Things to Love This Valentines Day

It's Valentine's Day! Whether your heart is full with your loved ones, gal-pals for "Galentine's Day," or you are buying flowers for yourself to honor you, today is a day I hope brings you smiles. 

Here are some worldwide eco-wins to love and that are worth raising a glass of your favorite celebratory beverage to toast!

💖 A First For Clean Energy
3 cheers for renewable energy, which for the first time ever is generating more electricity globally than coal. Likewise, solar and wind power grew at record speeds in 2025. Love that it's no longer a hypothetical wish for the future, but a future that is happening and edging out fossil fuels and coal.​ 

💖 Cities and States Are Trendsetting Energy Leaders
What's not to love about states like Connecticut, Maine, and New York who are passing laws to speed up their push toward 100% clean energy timelines. This investment in climate solution will push toward expanding transit and lowering bills. Fun fact: Chicago's Midway & O'Hare airports and a large number of other city buildings are now powered entirely by clean energy. ​​

💖 Wildlife Comebacks For the Win
Once thought to be extinct, the black lion tamarin of Brazil is now counting at about1,800 tamerin-strong. Community-driven conservation and habitat restoration are to thank for that. Communities like the Sri Lanka Centra Highlands are putting in wildlife corridors which are helping to reconnect the leopards to their habitats as communities grow around them but with them in mind! New protections for the penguins in Patagonia are helping to protect their numbers and breeding potentials.​​​

💖 Rewilding Is On the Upswing
​Rewilding is when you let land and nature have the time and space it needs to heal from overusing the land. This is happening in Zimbabwe's Zambezi region where thousands of animals are being moved to enhance the health and biodiversity of their habitat and ecosystem. Another example is in Europe's Rhodope Mountains where animals such as red and fallow deer, wild horses, and European bison are reintroduced in order to create natural grazing and predator-prey relationships. The same is true with Argentina's Iberá Wetlands where locally-extinct specials like giant anteaters, pampas deer, and jaguars, were brough back to help the ecosystem 

💖 Communities Are Leading
Grassroots movements in many locations are working to make a difference to try to reverse harmful policies. Case and point: throughout Latin America, local communities worked to help conserve bird habitat across hundreds of protected areas. Other projects across the Amazon are being community-driven to protect millions of acres of forest. 

💖 Climate Education Is On the Rise
Let's toast states like Oregon, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, California, and Illinois who are now incorporating climate and sustainability education in their K-12 public schools. Maryland has long had their growing network of certified Green School who are putting environmental education central to their curriculum. We build environmental stewards by weaving climate literacy into everyday life.​

💖 Policy in Action
Environmental policies are starting to show up in many places, really starting to make a positive difference. New congestion pricing in New York City means that vehicles pay a fee to enter the busiest parts of town during peak times. That helps make transit choices will reduce both traffic and vehicular pollution while also having that charged fee go to improving public transit. In other places, climate task forces are creating plans to help mitigate flood or drought risks, tackle heat waves or fire risks, open cooling centers when needed, or providing business incentives for affordable and efficient heat pumps, insulation, or solar panels. Bringing healthier and more affordable solutions is always worth a toast!

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So as you celebrate love this year, make sure it's not just about who we love, but how we love the world we live in. Take notice of where we are healing both as people and as a planet. Cheering on not only what's winning in our own life and the things/people we love, but also those on a larger scale. All things flourish that we shower with love!

Control Alt Achieve's Public NotebookLM with AI Policies, Guidelines and Frameworks

Eric Curts from Control Alt Achieve is one of my go-to edtech gurus. Not only is Control Alt Achieve an amazing resource for teachers, he was a dynamic speaker at FETC last year and one of my favorite follows. 

Eric had a recent post entitled Public NotebookLM with AI Policies, Guidelines, & Frameworks from January 20th, 2026. NotebookLM is an amazing tool for using AI to synthesize information. I learned about it last year at the 2025 FETC: The Future of Educational Technology Conference. It's known as a "thinking partner" where you are upload your own documents to use as your data set and you can interact directly with your own set of sources. You can learn more about NotebookLM here.

With his post, Eric included 40 resources (at this time of writing) in his AI Public NotebookLM. Additionaly, he has provided public access to that digital collection. Once inside this NotebookLM, you you can interview the resources through AI to answer specific AI-related edtech questions you may have based on your specific AI-centric goals or guidelines you'd like to create. He's included some of the Studio features of NotebookLM, including an informative podcast created to detail the givven information.

Be sure to click this link to get to his Public NotebookLM with AI Policies, Guidelines and Frameworks. Here you will get his details post that includes the link to get you to this robust resource. You can then ask your own questions and create your own tools to help create what you need for your own school or district. 

