How Stress Affects Your Body - A TED-Ed Lesson

Hopefully, as you read this you've had a relaxing weekend absent of stress. As we all know, stress can do some odd things to us. From headaches to backaches to just flat-out getting sick, being stressed is not fun for anyone. But why do our bodies react to stress? And which systems in our bodies are impacted by stress? The answer to those questions and more are found in a new TED-Ed lesson How Stress Affects Your Body.


As we start to head into mid-term exams in some schools and later final exams for the semester, this might be a good time to remind students to get proper rest and take other steps to keep their stress levels in check. This video is also a great reminder for all of us to take steps to take time to decompress when we're feeling stressed. Speaking of which, Vicki Davis has some good tips on dealing with stress at school.

Go On Safari in Google Earth

A couple of nights ago I opened Google Earth to search for something completely unrelated to what I'm sharing in this post. When I opened Google Earth I was greeted by a pop-up promoting a new-to-me file in Google Earth called Go On Safari. This file is a 66 placemark tour of wildlife in Africa.

The Go On Safari tour is based on the work of Mike Fay's Africa Mega Flyover project which set out to study the impact of human activity on wilderness and wildlife. You can find the tour in Google Earth under the Primary Databases and Voyager layers.

Applications for Education
One of the great things about Google Earth is that it lets students see places in ways that paper maps and pictures cannot. Encourage students to dive deeper into the placemarks on this tour or others and see the landscape around the stops on the tour. Ask them to analyze how the physical and human geography has shaped places and impacted wildlife in an area.