Want safety? Strengthen Traffic Safety Training for Happiness

In United States, May is taken as National Transportation Month in which people are introduced to the glorious development journey of transportation technology and things relating to it. It is true that the citizens were, are and will be enjoying the convenience brought by the advanced tech, while at the same time some side effects come out, too, such as pollution, traffic jam, etc. among which traffic safety is a key point. As some researches show, great life loss and disability result from motor accidents. Therefore, training about traffic regulation and safety needs to be strengthened. Schools, corporations, traffic administrations, etc. must take the responsibility to make students, employees, the public clear about the relating traffic regulations and safety tips.

In recent years, transportation industry increases greatly. More and more autos crow in the street, and on the other hand traffic accident happening frequently has taken many people’s precious lives, and these tragedies still show up continuously. Let’s see some statistics from authority:

•  There are more than six million car accidents each year in the United States.


•  A person dies in a car accident every 12 minutes and each year car crashes kill 40,000 people.


•  The leading cause of death for individuals between 2 and 34 years old is motor vehicle crashes.


•  Excessive speed is the second most common cause of deadly auto accidents, which accounts for about 30% of fatal accidents.


•  Car accidents are the leading cause of death for kids between 2 and 14; About 2,000 children die each year from injuries caused by car accidents.



(Source: http://www.edgarsnyder.com/ )

For teachers and parents, nothing is more important than kid’s safety and development; for traffic administration, the normality and safety of traffic is a key task. The traffic safety training will be beneficial to realization of the purposes. The importance of traffic training is obvious, but how to adopt the training effectively?

Some suggestions on traffic regulation and safety training:

1. Invite experts in this field to offer students, employees, and the citizens, etc. professional and practical knowledge and tips about traffic safety. Pay attention to choosing proper lecturers according to the features of listeners. Kids need vivid stories which are easy to understand; the mass needs common knowledge; people in transportation field needs professional explanations.

2. Provide the trainees various learning materials like videos, brochures, images, stories, etc. It is the method we often use, but several details still requires attention. Our aim is to spread the knowledge and tips, so vividness is critical. No one needs stiff and boring preaches.

3. The result of training needs to be evaluated to guarantee good effects. Motivation comes from pressure. A transportation regulation quiz or traffic safety quiz made through quiz maker will evoke students and employees to pay more attention to the training. Traffic administration can start a quiz competition to attract more people to participate in the learning.

Traffic safety training does good to people and society. In this special National Transportation Month all sides needs to emphasize the importance of traffic safety. Cherish life, enjoy happiness!

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Efficient Feedback to Earth Day Publicity Quiz Saves You Out of Environmental Disasters

Recently many terrifying disasters happened in the world: strong earthquakes hit Haiti, Chile, China, etc. one after another. Some may say it is normal for the movement of Earth's crust, while how to explain the extreme weathers, whether serious draughts or heavy blizzards, happened frequently worldwide. These affairs increase people's worries about environment. Are they the alarms from nature? As far as we know, now people's activities impact the environment greatly and result in climate changes. The publicity of environment protection needs to be strengthened; we can start from us and let more people know the importance of protecting our earth. How can we, the common people, spread the knowledge of environment protection efficiently?

Please neglect those delicate paper brochures, because they aren't environment-friendly; forget the flourishing advertisements on media, for they require many efforts. Comparatively, publicizing the knowledge through online quiz is a good choice for us, the common citizens. It can be the flexible and efficient way of environment education and publicity. We can make full use of the power of broad Internet and the interactivity of online quiz. People's knowledge about environment protection can be tested and enriched. The success of an Earth Day quiz for publicity lies in the efficient feedback which will pop up and show the right way to do for the environment with detailed explanations, so we should focus on it. Then how should we create proper feedback?

Feedback in quizzes plays an important role in spreading environment protection through Earth Day quiz whose main purpose is not for test, but for information publicity. Thus, feedback should be informative, and attractive. Let’s see how to achieve the requirements.