I know AI can still be so scary to people out there, but there are so many features about it that can really help you ramp up your productivity. Every teacher out there knows the saying "teach harder, not smarter." This is a classic example of using the tools that are there to help you level up and do just that, maximizing your time in the smartest way possible. Eric's post and public NotebookLM are great for doing just that!

Image from https://www.controlaltachieve.com/2026/01/notebooklm-ai-guidance.html

Google Takeout for Graduating Seniors & Moving Teachers

Moving schools (either as a graduating student or a teacher moving on to another school) comes with a lot. Especially if you are a Google School and you have created a lot of digital files.

I've fallen victim to this: realizing too late that my email/Google Drive was ending sooner than I thought and lost files. This happened to me when Eagle Cove closed down. Realizing a little too late that part of the packing includes those digital files and creations I made along the way! 

For that reason, I got pretty excited when I saw Chromebook Classroom's Facebook post about "Google Takeout" for graduating seniors (and leaving teachers) being able to transfer school documents to a personal account.

This video from John Sowash walks you through how to do it. (Note: As he details in the video, it can take a week or so to process the transfer....so definitely pay attention to timing!)

Video from https://youtu.be/LVF-qyRoKeQ?si=WgpFn1uSRayp3eEK and image created at Canva.com

The Gift of Snow

Waking up to the Wintery Wonderland is always a gift. The world of white abounds and surrounds. And it is still coming down.

I've seen reports of both 35 states being affected, and also ones saying that half the US being under snow storm forecasts for this weekend. That's a lot of people facing a lot of snow. At this writing Sunday morning, the federal government is already closed, but I'm awaiting our county's school district decision. I'm not too worried. 

The pace of life just seems to change when the blizzardarious conditions head your way. You stock up. You settle in. You hunker down. You bundle up and head out to explore--OR--you snuggle in and get toasty in front of a fire or under a blanket. Expectations change and it's all cozy and comfort food and time slows down. Some of it is the novelty and unexpected variety to your normal days, and some of it is just the inability to go anywhere because you are closed in with that blanket of snow and the plows not yet making their way to you. It is a gift. The gift of time.

With my gift, I see books being read. Blog posts being written. Shows being watched. Naps maybe being taken. Soup being made. Maybe a load or two of laundry getting tackled, or even a scary clutter corner or two. But the bar is low, as are the expectations. It's a rather cozy gift indeed....as long as the power stays on! 😉 

How are you going to spend your gift of time and your gift of snow?

Weather map from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/snow-storm-forecast-maps-winter-weather/; banner image created at Canva.com with my snow photos.

Squirrel Appreciation Day: Annually January 21st

One could argue that there is a "day" for everything. They just may be right. This week ahead (and annually), mark your calendar: Squirrel Appreciation Day: January 21st!

This annual environmental day was created in 2001 by Christy Hargrove, a wildlife rehabilitator from Asheville, North Carolina. 

The reason? She wanted to honor these little scampering scurriers who have a harder time in the winter landing on their next food source.

To appreciate our little furry neighborhood buddies, I used this National Wildlife Federation blog post for inspiration to write this "Squirrel" Acrostic! You can always click that link to learn more!

Scampering about our parks, cities, suburbs, and wooded areas,

Quietly going about your business in our backyards...

Under trees, then up in the branches you go on your quests,

In search of your next snack with those seeds and nuts that fall about.

Routinely one of our wildest mammals we see,

Raiding our bird feeders just a little too often.

Energy-crazed and zipping about, revving up our watching dogs,

Letting us all watch, these furry acrobatic squirrels bounding about.

And here's a little National Park Service social media I ran across about a year and a half ago that I tucked away, for this very day! Hope it makes you chuckle!

For the "Learn more" link above, click here to find out more at the National Park Service.

Social Media screenshot from National Park Service: https://www.facebook.com/nationalparkservice/posts/pfbid0aswwaxzHEzJW5u3iXcyqaYHSboKX5ZK7oDABJ19UBGSha9qLBVzA5GWb1CDZGSj5l; Photo from my back yard, Squirrel Appreciation Day image created at Canva.com

What Was Lost Is Now Found

If you read my last post, you saw reference to my title above. It falls in the category of "A funny thing happened on the way to writing my next GTG blog post."

You know that feeling of déjà vu you get when you've done something before, but you go back to where you did it and there is absolutely no sign you've done it? But you know you did itA You are absolutely, certainly, 100% positive. Maybe it's akin to trying to find a now-lost item, or it's you, retracing your steps in a not-so-successful way.

