Vandana Shiva: Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Forest Today, at a time of multiple crises, we need to move away from thinking of nature as dead matter to valuing her biodiversity, clean water, and seeds. For this, nature herself is the best teacher. My ecological journey started in the forests of the Himalaya. My father was a forest conservator, and my mother became a farmer after fleeing the tragic partition of India and Pakistan. It is from the Himalayan forests and ecosystems that I learned most of what I know about ecology. The songs and poems our mother composed for us were about trees, forests, and India’s forest civilizations. My involvement in the contemporary ecology movement began with “Chipko,” a nonviolent response to the large-scale deforestation that was taking place in the Himalayan region. In the 1970s, peasant women from my region in the Garhwal Himalaya had come out in defense of the forests. Logging had led to landslides and floods, and scarcity of water, fodder, and fuel. Beyond Monocultures The Dead-Earth Worldview
Check out if You Correctly Integrate Technology Using This Awesome Rubric One of the questions you might be asking yourself as a teacher using technology in his/her classroom is whether you are using it the right way or not. First , questions such as these are healthy signs of your ongoing learning and the more you question your learning and teaching practices the more improved your overall teaching becomes. This is an important part of our lifelong learning process , and as I said before in one of my previous posts, teachers are or should be on a constant hunt for new knowledge. We are not seeking perfection because nothing is perfect in this world but we do want to have a sound intellectual mind . Now that you have started thinking critically about the technology you use in your classroom, you will need s answers to some questions you have in your mind ( like the one above ). So what is Technology Integration Matrix ? The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology
7 ways for Modern Society to Reconnect with Nature I got a question recently which I spent a while pondering, and now am striving to try and put into words this idea that i’m having about the way that modern society and nature interact with each other. The question went something like – “If the Flower of Life is everything, then is stuff like traffic jams and office cubicles a representation of the Flower of Life too?” So far, the short answer that I have for that is “Yes and No”. There are parts of that which is true. What occurs to me however, is that around a certain point of that fractal, from the atoms to the molecules to the cells in your skin all the way to the clothes that you’re wearing, those geometric fundamentals break down in favor of man-made structures that are more removed from that original geometry. We take those fundamental patterns, and make stuff out of it. For example, did you know that Man made Plastic out of Oil? Of course, as many stories go with humans, that’s not what we did. 1. 2. We can learn a lot from that.
10 Great Tools to Integrate with your Google Docs Since Google officially changed Google Docs name to Google Drive and a number of updates have been introduced to improve its overall performance. One very recent update is an increase of cloud storage capacity to 15GB usable across Gmail, Drive, and Google Plus. It is quite obvious that Google is trying to outsmart its immediate competitor Dropbox and I think Google is successful in its strategy so far. To make Google Drive stand out from the crowd, Google opened it to apps developers and allowed users to select from a wide variety of web apps to integrate into their Google Drive accounts. I have curated for you some interesting apps that are integrated into Google Drive and which you can install right from your Google Drive interface. This is how o install any of the apps below into your Google drive : Head over to your Google Drive, click on create, then click on " connect more apps", then type in its name in the search pane and click on " connect " 1- WeVideo 2- PicMonkey 4- Lucid Chart
Plants Have Memories: The Spiritual Case Against Agricultural Manipulation The Lakota of North America have many stories about seeds and how to know when each plant is in its sacredness. One seed flowers during a spiritual window called the Timpsila Ttkahca Wi, or when the Moon of Timpsila (turnip) is ripe. If you were to prematurely dig for the plant, it will not grow into a full nutrient. If you're too late in collecting the flower top, it breaks aboveground, and fierce winds blow the top away, leaving no trace where the underground root is located. During the short spring-summer months the Timpsila flower is in its calling — to let one know the time for collecting and abundance. It's during this moon the Lakota are preparing for great ceremonies to be held throughout the coming spring and summer months. I recently heard of a "spiritual food" from a leading activist who related a story about the ancient Pawnee Eagle Corn, named for the pattern of wings on the kernels. So it is with the Lakota people. Photo Credit: Getty Images Today is my 39th birthday.