First, please prepare sufficient materials about the Earth Day 2010 and environment situation. Questions are refined from various knowledge and information in this field, but if we want to make quiz takers know more about the details, feedback is the real repository to show useful tips and knowledge about environment. Throw away the dull words like "correct" or "wrong". The feedback needed in Earth Day quizzes is informative and efficient in environment publicity. Therefore, informative feedback needs more preparation of environment knowledge.

For those complex questions, some detailed instructions will be in need. Then how can we show large quantity of feedback within a simple environment quiz? Hyperlinks can help us achieve this. There are countless specialized websites about the Earth, climate, sources, environment, protection activities, etc. Once the quiz is linked to these sites, this Earth Day quiz will become a knowledge base of environment protection. In addition, it is also wonderful to create a special page for more comprehensive messages. Some professional quiz makers call the space as "blank page" or "blank slide", etc.

Apart from content, the way of showing feedback is also critical to great extent. Words are necessary in feedback, but plain words are not the best outlet and possibly they will make quiz takers bored. Don’t forget that we aim to attract more people to learn about environment protection. Have you ever thought of adding images and audio files, to the instruction? Multiform feedback will show information much better and more vividly. Quiz takers can gain knowledge from more sense organs impressively.

The above are some suggestions in adding efficient feedback to your Earth Day quiz. If you are not clear about how to add the feedback, you can take some quiz maker software like QuizCreator as a tool and its feedback feature is quite helpful and easy-to-use, or you can also turn to some online websites like ProProfs.com for some of the features.

Earth Day is a hot topic in each April. It must be more meaningful this year because we human beings have experienced too many tragedies resulting from environmental disruption. The prophecy of "the doomsday in 2012" causes some worries, even panic recently. Though it is still lack of scientific proofs to prove its rightness, the end of the World will come one day if we don’t act together to protect our mother planet. Your simple action will influence the fate of the Earth, and human beings.

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Online Foreign Culture Learning Makes You Real Residents of Global Village

As financial crisis fades, cooperation between countries has flourished again. It requires the enhancement of transnational communication and understanding. If you need to work abroad, if you are a language learner, or if you want to travel around the world, it is necessary for you to know the culture of target country, which will help you work and study more smoothly and efficiently. How to learn the foreign culture effectively? Technology will help us. Let’s get familiar with some online resources for foreign culture learning.

Language is the great carrier of culture and if you want to learn a nation’s culture, you must know about its language first. I will introduce two wonderful language learning sites: livemocha.com and BBC Language.

• Livemocha.com is the most active language learning community in the world. This online language paradise enables you to communicate with native speakers, and also offers many online lessons and quizzes to improve and check your language level. You can invite others to check your work and you also evaluate others’. Livemocha supports to record audio and then other language learners will offer you feedbacks. It is quit interactive and you will not learn the language alone.
  
• BBC language is another effective resource for language learning. There are many foreign languages like French, Spanish, Chinese, German, etc. You can exchange learning tips, play language games, and share travel experience on it. News pieces and TV programs are available to visitors.

In the process of studying foreign cultures, it is better to discuss with the natives or at least share the opinions with others. Thus you can enjoy more feedbacks and some first-hand materials. An interactive atmosphere will act as a good assistant helping you learn more. I suggest you make a quiz and presentation to show what you learn, which will increase your satisfaction of mastering new knowledge. Then let's see some platforms you can make use of.

• Facebook, Twitter, etc. are quite popular social media on which you will find a lot of people with same interest with you. They are the ideal places for you to get suggestions and share experiences.
  
• Travel Blog shows us enticing scenery of all the continents. It is a collection of travel journals, diaries and photos from around the world. You will experience the whole world through the blogs. The travel forum, at the same time, will allow you to learn from those who have been to other countries.
  
• Studentoftheworld.info is a typical site for students all over the world. This site has full introduction including the overview, statistics, etc. of nearly all the countries. One important thing is that students from the target country will show you their ideas which manifest the nation’s modern values, in some degree.

