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Michael Bluejay's Saving Electricity site reveals that powering a desktop PC with a 17-inch LCD, 8 hours a day, 20 days a month costs about $35 a year. It also claims that computers and electronics consume nearly 10 percent (in some cases below) of the average energy bill. Hence, you should take considerable approach to reduce the PC's carbon footprint.

"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reports that children spend an average of seven hours a day consuming various types of media. This data illustrates that society's voracious appetite for media makes media literacy more important than ever. How can you teach your students to interact responsibly with the media? The following resources can help you plan thought-provoking lessons on the subject."

"Mobile devices as teaching tools are becoming a more and more common part of the American education experience in classrooms, from preschool through graduate school. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 58% of U.S. teachers own smartphones - 10 percentage points higher than the national average for adults. Those teachers are building that tech-savviness into their lesson plans, too, by embracing bring-your-own-device policies and leading the push for an iPad for every student. In 2013, an estimated 25% of U.S. schools had BYOD policies in place and it's reasonable to assume those numbers have risen in the past two years. What do these mobile devices really add, though? Is there more to this tech trend than just grabbing the attention of students? Is mobile technology boosting classroom instruction, or is it all just a flashy way to accomplish the same things as analog instruction?"

"Finland's classrooms are very different from America's -- far more permissive, with less of an emphasis on academics. There are no standardized tests until high school, and children get 15 minutes of recess in between lessons -- more than an hour of recess a day. "Play is important," one Finnish teacher told the Smithsonian magazine. "We value play." Yet Finnish kids always get good grades on comparisons of student achievement between countries. Their average scores on the Program for International Student Assessment, a test that's given to 15-year-olds in 65 countries, are among the highest in the developed world. As a result, critics of education reform in the United States often cite the Finnish example. It's a stark contrast to America's reliance on using test scores in public school teacher evaluations, or the strict, "no-excuses" model of discipline in charter schools that many have touted as improving academic results. Now, Finnish schools are embracing an even more radical approach to teaching. One major initiative is to encourage teaching by topic instead of by subject. According to The Independent, instead of teaching geography and foreign language classes separately, teachers will ask kids to name countries on a map in a foreign language. Instead of separate lessons on history and economics, they'll talk about the European Union."

"Students at Canadian private schools have more educational success than their public school peers because of their backgrounds and classmates, not the schools themselves, Statistics Canada says in a new report. The study followed 7,142 Grade 10 students, focusing on standardized test scores in reading, math and science at age 15, as well as the educational qualifications they had earned by age 23. Private school students had better test scores (about nine per cent higher on average) and more educational success after high school. None of the differences, however, could be attributed to school resources and practices, Statistics Canada says."

"Spreadsheets can be intimidating to a lot of teachers and students. I have to admit that at one time working with spreadsheets was a daunting task for me too. Fortunately, Google Sheets has made it much easier for the average computer user to work with spreadsheets. Once you get the hang of working with Google Sheets there are a lot of great ways to use spreadsheets as a teacher or as a student. Here's a run-down of some of my favorite things to do with Google Sheets in the classroom."

"Kids who struggle with reading get an early lesson in one of life's more sucky realities; the earlier a person falls behind, the harder it is to even want to catch up. Their classmates move on to more interesting books, write stories that get noticed and get rewarded for finishing their work fast. Meanwhile the slower readers can barely make sense of the activity sheet in front of them. When a child can't read, school becomes either a huge, grinding drag or a very efficient confidence-removal machine. Usually both. Reading is not a natural ability. The vast majority of humans don't just pick it up; they have to be taught it quite explicitly. Until Johannes Gutenberg invented mechanical movable type, most people had little use for reading, just as now the vast majority of people have no use for weaving. And for some, acquiring this essential skill is an incredibly frustrating experience. Education experts are not of one mind about how much of the population has a diagnosable reading disorder such as dyslexia, but it's clear that while kids all read at different ages and stages, some otherwise average-intelligence people find reading an unusually hard slog."

"In 1962, Princeton psychologist Sam Glucksberg performed an experiment based on the classic candle problem test. He presented two groups with the same task, but with different rewards: One would receive monetary rewards based on speed, while the other was told only to complete the task as quickly as possible. The results were counterintuitive. The latter group performed the task on average three and a half times faster than the first. Why? As career analyst Dan Pink (Watch: The puzzle of motivation) has learned, traditional motivators like money can be far less effective than intrinsic motivators like autonomy, mastery and purpose. Indeed, productivity itself is a mystery we still struggle to unravel. Below, find seven must-reads (and a playlist) that look closely at how work works, provided by Pink for his TED Talk."

"It's the bottom of the ninth with two outs and it's all tied up. You've got a runner on first base and you need to decide who you're sending to the plate. You have a player with a stellar batting average, a player reliable for drawing walks and one who promises they can win it all for you-who do you play? In the fall of 2002, the Oakland Athletics shattered a 55-year-old record with twenty consecutive games won. The A's accomplished this on a shoestring budget and despite losing three of their best players at the start of the season. How, you ask? By applying rich data analysis to the sport, a practice known as sabermetrics. When we set out to design an engaging kickball unit for our middle school students, we asked ourselves how we could learn from the 2002 A's. In short, we wondered how we could combine data analysis, computational thinking and kickball to make the P.E. experience more personal, more academically rigorous and more inclusive to students of all athletic abilities."