10 Life Hacks to Help You Cut Plastic Out of the Picture By Kate Good / onegreenplanet.org Plastic is so ubiquitous that it can be found in or associated with nearly every tangible item in existence. Just think about how many different things you used today that either were plastic or came packaged in plastic, you’re guaranteed to come up with at least five. It’s no secret that we all have a rather sordid relationship with plastic: it’s incredibly convenient, but it’s equally wasteful. In the U.S., we go through around 1,500 plastic water bottles every second, and it takes around 100 years for these bottles to break down. There are around 270,000 tons of plastic waste floating on the surface of the oceans; plastic bags and plastic microfibers and beads make up a vast majority of this waste. A recent study found that fish exposed to water contaminated with the endocrine disrupting compounds found in most common plastics (notably BPA) are more likely to suffer from low reproductive rates and disorders. 1. The Kitchn 2. 3. Judit Klein/Flickr 4. 5.
London If you live in London, are visiting England's capital, or are studying London, why not bring... This is Activity Village's collection of original London colouring pages. Take a tour around... Here's a brand new collection of printable word search puzzles, mazes and word scrambles for... Use these fun London postcards - quick and easy to print onto paper, cut out and stick - as a... Just for fun, these simple illustrated posters for younger children feature some of London's... Our London I Spy booklets have lots of uses. Use our printable story paper for all sorts of writing activities, in the classroom or at home. Use these writing pages - available in colour or black and white - for writing about these famous... Kids can have fun with these printable step by step drawing tutorials for some of the best known...
Love English: 10 things to see in London (magazine article) 'I love English': magazines designed for language learners that can be used in classroom as extra activities to add colour and motivated students. - talk about London - read about the 'top 10 things to see in London' - complete the activities Discussion: 1. 2. If the answer is yes proceed with the following questions: 3. 4. Reading: Scanning (tell students they have 2 minutes to quickly scan the pages and list the 10 things to see in London) Question: List the top 10 things to see in London? You can download the magazine's pages here:London 1London 2 London 3London 4 Reading for information ( Skimming :ask students to read again and complete the following activities. Vocabulary activities: 1. 2. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 3. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. or download the worksheet here:Closing the lesson:1.
Listening: A Tour of London Tower Bridge, London (Copyright: Getty) When you visit a city for the first time, a good way to explore it is to go on an organised sightseeing tour. The tour will give you an overview of what there is to see and also provide you with some historical background. A popular way of seeing London is to go in one of the red double deck buses. This tour will take you around London by bus. Listen to the guide, and then do the activity below. Activity Check how well you know London. a Madame Tussaud’s is a famous wax museum. b Bond Street is where the detective, Sherlock Holmes, once lived. c Marble Arch is a gate which was built in 1827. d Hyde Park used to be the royal hunting grounds. e Buckingham Palace is the London home of the Queen. f Piccadilly Circus is the largest circus in the world. g Fleet Street once housed the national newspapers. h St Paul’s Cathedral is a small but beautiful church. i The Tower of London is more than 900 years old. j The Globe is the world’s oldest restaurant.
Stonehenge - Tour around Britain Stonehenge is a mystical place. Its stone circles are probably more than 4,000 years old. The huge stones come from an area about 30 km north of Stonehenge. The smaller stones possibly are from the Preseli Mountains in Wales, almost 400 km away from Stonehenge. Nobody knows for sure what the function of Stonehenge was. Maybe it was a druid temple.
Geography of the UK The official title of the UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland . Great Britain (the formerly separate realms of England and Scotland, and the principality of Wales. ) Northern Ireland (also known as Ulster) Numerous smaller islands including the Isle of Wight, Anglesey, and the Scilly, Orkney, Shetland, and Hebridean archipelagos. The UK is an island nation in Western Europe just off the coast of France. The mainland areas lie between latitudes 49°N and 59°N and longitudes 8°W to 2°E. The UK lies between the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, and comes within 35 km (22 miles) of the northwest coast of France, from which it is separated by the English Channel. The UK has a total area of approximately 245,000 km², almost a quarter-of-a-million square kilometres. The UK is made up of several islands. The UK is bordered by four seas: Scotland and Wales are the most mountainous parts of the UK. Lakes Find out more about the landscape of England