September 2023 Newsletter
Are you hitting your stride? Have you found a way to add a moment in a class that made one or more of your students turn their heads in interest? We hope that in what’s below, you’ll see possibilities in that space. Let’s jump in!
Featuring Favorites
Each week during the school year, we post a cool video with associated writing and discussion prompts in our NVIV series. Here are the last three:
In Promoting Your Place, we look at a video by the host committee for next year’s Olympic games in Paris. It may bring to mind a feeling from an epic scene from the film Casablanca.
The post Light and Growth is a visually fascinating story of the combination of design and agriculture, and allows us to think about what counts, and what gets counted.
Finally, there’s A Good Argument. Use this not only to celebrate two young people in Brooklyn and Harlem, but also to make your students think about how they talk about challenging and interesting topics.
Cool Contests
How about having students make short videos explaining something that you regularly have to explain repeatedly to students? That could both save you time, and also allow us to recognize the students for their creative ways to teach that topic.
As we do every year, we are running a video contest in which students are challenged to describe something one might encounter in school in 90 seconds or less. Over time, we’ve had some gems (here are all the student winners), and we hope you and your students will take an interest in this year’s contest, Creative Spark ’23!
As always, if you have any questions, let us know. We’re happy to help you make it a good experience for them and you!
In Stories, Inspiration
Do you listen to podcasts during your commute, workouts, or cooking time? If so, or if you want to get started, I hope you’ll consider the rather amazing stories that come from my service group, the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley. As of writing, we’ve posted five as part of the Inspiring Solutions for a Better World program, and will continue to punch these best-of presentations out every other week through the rest of the year.
These are some seriously share-worthy pieces, and you’ll be thinking about them long after you hear them the first time!
Super Sips
Last month, we yet again did what we sometimes do in the summer, and instead of doing a drawing, we gave Starbucks cards to everyone who entered. How’s that for a nice vacation item?
This month, you can enter by letting us know which of the NVIV episodes featured above is your favorite and why, or by listening to a podcast from the Inspiring Solutions for a Better World show described above, and then letting us know what you think.
image by Nathan Dumlao from Unsplash (license)
First Finish
None of us is so good at what he or she does that there is no room for improvement. If you have an idea that can help us make this newsletter better, please let us know!
As we say every month, may you inspire, and be inspired, every day!
In service,
Rushton and the Next Vista team
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
* Let’s start the September videos with this gem from an online retailer in China called JD. They have a mascot named Joy, and in this story, Joy meets a heron and learns something about first impressions. (4:14)
* What would you do if you had extra arms? In this video about the cyborg equivalent of extra arms, you’ll meet Masahiko Inami, who not only has ideas on this, he made it possible to try them out. (1:57)
* The title of this video is The Future of Software-Controlled Cooking, which is really a report on using a 3D printer to print a 7-layer cheesecake. I like that they explain the challenges of jelly and similar having trouble “holding their shape under stress.” Who wouldn’t enjoy hearing about peanut butter and Nutella and tech printing desserts? The shout-out for this goes to The Paella Master, a buddy of mine with serious skills in the kitchen. (3:49)
* Stick figures can be great drawings, and very useful for illustrating ideas quickly. To draw something that looks like a real object, though, takes a different approach and time commitment, as you’ll see in this video. (1:16)
* More art, but this time, with shadows! In another cool and very short video from Insider Art, see the work of Vincent Bal and how his simple drawings coupled with a carefully placed item throwing a shadow gives one a new perspective. (0:48)
* Apparently, Hajime Miura is to the rest of the yo-yo world who Einstein was to everyone else in physics back in the day. Speaking of physics, there is no small chunk of that science happening in Miura’s performance at the 2023 World Yo-Yo Contest. If the audience reaction is any indication, you’re watching someone so far ahead of the rest of the field that they’d have to squint to know he’s still out there. One commenter writes, “Maybe the best trick design and execution in the history of competitive yoyoing.” Thanks to the truly inspirational Future Crunch newsletter for this share. (4:01)
Worth the Read
* I read many articles on generative AI, and only share those I think are several steps above the average. This EdSurge piece, titled How Schools Are Coaching – or Coaxing – Teachers to Use ChatGPT, looks into some specifics of how to think about helping folks better understand the possibilities the tools provide. One quote: “If educators can reclaim their time by using generative AI to do the mundane tasks, they can get back to doing some of the fun stuff that made them get into teaching.” I agree, but understand that is much more easily said than done.
* The last line in this Edutopia article sums up the suggested activity as: “one topic, two hours, three interruptions, and amazing authentic learning.” It’s an opportunity for middle or high school students to work together on something for which they have tremendous flexibility for development and presentation. In some ways, this is most powerful for the teacher as a means to see something different in the students. The “interruptions” part may be the trickiest (and most effective) component.
* This resource from Kyle Castleman is more of a try than a read, but regardless of the classification, it’s certainly worth a look. California Educators Together (CaET) is the California Department of Education’s repository of high quality instructional materials, and a place to find lesson plans, resources, collaboration, and professional development. Some teachers can even attend Lesson Design Institutes, and receive stipends for submitting approved lesson plans (see the details on CaET’s Lesson Design Institute page).
Recent Newsletters
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Last Bit
As I write this newsletter, the tragic stories are coming in from Morocco following the terrible earthquake there. Please consider supporting efforts to assist those whose lives have been upended and who are grieving their lost ones through organizations like CARE.
photo by Sergey Pesterev
from Unsplash
(license)
See you next month!
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