"Educators and parents have something in common when it comes to the kids in their care: They are both navigating the treacherous waters of media, devices and children. Parents worry their children overuse screens, yet, they also fear that without the devices, their kids may fall behind socially, academically or be unsafe. Educators are aware that parents like the quick access to their children, and they also know smartphones offer opportunities for learning. Yet the devices can also be distracting in school. Many parents look to school leaders for guidance. They want recommendations for purchasing phones, using apps, keeping children safe and establishing screen time guidelines. Yet, schools tend to shy away from doling out this kind of advice.   Schools should reconsider this aversion. After all, the average age for getting a cell phones is now 10, which makes middle school the ideal time to share advice and recommendations for parents. Creating student smartphone guidelines presents an opportunity for educators to partner with parents and children about the use of devices and digital mental health."

"Many American teenagers try to put in a full day of school, homework, after-school activities, sports and college prep on too little sleep. As evidence grows that chronic sleep deprivation puts teens at risk for physical and mental health problems, there is increasing pressure on school districts around the country to consider a later start time. In Seattle, school and city officials recently made the shift. Beginning with the 2016-2017 school year, the district moved the official start times for middle and high schools nearly an hour later, from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. This was no easy feat; it meant rescheduling extracurricular activities and bus routes. But the bottom line goal was met: Teenagers used the extra time to sleep in. Researchers at the University of Washington studied the high school students both before and after the start-time change. Their findings appear in a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. They found students got 34 minutes more sleep on average with the later school start time. This boosted their total nightly sleep from 6 hours and 50 minutes to 7 hours and 24 minutes."

"ometimes, your average tape just won't do. Sometimes you need a tape with attitude. Maybe you have a craft that needs to be more colorful, or you want to add a little bit of a pattern to that DIY project. And yes, sometimes you just want a tape that's more, well, bacon-y. Whatever the occasion, we've got a tape to match. Our new Duck Tape prints come in a wide variety of fun colors and styles, perfect for any creative project or home repair."

"As the school year draws to a close, I am looking forward to the laidback freedom of summer with its less hectic schedule and longer daylight hours. If I'm being completely honest, there's something really incredible about turning off my alarm clock for the foreseeable future. For me, it's time to recharge, to reflect and to prepare to return to the classroom and library renewed with energy and ideas. As an educator, I'm also keenly aware of the potential for kids to suffer from the summer slide-a loss of academic progress over the course of the summer months. According to a study done by the Colorado Department of Education, children in low-income households fall behind an average of 2 months in reading during the summer. And, summer slide is cumulative, with these learning losses building up each summer. The basic solution? Stay engaged in learning: read, write, do some math."

"Five years ago, universities like MIT and Stanford first opened up free online courses to the public. Today, more than 700 schools around the world have created thousands of free online courses. Here are 250 Ivy League courses you can take online right now for free 250 MOOCs from Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale. medium.freecodecamp.com I've compiled this list of over 438 such free online courses that you can start this month. For this, I leveraged Class Central's database of over 7,000 courses. I've also included each course's average rating"

"There's an old saying that the things that change your life are the books you read, the places you go, and the people you meet. But I'd like to add a fourth: the challenges you face (and how you face them) will always change your life. If we want our students to respond to challenges with creativity and inventiveness, we must create the conditions in which innovation is not only possible but encouraged. You don't help students learn to invent by giving worksheets or cookie-cutter assignments. In fact, these one-size-fits-all approaches may actually take up the time that could be used for such creativity. Get the best of Edutopia in your inbox each week. According to the Torrance Test-which measures CQ, or creativity quotient-the United States has been declining in creativity since 1990. There has to be a reason. Perhaps it is because we focus on students' weaknesses instead of their strengths. In many schools, we'll put a math genius who struggles with grammar into extra English classes. Should we not give this math genius access to college-level advanced math work, and figure out the basic English requirements he or she needs for a basic understanding of grammar? Why do we think that all students should be good at everything? We can either be average at everything or exceptional at something. With this in mind, here are some things we need to do to encourage student inventors as we nurture student passions, interests, and strengths."

"Six years ago, universities like MIT and Stanford first opened up free online courses to the public. Today, more than 700 schools around the world have created thousands of free online courses. I've compiled this list of 430 such free online courses that you can start this month. For this, I leveraged Class Central's database of over 8,000 courses. I've also included each course's average rating."

"Games can be a great tool for teaching students about complex topics like digital citizenship, politics and even science. With about 47 percent of kids aged 4 to 13 playing digital games every day, game-based learning is poised to further engage children in the classroom. One classroom in Tampa, Fla., has discovered that digital games can help some children with mathematics. Gregory Smith, a fifth-grade teacher in Hillsborough County, tells Education Week that after incorporating math-strategy games - think word problems with corresponding interactive elements - his students' math-skills scores went from an average of 49 percent to 83 percent. The students themselves also reported more enjoyment from math."