That was me this weekend. I came to write my next blog post and was like: "Wait a minute!?! It's gone?!? My last post is gone! I wrote it last weekend, it was here, and now it's gone." Serious disappearing act. It starts to give you a distinct "I'm losing my mind" sensation. I've not been getting a lot of sleep lately, but could I legitimately have been so brainfogged that I dreamed I wrote about SpoGomi? That's a random dream!!

I looked everywhere--drafts, trash, did I post it on another date, is it hiding in my website history? Nope! No where to be found. I have absolutely no clue what I did, but into thin air that post went. Brain cells, blood, sweat, tears--gone! Perhaps that's a smidge dramatic, but I did NOT want to reinvent the wheel and spend the time rewriting the whole thing. Anyone who grew up in the late 1980s & 1990s who has ever lost a paper due to lack of saving it (before the excellent era of auto-save we all live in now), knows of this excruciating pain.

So I did what is becoming the natural new step in this modern-day life--I took it to the wonderful world of AI and asked if it could help. 

My AI of choice in this scenario was Gemini--figuring I'd score the best there since GTG is housed on Blogger, a Google product. When in the Googlesphere, let's stay in the Googlesphere, I thought. 

Well, guess what?! Gemini saved the day! I can't tell you how relieved I was when (after a couple queries back and forth) it popped out this:

I appreciated the confirmation both mentally and emotionally from Gemini that my mind was indeed intact. *Insert BIG sigh of relief here.*

But it really leveled up to me the power of AI. This was an amazing use of it for me! Recently a person dear to me passed and their executor went to AI to compile a list of things an executor needs to do for a person and their accounts--presto, quicko: an 11-point checklist of solid points spit out. Another good friend ran a series of AI exchanges in the form of a mock interview to prepare for a job interview coming up. Brilliant! Sharpening and leveling up resumes? Another amazing use. I've personally planned trips, designed flavor-compatible dinner companion sides and deserts, and created classroom curriculum and interactive games....among other things, all using AI. The scope of it's productivity and assistance in taking us to the next level is endless.

One of the things I always tell my elementary students is that our role in lives--as students, as people, as citizens of the world--is to be problem solvers. So here is an amazing tool that took what was lost in cyberspace and now it is found. Thank you, AI. Thank you for helping me solve my problems! Thank you for opening my eye to how endless the scope truly is!

Image created on Canva.com and the other one a screenshot from my exchange with Gemini.google.com

Starting the New Year On the Right Foot

(What was once lost is now found....more on that in my next post!)

It's a new year, and if you are like me, you like to "feel the fresh." Ergo...a "feel good" story was just what the doctor ordered for this kid! If you are looking for a new year's resolution or a way to make a difference this year, perhaps SpoGomi is for you.

Interestingly enough, it's not a new concept (though it felt new to me), and it's actually something I've written about before but with another name: plogging or plalking. If you are like most people, this is a new term for you. Basically, it's Swedish for "p"icking up "l"itter while you are jogging (plogging) or walking (plalking). Both have become quite popular over the past decade.

SpoGomi, on the other hand, is a bit more of a "sport," and it stands for "Sport Gomi" ("gomi" is Japanese for "trash"). It becomes it's own competitive level sport where  teams of three people compete to pick up the most trash in a set amount of time. There is even a World Cup for SpoGomi!

I think this is a great way to get people involved in cleaning up their communities. It's fun, it's competitive, and it makes a real difference. Maybe neighborhood SpoGomi is what we need! Who's with me?

Check out this poster I made (with a little help from AI) to show the basic rules!

 

The rules are simple:

1. Teams of 3: You need a team to compete... and you need to compete against a team.

2. Set the time: You have a set amount of time to pick up as much trash as you can.

3. Define a specific area: You have to stay within a certain area.

4. Types of trash: Different types of trash are worth different points. Cigarette butts are usually worth the most!

5. No sorting: You don't have to sort the trash, but you do have to pick it up safely. So take steps and wear safety equipment/gloves as needed.

What a great way to start the new year on the right foot. It's a small thing, but it can make a big difference. Let me know in the comments if you've ever heard of SpoGomi or if you'd be interested in starting a team!

Happy New Year, everyone! Let's make 2026 the cleanest year yet!

Images from https://www.facebook.com/1MillionWomen/posts/pfbid02HwVmLdpmMom5GSrYjxEs1W8Gfu76XWNwJcgHXhTcWvj6yZofZBjS7LNS8Ja8PsLvl and Spogomi Rules Infographic created using Perplexity.AI (and corrected in at least 4 places for spelling through my computer's editing tools--showing that it's always necessary to edit those AI requests carefully!!)

Cheers to the New Year: 2026

Cheers to 2026. May your year begin with a fresh start, and may it come with new adventures, good health, abundant joy, satisfaction and success, more good times than bad, and many memorable moments.