Tag: School’s out Friday

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School’s out Friday

Have you had your fill of serious sport after a couple of weeks of the Olympic Games? Looking for a participation sport that can involve anyone without the prerequisite of being an ultra fit athlete? Then look no further than the latest MP3 experiment from the Improv Everywhere crew. Here, 4000 participants converged on Governer’s island in New York City to follow out instructions fed to them via a dowmloaded MP3 file they were listening to through earbuds. It looks like a tonne of fun. Look out for the Hextacopter drone that is used to take the aerial views – very interesting.

The sheer bliss of a weekend awaits. Not much on my agenda, other than the requisite work required for school and the never ending cycle of housework. If the weather cooperates, I just might venture down to the local beach where I’ll store some energy for the week ahead from the sea.

Enjoy whatever comes your way. I hope the next couple of days are kind to you. 🙂

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School’s out Friday

I saw this video last night at the evening session of the Teacher Dialogue Conference being held at Southern Cross University in Coffs Harbour. It’s reflective of the kind of environment I’ve been immersed in over the last two days, where academics and teachers have been engaged in discourse over what’s important in both pre-service teacher education and the way we teach students in schools today. This morning I delivered a Keynote presentation about what it means to be a Networked Teacher. I’ll make a valiant attempt to write a more detailed reflection of my thoughts about the experience over the weekend.

Right now, it’s time for sleep. I’ll be enjoying the sunny weather here in Coffs Harbour in the morning, then will head back to Melbourne in the afternoon. I’m hoping for mild weather back home – been a bit spoilt here in that regard these last few days!

Enjoy the weekend ahead. I hope it’s kind to you. 🙂

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School’s out Friday

Take a few minutes to watch the Improv Everywhere team make a game of mini golf into world championship stuff. Very endearing.

I really hate it when I see the only posts here over the last few weeks being School’s out Friday posts. My reality has been that the last 5 weeks have been quite manic. Finding time to post here about what I’ve been involved in has been too difficult because I’m planning the next thing as soon as I’ve finished the last!

Today I presented at the SLAV Conference at the MCG here in Melbourne. It was a great day and I really felt like a lot of people in the room were open to ideas I was presenting. I could be wrong about that; it can be quite difficult to gauge when you’re the presenter. I’ll try and do the day justice by writing about it, and numerous other events, over this weekend.

It’s early to bed for me now so that I can awaken at 5.30am to see the Opening Ceremony of the London Olympic Games. I love a good opening ceremony so I’m hoping it lives up to the hype. Even if it doesn’t, I like to pay due respect to major events like that by setting my alarm clock to meet the action in the time zone of whatever country is the host. My Olympic Games Opening Ceremony memories extend back to Moscow in 1980, when it seemed that the Russians had used their enormous population to great effect to impress us all with crowd participation. Here’s a trip down memory lane for you.

Have a great weekend. Looks like a rainy one for Melbourne. Hope the forecast is looking better wherever it is you may be. 🙂

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School’s out Friday

Last night, I presented my talk at TEDxMelbourne Education Leadership. I’m not going into detail about that here, other than to say that it was very well received and I’m very humbled by the kind words that have come my way over the last 24 hours.  A post over the weekend will be coming. Right now, I’m totally exhausted and will be heading to bed as soon as I press publish here.

In the meantime, you can utilise 19 minutes or so watching the incredibly gifted Neil Gaiman deliver a speech that will stay with you long after you’ve watched it. I used this in my Yr 10 English class earlier this year and my students took so much away from it that they can apply to their own learning. They thought it was well worth the time invested watching it. Lucky Neil, he had a lecturn and notes to refer to!

Enjoy your weekend. I hope the sun will be shining where you are. Sleep beckons!

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School’s out Friday

This the the 2012 version of ‘Where the hell is Matt?‘. This time, he has varied the dance moves and tried to be in keeping with more traditional dances from the countries he visits. David Pogue interviewed Matt this week; if you’re interested in the background details about the creation of the video, take a read. Matt’s also released the outtakes video, and I think I prefer it- there’s something really touching about people from all differing nationalities joined together in the spirit of doing something fun.

It feels a bit to me like ‘Where the hell is Jenny’ at the moment. I’ve been on the move for the last few weeks with conferences and a family holiday. I’m very happy to report that tonight I landed back in my home town of Melbourne and am very happy to be writing this post from the warmth of my bed! Travelling is exciting, but the old adage, ‘There’s no place like home’, starts to ring true when you’ve been away for awhile.

There’s no rest for the wicked though (cliches flying thick and fast tonight!). Next Thursday night is TEDxMelbourne: Education Leadership, and I’m one of three speakers presenting there. For the next six days, that’s my focus. I’ll be fine tuning my talk and hoping I can deliver it with passion. I’m very honoured to have been asked to speak and want to do the event justice. I’ll certainly be sharing my thoughts on the process here, so keep an eye out for a post or two over the next week.

Enjoy the weekend everyone. Let’s hope the sun shines for us. 🙂

 

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School’s out Friday

You could be mistaken for thinking that I’d fallen off the planet given my lack of posts of late. I’m still here, but have just been incredibly busy. In the last two weeks I’ve attended and presented at the ISTE conference in San Diego, returned home for three days, and then headed to Cairns where I was a Keynote presenter at the SLAQ conference. Right now, I’m on the Gold Coast holidaying with my family. It’s been a tad full on to say the least. Next up is the TedxMelbourne: Education Leadership talk on July 19th. That’s occupying much of my thinking space right now, so apologies for the neglect here.

