The Science of Cycling and the Tour de France

The Tour de France begins tomorrow, about two months after it was scheduled to begin. As an avid cyclist I enjoy watching it and I find that it provides some neat opportunities for science, health, and physical education lessons. Here are some of my go-to resources for teaching and learning about the Tour de France.

The Science of Bicycles and Bicycling
There is a lot of physics involved in casual bike riding and in racing. Here's a selection of videos that explain the physics of bicycling.

The first time that you ride in a pack of experienced cyclists you'll feel the power of drafting. Besides their incredible fitness and bike handling skills, drafting helps cyclists in the Tour de France move quickly. The following video explains how drafting works.


Minute Physics offers two videos about the physics of bicycles. In How Do Bikes Stay Up? we learn how bikes stay upright, how design and weight influences balance, and why bicycles are difficult to balance in reverse. The Counterintuitive Physics of Turning a Bike explains how we turn bicycles.




The Diet of a Tour de France Racer
I've done some long days on my bike over the years including a double-century ride and at the end I've always felt like I could eat anything in sight. That's because I burned thousands of calories. But even then I didn't burn the 6,000-8,000+ calories that a typical Tour de France racer burns every day of the race.

What does it look like and feel like to eat like a professional cyclist? That's what the Wall Street Journal's Joshua Robinson set out to discover in his 6,000 calorie challenge. Take a look at the video below to see how he did it. Pay attention to the professional cyclist at the 2:40 mark in the video for commentary about energy gels because it surprise you and make you rethink the whether or not the average weekend warrior needs the expensive "sports energy" products for a simple hour workout.


If you want to get into a bit more of the science of nutrition of cyclists, take a look at this video featuring the team nutritionist for EF Education First's professional cycling team.

Back-to-School Email Tips & Reminders

Every year at this time I share some cute videos intended to help students understand proper email etiquette. This year those lessons are going to be more important than ever as we're all likely to get more email from students than ever before. Here are some tips and reminders to make everyone's use of email a little bit better.

IT Support is Done by Humans
I know that this fall many teachers are being forced to use technology in new ways that are pushing the boundaries of their comfort zones. That said, when you email your IT support person this fall remember that he or she is a real person who is probably grossly underpaid for his/her skill set. Say thank you when they fix your problem or otherwise help you, it goes a long way.

Emailing Your Teacher, With Captain Communicator is my favorite video about email etiquette. The short video features two students demonstrating how to write an email to a teacher. The students remind viewers of the importance of using a proper greeting and closing. It's cute and well worth 90 seconds of your time.

Email Etiquette for Students was made by a teacher. I've used and shared this video for years.



Common Craft offers a video titled Clear Communication in Email. It is a good video about how to get a recipient's attention and get a recipient to reply. A couple of small things go a long way toward getting better responses or even a response at all.



This week's Practical Ed Tech Newsletter featured a bunch of time-saving tips for the new school year. One of those tips included using smart replies and email templates. Watch this video to learn how to do those things and more.

Getting Started With Flipgrid - Teacher & Student Views

In the last month I've shared videos about how to make split screen videos in Flipgrid and how to make whiteboard videos in Flipgrid. It was pointed out to me, in the form of a reader request, that those are great features once you know how to use the basics of Flipgrid. To help people get started with Flipgrid, I made the following video.

I think it's important to understand what students see when they use a tool that you've assigned to them. For that reason I've included the teacher and student views of Flipgrid in my getting started video that is embedded below.


What is Flipgrid?
In a nutshell, it's a free tool for posting discussion prompts for your students to respond to with short videos that they record directly in the Flipgrid website or Flipgrid app.

How to Use Remind to Send Messages to Multiple Classes at the Same Time

Yesterday I posted a video about how to get started using Remind to send text messages from your computer to students and their parents. This morning a high school teacher asked me if it would be better to have just one large class in Remind or multiple classes in Remind representative of her schedule with multiple classes. My suggestion is to have a Remind class for each actual class. Then you can use the option to send the same message to all classes or choose to send it to just one class. That's what I demonstrate in this new video.


Applications for Education
Creating multiple classes in Remind is a great way to organize all of the classes that you teach. If you, like I did for years, have multiple sections of the same course you know that it's almost impossible to keep them on the same schedule throughout the semester. That's why I'd have a different Remind class for each class I taught. Then I could easily send the same message to all classes when necessary and send differentiated messages when necessary.

How to Use Remind to Send Text Messages from Your Computer

Remind is a service for sending text messages to your students without having to reveal your real phone number. I've been recommending and using it for years. One of my favorite aspects of Remind is that I can schedule and send messages from my computer and respond to messages from my computer.

In the following video I demonstrate the basics of getting started with Remind to send text messages to students and their parents from your computer.


It should be noted that if your school or school district subscribes to a school-wide paid Remind plan then the process of setting up your classroom and importing students is slightly different. However, the process of sending messages is the same whether you use an individual Remind plan (free) or a school plan.