Improve the World

My friend, Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning has a great project for students to get involved in called Improve the World.

“Next Vista for Learning invites students around the world to share ideas that can help others.”

The student needs to make a video for 90 seconds or less. On his page about the project, Rushton gives in great detail how to go about sharing your idea to improve the world.

“The video can be you explaining something to the camera, or a screencast with slides as visuals, or narrated artwork. The style and editing are not what is important; what is important is that you have and convey a compelling idea.”

The student would choose one of the following categories for the video:

1. Promoting peace
2. Fighting disease
3. Providing clean water, sanitation, and hygiene
4. Saving mothers and children
5. Supporting education
6. Growing local economies
7. Protecting the environment

He encourages students to show others before submitting and get lots of feedback. Once it is refined, the student would upload the video to YouTube or something similar. Rushton also gives some recommendations for settings when doing this.

There is no deadline because this is not a contest. It is a project to help others improve our world. They will take the best ones in each category listed and share them with service organizations around the world who may decide to do that project.

What a great project that would incorporate all subject areas! It could be a month-long project or even a year-long project depending on the research and follow-up you would decide to do. This could be a class project or even a school project depending on how many teachers would want to get involved. It also would be great to make learning relevant to our students concerning the issues in their community and world.

Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash

Peace of Mind

In What gives you peace of mind? From Blue Skunk Blog, Doug Johnson shares what gives him peace of mind. He states,

“Increased anxiety seems to be a common symptom of the CORONA virus and the isolation many people feel because of it.”

This would be a good story prompt for students.

What gives you peace of mind?

I remind students many times that we can’t control what other people do or think but we can control our own actions and thoughts.

So, the things that give me peace of mind are the following things:

• I keep in touch with family and friends.
• I keep a prayer journal and I pray several times a day.
• I keep a bullet journal and try to be productive every day.
• I exercise regularly to stay healthy.
• I choose healthy things to eat.
• I avoid eating many things that I know are bad for me.
• I keep track of the foods I eat.
• I read every day.
• I pay my bills on time.
• I don’t spend more money than I have.
• I keep my house clean.
• I work on having positive thoughts.
• I look for the good in people instead of the negative things.
• I only watch the news on TV once a day.
• I encourage others as much as I can.

What gives you peace? Please share.

Photo by Colton Duke on Unsplash

A Message of Peace

In “Peace Across the World” – A Global Message from  On an e-Journey with Generation Y,  annemirtschin talks about how her students were asked to “compose messages for “Peace Across the World” for the World Peace Song project partners..."

Then she asks,

“What would your message be?”

Peace is when everyone can get along without violence even though we have our differences. We accept that we are all different people and can live with that. People can disagree but be okay that they don’t agree on everything. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and treated with respect. Peace is when we recognize that alone, everyone has strengths and weaknesses but if we all work together, we can be strong united. As a knitter, I know that one ply of yarn is not as strong as a 4 single strands plied together.

What would your message be? Please share.