Blogs on Integrated Studies

Earth Day has deep roots in education. The first one was in 1970, held as a "national teach-in on the environment." It was groundbreaking in that it brought together people with different beliefs and backgrounds to fight for a single cause. We celebrate on April 22nd, but you can teach your students about sustainability and environmental stewardship all year round. It doesn't take much for kids to feel like they can make a difference for our planet, mobilizing them to be life-long environmentalists! Here's a playlist of videos to get you started.

Minecraft in the Classroom is a recent addition to the field of game-based learning. It is a sandbox game where players can create and build, fight off enemies and explore vast landscapes.

Spring has sprung, and it's time to start thinking about getting outside and planting green things! School gardens are a great way to teach kids hands-on science. Whether you have a full garden where the kids produce their own cafeteria food, or you're just getting started and egg-crate seedlings are more your pace, you can pull valuable lessons in ecology, sustainability, healthy food habits, and teamwork out of the dirt.

Did you check out Open Education Week this month? The international event highlighted free lesson plans and materials, searchable by subject, grade and quality. I spent a couple days throwing keywords into OER (open education resources are digital materials freely available through open licenses) search engines to assess the quality of secondary and higher education writing curricula.