Month: October 2014

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School’s out Friday

OK Go – you remember them. The guys who made that video on the treadmills. You know, the one where you were expecting one of them to fall flat on their face, but remarkably they stayed upright and performed some amazing moves that had us all transfixed.

Well, here they are again, in another feat of visual mastery. According to this Billboard post, the video was filmed in a single take using drones with mounted cameras but it took 50 to 60 run throughs to get it right. Another interesting fact – it was paid for by Honda who supplied the seated Segways the band members are sitting on. Now wouldn’t you love one of those to scoot around in?

Clever, huh? Create a video that has viral appeal, thus reducing your marketing costs, and then get Honda to pay for it. Use that as an example in your next Business Studies class and forget the textbook that probably is laden with examples that hold little relevance in today’s digitally driven world.

And if you’ve never seen their original 2009 video, well here it is. Enjoy it, and the weekend ahead. I’m sure you deserve a break.  🙂

 

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Green lighting – do we give kids permission?

Last Friday, after watching Kevin Allocca’s video about why some videos go viral, I had a discussion with my class that went something like this.

If there is one thing you take from this class this year, it is this. Don’t wait for someone to green light something that you want to do. If you’re passionate about something, if you have an idea, if you want to pursue an interest, don’t wait for permission. We live in a world where you can start something if you have the wherewithal and desire to follow it through. Your parents might not like me saying this, but I’m not convinced that the only path to success is waiting for the credentials you get from a University education. I’m pretty sure that employers are going to be looking for people who have demonstrated that they think outside the square and know how to go about making things happen. You don’t need a green light – you can start now.

In fact, thinking on it, it was a bit of a short lecture rather than a discussion. It was the end of the lesson and they were wanting to head out to recess…  but, they did listen intently, and maybe they did take it in.

I hope so, because I think it’s advice worth taking.

(And below is Kevin’s video, where he talks about green lighting at the end of his TED talk.)

 

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TER Podcast – my interview from Edutech 2014

After my Edutech presentation in Brisbane in June I was interviewed by Corinne Campbell for the Teachers’ Education Review (TER) Podcast. It was posted on their site last week and I spent some time listening to me sound quite knowledgeable about topics related to digital citizenship, the importance of our students understanding what curation means in today’s world and the approaches we are taking at my school with our LMS (Learning Management System) and Google Apps.

Part of the interview was spent discussing the importance of schools committing funds to infrastructure to support whole school technology initiatives. Corrine remarked in the commentary after my interview that she’d never really heard people discussing this in depth. This is a conversation that needs to be had at every school looking to make large scale change with technology initiatives to support learning. Without a robust network supporting the introduction of web based LMS’ and cloud based technologies like Google Apps you have no hope of seeing adoption become widespread. Teachers need reliable infrastructure to ensure everything ‘just works’, and school administrations need to provide funding and staff to make this happen.

Thanks to Corinne and Cameron for posting the podcast on the TER site. To hear my interview, go to 40min 19sec in when it begins. The entire podcast is worth a listen, with timecodes listed below.

Timecodes:

00:00 – Opening

01:19 – Intro

10:13 – Off Campus with Dan Haesler

19:12 – Education in the News

37:09 – AITSL’s Teacher Feature

40:19 – Main Feature, Interview with Jenny Luca & discussion about technology in education

01:09:43 – Mystery Educator Competition

01:10:54 – Announcements

01:12:27 – Quote and Signoff