California Educators Together · Episode

From your laptop to a loud GPU cluster, AI prompts are a mysterious energy drain. Our columnist attempted to trace their journey—and their impact.

📍 Is Your Smartphone Shrinking Your Brain? Think about it: When was the last time you reached your destination without staring at a glowing blue dot? We are living through a silent epidemic of cognitive map atrophy. In this episode, we expose the GPS dependency that is literally altering our brain structure—specifically the hippocampus—and how we are trading our spatial memory for digital convenience. We’re diving deep into the 'Analog Resurgence' of 2026 to help you reclaim the 'forgotten' skills of environmental literacy. From the secret code of the US Interstate system (did you know the numbering is a self-explaining map?) to the hidden logic of town water towers, we reveal the 40,000-mile map you’re already driving on but can't see. What you’ll learn in this episode: - The Shadow Stick Method: How to find True North with nothing but a twig and a sunbeam. - Nature’s Compass: Why ant hills and the lean of trees are more reliable than your 5G signal. - Highway Secrets: Decoding the even/odd logic of interstate numbering to navigate any city solo. - Brain Training: How natural navigation acts as a workout for your mind, fostering a deeper, more competent connection to the landscape. Stop being a passenger in your own life. Whether you're interested in offline navigation, slow travel, or simply want to know why your sense of direction is getting worse, this episode is your manual for reclaiming competent adulthood in a digital-first world. 🌿 Ready to unplug and find yourself? Hit that subscribe button and share this episode with someone who can't find their way out of a paper bag without Google Maps! Let’s rebuild our internal GPS together.  

Trustees agreed to submit two proposed resolutions to the Minnesota School Boards Association: one promoting K-12 environmental literacy standards and another asking MSBA to support districts sharing annual information on safe firearm storage and increased school-safety funding.

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"35% of the UK public don’t know that cardboard is a tree-based product, 15% are unsure about paper and 11% claim to be unaware that wood itself is made from trees. In addition to misidentifying materials sourced from trees, significant numbers of those surveyed also thought that non-tree-based, natural materials such as bamboo (53%), cotton (14%) and flax (10%) could be made from trees." https://uk.fsc.org/newsfeed/results-from-the-2025-fsc-uk-consumer-survey #EnvironmentalLiteracy #NatureConnection