The internet resources bring us more convenience to study the foreign culture. As long as you search, there must be more marvelous learning sources. The governmental sites, travel sites, etc. are all good platforms for you to know the country. The more you learn the world, the better your life will be.

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Easter Day Quiz for Teachers during April Fool’s Season

Easter Day is just around the corner. Dear teachers, have you prepared well for students’ questions about Easter Day? Though it is a commonly-known religious day, students still need to know more details. How can you know whether you have mastered the knowledge of Easter Day? What way will you choose to teach and share the Easter Day information with children? Ok, this Easter Day’s quiz will help you.

Easter Day Quiz

Question 1:

On what street in New York does the city’s famous Easter parade take place?

A. Broadway

B. 42nd Street

C. Wall Street

D. 5th Avenue

Question 2:

Who was the last monarch to wash the feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday as an act of humility in remembrance of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet?

A. Victoria

B. James II

C. George III

D. George VI

Question 3:

In France how are Easter eggs thought to be delivered to children on Easter Sunday?

A. By the Easter goose

B. By a church bell that scatters eggs as it rings out on Sunday morning

C. By the Easter bunny

D. By the Birgin Mary who delivers them to the children while they sleep

Question 4:

Who was the first to speak to Jesus after he had risen from the dead/

A. God

B. Mary, his mother

C. Judas Iscariot

D. Mary Magdalene

( Do you know the answers? Come on! ^_^ )

Question 5:

What are the English and German names for Easter or Ostern derived from?

A. The Passover ritual of Seder

B. The ancient name for the month of April

C. The German word for Austria, traditionally believed to be where Easter eggs were found

D. The Latin for word for eggs

Question 6:

What does the Easter Triduum refer to?

A. The Sunday after Easter Sunday, the conclusion of the Easter week

B. The ascension of Jesus to heaven and the completion fo the Holy trinity

C. The last three days before Easter Sunday

D. The meal eaten by the disciples following Jesus’ crucifixion

Question 7:

The Good Friday agreement, signed on Good Friday 1998, is also known as what?

A. The Belfast agreement

B. The Democratic Unionist agreement

C. The Dublin agreement

D. The Northern Ireland agreement

Question 8:

The term Maundy, describing the Thursday that commemorates the last supper and celebrated the day before Good Friday, is derived from the Latin word mandatum, meaning what?

A. Final

B. Commandment

C. Mandate

D. Disciple

Question 9:

What way will you choose to teach your students? If e-Learning method is used, what will be the result?

The quiz is finished, while is it hard to do the quiz and make a judgment? Please be patient. Let's try another version of this Easter Day quiz.

Is this one much more engaging? I didn’t show the Easter Day quiz made with Flash quiz maker first; however, don’t regard it as teasing on you. You know, it is April Fool’s season. ^_^ Check out the score you have got. Oh, there is an open question – the last question. What is the key? I think you should have already known the answer based on your experience in doing the quiz, and your students possibly have the same feeling.

Don’t feel upset if you failed in the quiz this time. There is still enough time for you to learn more about Easter Day. The following are some materials about Easter Day for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter

http://www.holidays.net/easter/index.htm

Children always like learning in interesting ways. Dear teachers, why not make full use of these techs in your class? E-learning has become the hot topic. If the e-Learning technology can be well adopted in teaching, students and also you must get great benefits from them.

Happy April Fool’s Day and Easter Day!

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Facebook Guide for Students: How to Become Popular?

Recently the news pops up that Facebook has overtaken Google to become the most popular site in U.S. As a survey shows, at least 85% of college students have at least one Facebook account. It has become part of students’ life. Then how to become popular on this hot social platform? This must be the confusion for many students and Facebook users. Here I want to share some tips with you, dear friends. You may find some inspiration from the Facebook guide based on my using experiences.

To become popular on Facebook, you need full preparation, patience and it is also necessary to know some tips and tricks. Please remember a principle: perfect your own profile first, and then communicate with others. Let’s see the details:

1. Choose unique image and nickname. Don’t change them if not necessary. This is because the image and nickname are the first two elements for other members to recognize you. Once friends get familiar with you, they firstly will distinguish you through your picture and name.

