How Do Trees Survive Winter

It has been a long, cold winter here in Maine. Some of the snow storms have taken their toll on the trees including the one that had my daughter's swing in it. But many trees are making it through the winter just fine. It makes you wonder why some trees survive the winter and others don't. Here are a couple of videos that answer that question and more.

Minute Science video, How do Trees Survive Winter?


SciShow Kids has a video on evergreen trees that explains how conifers survive cold winters and hot summers.


Try Vizia or EDpuzzle to create flipped lessons with these videos.

Spring?! - Three Short Lessons About Seasons

It might not feel like it to many of us, but tomorrow is the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. If you're looking for some quick video lessons about the seasons, take a look at the following three options.

Time has just released a new video that features images and text about the spring equinox.


Why do we have seasons? What causes the changes in weather patterns throughout the seasons? The answers to those questions and more are found in the following SciShow Kids video and Crash Course Kids video.





Try one of these seven tools for creating flipped lessons out of these videos. 

Take a Look at This Year's Explore.org Wildlife Cams

Explore.org offers a fantastic collection of live nature webcam feeds. In the gallery of live webcams you will find video feeds featuring owls in their nests, ospreys in their nests, and bald eagles in nests, and video feeds featuring puffins. Spring is almost here in the northern hemisphere and the bird videos feeds are the best they will be all year because birds will soon be hatching in those nests seen the webcams.


Applications for Education
Birds aren't the only animals featured in the Explore webcams, they just stand out right now because the rest of the year the nests will be empty. Your students can certainly explore all of the other webcams on Explore that feature polar bears, tigers, goats, and many other mammals. All of the webcam feeds have a little pop-up menus that contain more information about the animals featured in the feeds. All videos can be streamed via YouTube or the Explore website. I kind of like just having the owl webcam on as soothing background noise, students might like that too.

Tips for Creating Strong Passwords - And Don't Forget to Change Them

This afternoon I was in a little knick-knack shop when I came across a little notebook that had a cover page titled "online organizer." Inside the notebook there were pages for writing your passwords for the websites that you use. Looking at that notebook reminded me of some resources that I have saved regarding creating strong passwords.

Here's a set of three videos to get you started. The first video is a fun look at the ten most commonly used passwords, don't use these.



Common Craft offers the following video about creating secure passwords.