We all know that walking is good for us. It helps us maintain a healthy weight by reducing excess body fat, strengthens bones and muscles, prevents or helps manage conditions such as heart disease and high blood pressure, and improves mood.

According to Prevention.com, regular walking also helps people to be more creative. A 2014 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, Learning, Memory, and Cognition found that walking can help generate ideas. Subjects who were walking around proposed more solutions to creative thinking tests than people who were sitting.

So it’s clear, we should all try to fit more walking into our days!

Today just happens to be Walk to Work Day. For most of us at Velsoft (except you, Ben!) it’s not really feasible to walk to work either because before or after work we have to pick up or drop off kids at daycare, band, or badminton practice, or because of the distance. It would take Dave about four hours to walk from the Shiretown, and it would take Dylan, Brandon, and Jan approximately 12 hours and 28 minutes to walk here from the other side of the mountain.

So, in keeping with the spirit of the day, if you can’t walk to work, here are some ways to incorporate walking into your workday, from verywellfit.com:

  • Park in the far back of the parking lot and walk farther to the door.
  • Circle the room when waiting for meetings to start.
  • Use the restroom, printer, water cooler, etc. that is farther from your work area.
  • When making a phone call, stand up and pace around as you talk.
  • Rather than phone, text, or email, walk to a co-worker’s desk and talk to them in person.
  • When people stop to talk with you, make it a moving meeting and walk around together while chatting.
  • Take a short walk during your lunch break.

What’s in the Pipeline

  • Sydney is working on custom projects.
  • Dylan is working on custom projects.
  • Ben is working on custom projects.
  • Jan is working on CA course components and eLearning QA.
  • Carol is on vacation.

Tech Topics

  • Added a setting for toggling the notes feature on and off.
  • Fixed an error that occurs when viewing a student answers report and one of the questions in the course uses a dropdown field.

Course Count

Courses released this month:

Story Marketing for Small Businesses

Microsoft Office 365: 2018 New Features

Here is the official count of courses for both courseware and eLearning:

Computer SoftSkills Total Courses
Courseware 291 180 471
eLearning 947 178 1125

 

Fun facts about walking:

  • The idea of taking 10,000 steps each day first appeared in the 1960s when a Japanese company started selling pedometers called manpo-kei, which literally translates to “10,000-step meter.”
  • An average person has a stride length of between 2.1 and 2.5 feet, therefore it takes about 2,100 steps to walk one mile, and 10,000 steps would be almost five miles.
  • 10 minutes of walking = 1,200 steps on average
  • On average a person burns 100 calories for every 2,000 steps.
  • Sedentary people generally take 2,000 to 3,000 steps each day.
  • People began walking on two limbs three to six million years ago. Scientists believe that we evolved this way because humans wanted to carry goods and use energy more efficiently.
  • Most babies start walking around the age of 13 months. However, some may begin earlier, at the age of nine or 10 months.
  • Chickens, pigeons, cranes, and quails shake their heads while walking. Researchers say this sharpens their vision, provides depth perception, and helps them to find balance.

Source: http://www.ba-bamail.com/content.aspx?emailid=30817