October 2021 Newsletter
While we are always working to make your life better by finding goodies of all sorts for you and your work, we’re getting very literal about the effort with a new project on the way, called Improve the World. See below for more!
You’ll also find info on our Two EdTech Guys and Fascinating Folks webinars, and a mountain of cool freebies to watch, hear, read, and try. Jump in!
Improve the World
This month we’re letting everyone know about the Improve the World project, which we’ll formally launch in November. Call this announcement a “soft launch,” if you like.
Our thinking is that teens everywhere have strong, innovative ideas for improving their communities. We want to encourage them to share these ideas, and we’ll identify the best to get in front of service groups around the world to try out the ideas.
The challenge, as we see it, is to help teens go from something like, “People shouldn’t litter,” to how to incentivize people in some creative way not to litter. This isn’t just about litter, of course; we hope to get ideas on better education, fighting disease, building economies, protecting the vulnerable, and much more.
Sound interesting? If you’d like to be on the short list for info about the project, just let us know with a quick note from this page.
image: Bright Ideas by Patrick Tomasso from Unsplash (license)
Thought-Provoking Prompts
Our weekly gift of a wildly cool video, coupled with discussion and writing prompts continues!
This week, you can learn about an unusual lady in South Africa, Peggy, who knits clothing for babies, and then hands out what she makes to total strangers. Along the way, you’ll learn quite a bit about life from this unforgettable story.
You can find all the NVIV (Next Vista Inspiring Videos) and the prompts we’ve prepared for them at the NVIV page, here. You can also let us know you’d like to be on the short list we use to announce when we post new ones each week.
Service via Video
November 5th is the deadline for our annual Service via Video contest! As very few people have entered so far, anyone who can put a solid submission together has an excellent chance at finalist status. Just sayin’.
Find the information and rules on these pages. You can also be inspired by the videos which have won in previous years. And if you have any questions, just let us know!
Two EdTech Guys
For reasons that would be tedious to explain, the Two EdTech Guys Take Questions (and Share Cool Stuff) webinar I do with Richard Byrne of Free Tech for Teachers will happen this week and then again on the 28th. Normally, it’s a 2nd and 4th Thursday thing, but for October, it’ll be the 1st and 4th weeks.
The show happens via Zoom at 4p Eastern / 1p Pacific. You can join in for the fun and learning for free by registering via the link on this page. You can also send questions for us to answer about edtech, or just join in because we tend to share some cool insights (and stuff!).
We hope to see you Thursday!
Fascinating Folks
This semester we launched a project called Fascinating Folks: Educators Engaging Edupreneurs. Our first talk was with Brett Kopf, one of the founders of Remind, to discuss his new venture, Omella. Our second was called Three Pilots and a News App, and if you’ve wondered how to help students out of the media morass we’re all in, this conversation would give you hope it’s possible.
We’ll do more of these in the near future, with the next on a startup focused on mental skills training for athletes, including student athletes. The date is still being determined, but I’ll write anyone who wants to know once we know. Would you like an invitation to be part of the group asking the founders questions? If so, just let us know.
Cool Quote
Here’s a gem:
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
– Will Rogers
For those of you amassing experience at the moment, hang in there!
Super Sips
And then there’s our caffeine drawing. Last month, the winner was Konni in den Bosch – woohoo to you!
To enter this month, choose any video from the Service via Video winners page and let us know what you think of it. We hope that may spark an entry or two from your school!
image credit: untitled by Joshua Hill from Unsplash (license)
First Finish
As a friend mentioned recently, October is the month that a lot of teachers get really, really tired. If you’re feeling the weight of the work, we hope that some of the ideas above and the stories and tools below will provide you the energy to think of exactly what the having-challenges kiddo in your class might need.
As I say every month: May you inspire, and be inspired, each and every day!
