Baumgartner and his famous leap back to earth from space in 2012. There are plenty of interesting physics questions to consider, and a perhaps even more interesting discussion around the psychological question of why one would do this. (4:16)
Worth the Read
* The Greatest Traveler You’ve Never Heard Of is the first article I’ve ever read from the travel company AFAR. It won’t be the last. It’s about J.R. Harris, a guy who combines traveling alone with self-discovery in ways that are inspiring, and the bit about his time in an Inuit community will make you think about what community should be. This is not a short read, but it’s worth the time you spend with it. Perhaps as one who loves to travel, that story is an easier space for me to inhabit. Regardless, it’s a piece that could be a great discussion for students.
* If you like the idea of something thoroughly beyond the normal range of numbers we encounter, then this piece from Slate on why the Scottish thinker Thomas Dick’s guess that our solar system could support 22 trillion humans may represent a massive undercount. Some science geekery at the edge, this is.
* A good grading article is something I love to share, and this interesting one titled, No Points Off for Late Work from Edutopia by Christina Torres addresses lots of strong questions about why we handle assignments like we do.
* The recent Michael Linsin post I’d suggest is How To Keep Your Class Improving. In it, Linsin posits that you are either getting better or getting worse; there is no in-between. He provides a list system for how to go about it, and perhaps it’s something you can use.
Worth the Try
* Dr. Ashley McBride shared a tech coaching piece for ISTE that has loads of good visuals and questions about what it means to coach well.
* The Tucker Zone is a video, but after watching it, you might see why I put it in the Try section. It’s a tool that my friend Jolandi in South Africa uses with her students to get them thinking about the inner ear and how sound works.
* Data well presented can launch plenty of conversations. In this case, the organization IQAir has data on levels of pollution in cities across the globe (specifically, PM2.5 concentrations), and you can zoom in to see how a city’s numbers have changed over the last few years.
* For helping students with reading, you might look at Readlee, which has students recording themselves reading assigned passages and stories. The system tracks how well the students do with the words, how much they read, how long it takes them, and more. Thanks to Richard Byrne for sharing this one.
* Another nice share from Shags is the Art Coloring Book from Google. If you just need to push reset on your day, this might be a fun way to do so.
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Last Bit
Since the last newsletter, I made my first trip out of North America since December of ’19. It was a chance to reconnect with friends and make new ones at a conference in Cape Town, and while I didn’t make it to see the penguins, this Unsplash photographer clearly did, and I share it with you to enjoy!
photo by Casey Allen
from Unsplash (license)
See you next month!
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