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5 Things to Try to Reset a Crappy Day

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Blah days, rough days, frustrating days, crappy days, whatever you want to call them, we all have those days. Heck, I’m having one right now as write this blog post. But I’m going to break out of it soon. I’m about to do #1 and #2 on the following list. Both help me reset crappy days.

Micha L. Rieser [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons

Write About It

The writing doesn’t need to be on a public forum. Depending upon what’s eating you, writing about it on a public forum will make things worse. But the act of writing about it forces some thought and analysis of what’s going wrong and what can be done to change course.

Exercise

A good, strenuous workout can make you forget about whatever was bugging you at least for a little while. When I’m running or biking and my heart rate is at 90% of max, it is darn near impossible to think about anything other than pushing through the workout.

Step Away From Social Media

Having a bad day? Scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter probably isn’t going to make it better. In fact, it’s more likely to make it worse. And for me it becomes a time-suck that then makes me feel bad about not doing something more productive like exercising or playing outside.

Up the H2O Intake

Dehydration can contribute to feelings of lethargy, lack of clarity, and decrease in mental acuity. Just drinking more water and less coffee or soda pop can get things back on track.

Just Go Outside!

I’m lucky in that my daughters are young enough that almost everything they find outside is amazing to them. Yesterday, my two year old was enthralled with the discovery of a woolly bear. The point is, there are cool and interesting things happening all around us if we take a look. A simple walk around the neighborhood (without looking at the phone) can help clear the mind and reset the day.

Ed Tech Fitness Challenge of the Week – Second Quarter Reset

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Greetings from 30,000 feet over Connecticut. I’m flying home after a quick trip to speak at New Jersey City University. Over the weekend I spent a lot of time doing art projects with my daughters, walking with my dogs, and doing high cadence workouts on my spin bike. How was your weekend? What did you do? Leave a comment and let me know.

Challenge of the Week

Today marks the first day of the second quarter of 2019. I’m happy with myself for maintaining a consistent exercise regimen throughout the first quarter of the year. I’m not so happy with myself for my lack of commitment to improving my diet. That’s why this week’s challenge for myself is to reboot my commitment to using the My Fitness Pal app.

My challenge for you is to identify and commit to rebooting the part of your fitness regimen that needs attention. That might be diet, it might be exercise, it could be something else. Whatever it is, write it down every day and get after it. You can do it! I can do it! We can do it!

Have an awesome week!

The First Quarter Review

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Today is the last day of the first quarter of 2019. How are you doing on your fitness goals for the year? Are you still making progress toward those goals? Do you need to get back on the program? Now’s a great time to take a look at our wins and the things that we can do to still improve.

Wins

I didn’t start with a goal of losing “X” pounds. My goal at the beginning of the year was just to get back into good shape that I can feel proud of. I’m not there yet, but I’m getting closer to that goal.

I’ve either run on a treadmill, run outside, or rode my bike trainer for 80% of the days in the first quarter of the year. That’s roughly 70 more days than I spent exercising in the first quarter of last year and 100% more days than I spent exercising in the last quarter of last year. Not coincidentally, almost every pair of jeans that I own fits me again. The ones that don’t fit are from the days when I was really thin and riding my bike 250-300 miles per week.

The Ed Tech Fitness Challenges that I share every Monday have helped me build some strength and flexibility elements into my exercise routine that I would have otherwise ignored. Burpees, anyone?

Areas to Improve

My diet is garbage. I’ve had some good weeks, but the majority of the weeks have not been good. This is largely due to my stress-snacking habit and my habit of accepting free beer or red wine when its offered on my flights (I’ve taken 25 flights so far this year).

The good weeks with my diet have been when I use the My Fitness Pal app. I need to use that every week. Just writing those sentences reminds me that I now have the metabolism of a 40 year old and not a 30 year old let alone the metabolism I had 20 years ago when I could eat two Burger King Whoppers and not gain an ounce. Just writing “eat two Burger King Whoppers” probably added an inch to my waist.