In service,
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
* Liam Young is a director and architect who gave a TED talk called Planet City. It’s a visual re-thinking of life across the planet and much more a vision than a proposal. It’s also the kind of prompt that could lead to a week of discussions and essays about what we want out of our world, and why. (9:40)
* There is a Chinese performing arts group in which the dancers can’t hear and the musicians can’t see, and they’re amazing. In the Great Big Story video Dancing Without Sound, Performing Without Sight, you’ll learn about the excellence and friendship they achieve as part of the troupe. (3:19)
* Some might describe kung fu as a dance. In this National Geographic Short Film Showcase, you’ll watch students showcasing their talents together at the Shao Lin Kung Fu Academy. The film is one that can allow good questions about what this story tells, both about the academy, and about the choices the filmmakers make. (3:25)
* One more China item! This video from China Culture is about the Mid-Autumn Festival, one of the country’s biggest festivals. It tells about legends and family gatherings, and is a beautiful animation about this piece of Chinese culture. A big thanks to my friend Billy Lee for sharing it! (3:45)
* Another fascinating story from the Short Film Showcase is The Unexpected Beauty of Traveling Solo. It’s a collection of clips with an intriguing audio track that opens the story to a number of interpretations. Like all videos, watch it first to make sure that where your students might go with it is somewhere constructive for how they explore their creativity. (3:08)
* Those of you who teach design thinking might enjoy this video from USAID. The story is of Jehiel Oliver, who started Hello Tractor, something of an Uber for tractors, and then went to Nigeria, which has lots of uncultivated farmland. Can you describe how each element of the Stanford d.School’s design thinking principles were or might have been addressed in this story? If this story interests you, check out what the d.School has made available for K-12 learning. (2:25)
* The Camino de Santiago is a European pilgrimage route that is walked by thousands of travelers each year. Google Arts & Culture now has an exhibit with images, videos, and 360º virtual visits. I quite like the promo video for getting a sense of the experience, and perhaps this will generate some good discussion in your class, too! (2:11)
* Geometric patterns can move more mundane math moments into the realm of the artistic. In this video, you’ll hear from John Edmark, an artist, a designer, an inventor, and a Stanford professor. Edmark studies spirals, looking for non-intuitive patterns and effects of patterns. If you haven’t heard of the “golden angle,” you’ll learn something in this video called, Creating The Never-Ending Bloom. Interestingly, there’s a mathematical mistake in a formula they have in the video. Make sure that your students know how we know that (hint: read the comments). (5:28)
* Many teachers began to realize that tools like Zoom are about much more than dealing with a pandemic. The ability to connect and share with people around the world, now remarkably easy, can and should change what we bring to our teaching. This summer Zoom unveiled new features (including Focus mode), which Global EDU Lead Pat La Morte described on Zeus Kerravala’s ZKast video series. (27:10)
* Finally, if you want to fill your heart with some love, watch the 2020 gala for Morgan’s Wonderland in San Antonio, Texas, the world’s first “ultra-inclusive” theme park. It’s notably longer than I usually share, but certainly worth the time. For us as educators, it’s a reminder of how important our ability to be inclusive might be for some of our students. You might also take a look at their website. Cheers to ten years! (58:16)
Worth the Listen
* It’s October, which in my country means Halloween, spooky stuff, and some fun stories. This episode of Spooked from Snap Judgment is a teacher-focused scary story, and one with a connection to the SF Bay Area! The page has a blurb about a subscription fee, but listening to the episode is free. (27:39)
Worth the Read
* The Edutopia article, Defending a Teacher’s Right to Disconnect, spends much of its space identifying the ill effects of always being connected. It does finish with strong suggestions the authors gathered, so don’t let the rather dark content it begins with dissuade you from finishing it. This is a topic that certainly doesn’t get enough attention in many school settings.
* Michael Linsin is someone I regularly read for his insights into classroom management. In this September post, A Fun Way To Improve Group Work Participation, he spells out how to do “the decision game,” a tool for getting students to work together and come up with a shared decision quickly. As you might imagine, a class that can embrace this will be a lot better at group activities than one in which the students wait on each other.
* The Modern Classrooms Project is an organization that promotes self-paced learning in school settings, and they posted a short piece in September called Well-Managed Chaos. It provides a trio of strategies for how to cut students loose on things without having their individual questions swamp you. Their free course introducing what they do (self-paced, of course) is quite an interesting one (I enjoyed it!), and worth the time of anyone considering a radical change of model for learning.
* Those of you interested in the development of the edtech industry might put Betsy Corcoran’s EdSurge article, The Next Wave of Edtech Will Be Very, Very Big — and Global, on your reading list. It focuses on the successes and bold moves of Indian company Byju’s, and uses that storyline to ask strong questions about what parents and schools may choose to do in our changing educational environment.
Worth the Try
* KQED in San Francisco invites students to take part in various challenges, and this one is called Rethink School. The idea is to offer up a thought on what school might be in either a video or audio piece. This page includes material a teacher can use to launch the project with an entire class, including slides with instructions and resources. The deadline for audio submissions is the end of next week, if I remember correctly.
* Several years ago, I was able to spend a couple of days in Dubai. While the city is commonly known for its stunning skyscrapers, my favorite part of the experience was visiting the more traditional part of the city called the Al Fahidi Historical District. It’s a place where you genuinely can learn something about the culture and traditions of a fascinating people. This online exhibit from Google Arts & Culture contains plenty of content about Al Fahidi and more, and is a pearl of a resource for anyone curious about this part of the Middle East.
* Educator Katie Nieves has created Assembling Inclusion, a site with “free self-paced professional learning experiences and courses about special education, co-teaching, and inclusion.” A dozen micro-courses include tracking accommodations, co-teaching strategies, and adapting various technologies to be more inclusive. There’s also a blog, with a number of interviews of creative educators.
* Google announced new accessibility features for Android in September, including navigation using facial gestures. For your students with severe motor and/or speech disabilities, this could be very helpful if you have Android devices available.
* This Edutopia post and video is called Teaching Writing Through Landscape Paintings. Elementary teacher Lori Brenneise gives detail on how she uses these paintings to get students to write ever-more-complex sentences. Very cool stuff!
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Last Bit
Fall is my favorite season. I love the cooler temperatures, the launch of basketball season, and the beautiful leaves. While my part of California doesn’t get the kind of scene you see below, I hope that the changing season brings you plenty of beauty!
photo by Dennis Buchner
from Unsplash (license)
See you next month!
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