2. Decorate your page and make it look great. Never hesitate in choosing a personalizing Facebook background. Fill in all the blanks, and don’t let it look dull. If there are just some big blanks or “no info”, visitors will definitely lose interests.

3. Give freedom to your visitors. Pay attention to your privacy, but offer friends freedom they can enjoy. For example, you can make it open to comment in videos, images, etc. Help your visitors enjoy the time on your page.

4. Tweetmeme.com provides you bunch of hot news and topics for sharing on Facebook. Updating news and sharing interesting pieces are the best method to make others know your page is quite active. Tweetmeme will save your time in searching for the attractive word.

5. Communicate with others actively. Before visitors come to your page, you need to “go out” first. It is important to increase the number of your friend list, but the more critical thing to get more friends and keep them on your list is your interactive action with the people on and out of the list. Keep on commenting others’ messages attentively, and they will feel your true heart and appreciate you. Don’t just add friends, but “talk” with them.

6. Make full use of applications Facebook offers. To attract others to your page, you can take advantage of the Facebook applications, especially those which can make your page more engaging. For example, you can make a quiz on Facebook for visitors to take, which will be more interactive. Here is the tutorial: How to make quiz on Facebook. You can also make multimedia quiz with quiz maker like QuizCreator and upload it to your own site. Then share the link on Facebook. Many applications are quite interesting, but don't add a bunch of silly apps. Get some suggestions through the following article: Facebook Applications for Page Popularity .

The above are some tips I summarized based on my use of Facebook. Hope they can help you to some extent. For more useful tips, dear friend, you can get them on this authority website for Facebook guidebook: http://mashable.com/guidebook/Facebook/ Facebook is a hot and excellent social media platform for students to get friends, learn news and knowledge, while please act wisely to prevent yourself from being absorbed into it.

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Techs and Resources for Water Saving Education

Water, as one of the most important sources for human’s life, is facing a severer and severer situation. It is easy for us to find many tragedies resulting from the water shortage and pollution, so actions need to be taken at once! One of the necessary actions is to raise people’s consciousness of saving and protecting water source. That is to say, we must strengthen the water saving education to which techs and resources will be beneficial. The coming World Water Day on March 22th, 2010 is a good chance to enhance this education.

Five techs for water saving education:

1. Scribus

Scribus is the powerful free software that helps teachers or disseminators create great looking documents of all kinds easily. It is useful to make some interesting and practical educational brochure of water saving and protecting.

2. Ren'Py

Ren'Py is a cross-platform engine that helps users to combine words, pictures, and sounds together to tell stories with the computer. Its easy and efficient script language makes it possible for non-programmers to make visual novels. Teachers can make funny or innovative visual stories about water to kids and students.

3. Zoho Show

It is an online presentation maker, or we can take it as the alternative of PowerPoint. The big advantage is that users can embed the presentation to website by copy and paste the code snippet Zoho provides, which means teachers can create online water slideshows free for students to view at any time.

4. PowerPoint to DVD converter

Brochures are good for the publicity, while active “brochure” may be more vivid. Students may like a brochure that displays like a movie better because it is livelier. It is easy to make such a movie about water with PowerPoint and a PowerPoint to DVD converter.



5. Quiz creator

Make a World Water Day quiz with multimedia, and then let students or any other people take it. Thus, people can learn through interactive tests. Quiz competition can also be hold at schools or communities.

There are many technologies for the education on water saving and protecting. As long as teachers or disseminators use them properly, the techs must be able to work as a great assistant. Apart from the technologies, the teaching materials are the other critical part in water education. Check some authority websites of water knowledge below.

1. http://www.unwater.org/flashindex.html

This plays as the authority site of UN-water, a mechanism in United Nations. The relating statistics, activities and policies can be easily found here.

2. http://www.worldwaterday2010.info/

It is the theme website for the World Water Day 2010 from which we can gain information about the latest situation of water resource and the events relating to water protection in the world.