I do intend to write follow up posts reflecting on the two conferences I’ve just attended. Hopefully there’ll be some reflective time over the next few days to allow me to get to this space to share my thoughts.

In the meantime, I’m feeling a bit like a Sea World tragic. While in San Diego, I ventured out to Sea World with Ashleigh, a teacher from Sydney. If you are of my vintage, you probably grew up on a diet of American television, where plenty of sit-com families ventured to the Mecca that was Sea World to see Shamu the Killer Whale. I’ve always wanted to see the Killer Whales there, and I was pretty happy when Ashleigh said she’d join me. I told her I’d always wanted to see the Orcas and Shamu and she seemed just as keen. When we got there, we headed straight for the area housing Shamu (they call the show ‘Shamu’ even though the whales have different names). You could go to the underwater viewing area and the whale was a sight to behold. Incredibly huge. A real OMG moment. Even more so for Ashleigh, who until the moment when she laid eyes on it, had apparently no idea what she was going there to see! I’d been babbling on about Shamu and Orcas, and she told me she had no idea what a ‘Shamu’ was!

We got ourselves seats in the ‘soak zone’ for the show featuring the Orcas, wondering just how wet we could possibly get. Well, let me tell you, they don’t call it the soak zone for nothing. The whales back up to the crowd, splash their tails in the water, and you get the full force of hundreds of liters of water coming at you with all the pressure of a fire hose. We were soaked through and through. I was filming with a flip camera right through this; needless to say, I haven’t seen the footage because the flip camera has packed up as a result! It was a pretty spectacular show, but you do come away thinking that it’s unnecessarily cruel to keep such magnificent creatures confined in such small spaces. Little wonder there’s been some terrible incidents over the years involving Orcas and trainers, with the most recent in 2010 leading to the death of a trainer. The trainers no longer go into the water with the Orcas during the shows. I’m using the BlogPress app to write this post and can’t embed a video it seems, but you can see what the show was like by following this link.

My Sea World tragic tale continues, because right now my family and I are staying at the Sea World resort in Queensland on our family holiday. While a theme park holiday is not exactly my idea of fun, my kids and husband are pretty happy with it, and I’m pleased to be spending time with them. Wish me luck, as I mind the bags while they live it up on rides that give me that nauseous feeling that I consider abhorrent. I’ll check the twitter stream while I wait. That’ll keep me happy!

It’s not exactly the warmest weather up here on the Gold Coast, but it beats what’s being served up in Melbourne at the moment. I hope you find a sunny spot over the weekend sometime and enjoy it with a beverage of your choosing. Have a good one. 🙂

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School’s out Friday

Rear Window Timelapse from Jeff Desom on Vimeo.

If you’re a fan of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, you’ll enjoy this timelapse of what Jimmy Stewart was viewing from his wheelchair bound existence in the film. It’s the film condensed into 2 minutes 58 seconds – a cracking pace!

A cracking pace is what I need to employ to get through a power of work this weekend. I’ve got presentations to polish and report comments to write. Not exactly riveting fun, but necessary work. This time next week I’ll be preparing to leave for San Diego and the ISTE Conference. So much to do before then, best I get to it.

Have a great weekend- find something fun to so and I’ll live vicariously through you!

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School’s out Friday

This was the brief advertising firm D1gits was given;

The iPad act was a custom creation, made to be performed in the Stockholm booth at MIPIM trade show in Cannes. It was commissioned by lovely bureau Step2 Communications and the brief was to create a visual, magical and striking presentation about Stockholm using modern technology.

I think they filled the brief pretty well, don’t you?

A long weekend ahead in celebration of the Queen’s birthday. A monarchist I am not, but I’m happy to take the holiday break right now. I’ve got plenty of work to do, so this weekend will be heads down with fingers taped to the keyboard I’m afraid. I’ll try and squeeze some time with family and friends in, provided I keep myself on track and knock over as much as I can for two presentations and some school report writing . I know, you’re brimming over with envy right now, aren’t you? Who could resist such a tempting weekend’s activity? Me, for one, but I’ve got to commit or I’ll be mightily stressed this time next week!

I hope your weekend sounds more promising than mine. Enjoy whatever comes your way.  🙂

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School’s out Friday

Judging by some of the comments on YouTube, there are some interesting images in this 1 minute film that AlmapBBDO created to advertise Getty Images.Here’s a description from the YouTube site:

The film is surprising when showing 873 images in 15 images per second, sufficient speed to transform the series into a video that, without any text, tells a beautiful story. All photos, without any exceptions, are from the Getty Images archives.

I’ve tried to hone in on the possibly ‘controversial’ images, but have neither the time nor patience to try to halt the video at the right spot. If you’ve got more patience than I do, you might be enlightened.

It’s freezing cold here in Melbourne right now, and the weekend ahead isn’t looking real flash either. Time to switch that electric blanket onto high and hunker down. Hope it’s warmer where you are!

Enjoy your weekend. 🙂

 

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School’s out Friday

Ever feel like you’re existing in situations like this? This video’s been around for awhile, but I saw it for the first time this week when a colleague shared it with me after seeing it at a PD session. Made me laugh, anyway.

I’m still at school, at 11.20pm. It’s our fourth Sleepout for Schools event, where our Yr 9 students come together to raise money for Daraja Academy in Kenya. Take a look at their blog, where they’ve dedicated a post to our efforts this week. I’ll write more extensively about this over the weekend, because these great kids deserve to be recognised for their commitment to others. Right now, they are attempting to settle down for the night, and we are getting ready to settle into our sleeping bags for what is not the most comfortable sleep we’ll ever have!

I hope your night’s sleep will be a little more relaxed and comfortable than mine. Have a great weekend. : )