Second Quarter Goals

For the second quarter of the year I have three fitness goals. The first is to complete a 62 mile solo bike ride in April. The second is to complete a 100 mile solo bike ride in May. The third is to use My Fitness Pal every week to track my diet.

What’s Happening in the Second Quarter

275 of you have joined the Ed Tech Fitness weekly email newsletter in which I send out a challenge for the week. I plan to continue to send those in the second quarter.

I’m thinking of hosting a Strava-like fitness challenge in the second quarter. I’m still working on the details for that (largely legal details related to hosting fitness contests).

Finally, in April I’ll be recording the first episodes of the Ed Tech Fitness podcast. For one of the episodes I’ll be joined by an old friend who happens to have won a gold medal at the 1996 Olympic Games.

Tinkergarten – Fun & Learning Outdoors

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Last spring we took our daughters to a trial Tinkergarten class. We loved it from the outset! For the rest of the spring and throughout the summer I took my daughters to Tinktergarten every weekend.
If you have kids between ages two and seven, I encourage you to find a Tinkergarten class in your area. The one in my area starts in a couple of weeks.

What’s Tinkergarten?

In short, Tinkergarten is an outdoor play group organized around the framework of a lesson. Each week’s lesson has a connection to science, cooperation, and respect. Don’t think it’s a “sit and learn” lesson. The kids are engaged in play, songs, building, digging, and songs.

Every Tinkergarten class starts with a welcoming song and ends with a closing song. The closing song is nice because it mentions every child by name and ends with “we’ll see you again next time.”

My Favorite Tinkergarten Lesson

We went to ten Tinkergarten classes last spring and summer. I have lots of pictures from all of them. Without looking at the pictures, the lesson that stands out to me is the one in which the kids walked through the woods gathering sticks, leaves, wildflowers, and dirt to make their own “nature paints.” The kids then made drawings with their nature paints.

Parents Included!

Tinkergarten isn’t a “drop ’em off and pick ’em up” type of class. Parents are encouraged to be explorers right along with their kids for the whole hour. As a parent I loved this aspect of Tinkergarten because it not only gave me bonding time with my daughters, but it also gave me lots of ideas for activities to do at home with them.

Find a Tinkergarten in Your Area

Any time is a good time to play and learn outdoors. Find a class near you!

Blending Technology Into Outdoor Lessons

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Last week I spoke at the MACUL Conference in Detroit, Michigan. One of the talks that I gave was titled 5 Ways to Blend Technology Into Outdoor Lessons. You can view the slides here, but they’re not worth much without my explanation of the key points. Those are outlined below.

Geocaching

Geocaching is an activity in which you use your mobile phone or a handheld GPS device to find hidden caches. You can find lists of caches in your area by logging into Geocaching.org and exploring the interactive map.

Digital Mapping

In digital mapping students can use Google’s My Maps, Google’s VR Tour Creator, ESRI, or Scribble Maps to create maps. All of those platforms will let students incorporate their own images and videos of interesting things they’ve found outside.

Students can also use Google’s My Maps to plan safe running and biking routes.

Augmented Reality

Pokemon Go was the first popular, mainstream use of augmented reality in outdoor settings. With tools like Metaverse you and your students can create own educational augmented reality applications to use outside. I recently used Metaverse to create an Amazing Race game and a couple of years ago I used it to create a history mystery game.

Recording Observations

Project Noah is a program that I have been promoting for years. It’s a community-powered project (with some backing from National Geographic) in which users submit pictures and written observations of nature in their neighborhoods. There is a classroom version of Project Noah that provides projects for classrooms to complete together.

Activity Tracking

Does your class have a fitness goal? Perhaps a goal for a cumulative time spent playing outside in a week? Using Google Form along with a pivot table in Google Sheets is an easy way to track progress toward that goal. And starting in June you could use the Moki activity tracker to keep track of steps. Unlike activity trackers made for the general public, Moki doesn’t use Bluetooth or GPS tracking.

I’ll be talking about all of these ideas in much more detail in next week’s Practical Ed Tech webinar, 5 Ways to Blend Technology Into Outdoor Lessons.

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