3. http://water.org/

It is the site of Water.org, an American nonprofit developmental aid organization. This site shows us knowledge about water facts and what we can do to offer the clean water.

4. http://water.usgs.gov/

Here visitors will see the knowledge about water in all rounds like the basic information about water, water use, water pollution and ways to protect water. The feature is that there are specialized materials for education.

5. http://www.kidzone.ws/water/

There are fun facts for kids about the Water Cycle. Photos, activity suggestions and some printable worksheets are offered to visitors.

As reports show, many areas in the world are facing serious water shortage and pollution. Therefore, UN has started World Water Week from September 5th to 11th and World Water Decade from 2005 to 2015, besides of World Water Day. However, as residents of this global village, we must take actions by ourselves in daily life to protect precious water. At the same time the water education needs to be strengthened to raise the public’s sense of water protecting and make more people, especially the young, know the importance and benefits of it.

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Enhance Poison Prevention Education to Keep Children Safe from Toxicants

National Poison Prevention Week is coming. The goal of this special week is to raise awareness of the risk of being poisoned by household products, medicines, pesticides, plants, bites and stings, food poisoning, and fumes. Children are always curious about everything, and have poorer ability of self-control; thus children belong to the group needing more help in poison prevention work. Schools have great responsibility to educate children how to prevent horrible poison.

Knowledge of poison prevention is complex and fussy, while teachers first need to make children clear about the most important or efficient contents.

1. Raise students’ awareness of the danger in poisons. Students may be naughty and rebelled, so the best way to persuade them to be cautious about the toxic is to make them well know the danger and harm. According to the research, Over 1000 Americans die from poisoning every year. And more than two million potential poison exposures are reported every year to American Poison Control Centers. On average, poison centers handle 1 possible poisoning every 13 seconds.

2. Tell students how to avoid the harm from poison. When children know the danger of the toxic, it is time to help them act correctly and properly in their daily life. People live with poisons every day. Some small actions may result in unhappy endings. Tell students what they can do and what they cannot.

3. Share some symptoms of being poisoned and the fist aid tips. Unavoidably, some students or people beside them may be tortured by the toxicants. When emergency happens, the knowledge students learned can be of great help for themselves and also the other victims.

With the above training, the possibility for children to be poisoned can be reduced in some degree, and also even when some accidents happen, they themselves will take proper actions to relieve the pain. The following are some links for schools to share with students for poison prevention:

http://poisonhelp.hrsa.gov/

http://www.poisonprevention.org/

http://www.poison.org/

These are all professional and authoritative websites of poison prevention. Situations, treatment, first aid tips, etc. can be easily found there.

It is important to adopt poison prevention education, and the way to pass relating knowledge to students is also critical to the teaching efficiency.

1. Make children disseminators of poison prevention in voluntary activities.

During the poison prevention week, schools can organize some voluntary activities in communities, such as propagating poison prevention to residents, which will drive students’ sense of responsibility. Thus, they must devote to learn the knowledge and maybe they will continue passing the knowledge to others after the week. Teachers can also help students create some poison PowerPoint slideshows as courseware telling how to prevent being poisoned and tips for first aid. With the knowledge and courseware, students must do the voluntary job more efficiently.

2. Generate online poison prevention quiz for students to take.

Tests act as another method to encourage students to study poison prevention. Teachers can make quizzes about poison prevention and upload them to websites or LMSs for students to take. One thing to remember is to keep the quiz interesting and attractive, and this will draw students’ interests. A quiz can be made with Google Docs, free online websites and quiz maker, etc. The online test made with quiz software like Wondershare QuizCreator is recommended to school use. It can create quizzes with multimedia (images, audios, Flash videos, Flash movies, etc.), more question types and more publish channels, which definitely will please the quiz takers.

Educating students on poison prevention is a task for a long time. Teachers and school authorities must take the responsibility to help children know more about the toxicants, so there will be fewer tragedies.
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