OK, time for a bit of good old Aussie humour. Hamish and Andy, an Australian comedy duo (remember ‘ghosting‘- featured here before on School’s out Friday) are here to entertain you once again with ‘Stranger Racing.’ If you haven’t already chuckled through the 6 minutes above, then you need to know that Stranger Racing involves attaching a helium balloon to two strangers without them being aware of this, and then seeing who can make it across the road first. My kids and I were laughing our way through this segment last night. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
I promised last week that I’d post about the work we are doing at my school that has occupied so much of my time this year. I’m halfway through the post, and with any luck, will actually manage to complete it this weekend. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I just haven’t had a spare minute to get to it during this week. My energies went into supporting our Ning for our Yr 8 Inquiry Week, and it was worth every minute of the time invested. The sharing that took place in that space made the learning very transparent, and was due reward for the teachers who worked diligently to ensure the students were supported and encouraged.
I hope the sun is shining where you are this weekend. I don’t think the forecast here in Melbourne is looking that flash, but I’ll gladly grab some moments in the sun when and if they present themselves.
You can thank my YouTube surfing son for this week’s School’s out Friday video. It’s the Google+ Rap, and Funnyz certainly does a pretty good job selling it for Google. I do wonder though, if he’s also having a bit of a swing at it too with the inclusion of the interviews with people who have no idea what it is!
Google+ is certainly not on the tip of everyone’s tongue right now, but it does have the potential to be a very influential network. Right now, I scan it everyday, but I’m not posting much at all. Nor are many others in my circles I might add. I’m still finding that twitter is my network of choice. It’s high frequency sharing of information, and that’s where my life’s at right now. I’m pressed for time, and dipping in and out of a network is all I can afford during the working week. Google+ is more like longform journalism; the stream can be quite thoughtful, and the discussion requires more thinking. That’s obviously not a criticism, in fact, it’s a compliment. It’s the kind of thinking network I’d like to spend more time in, but the pace of life dictates otherwise right now.
The end of yet another busy week brings with it the promise of a quieter weekend. The sun looks like it will be shining in Melbourne this weekend, and this makes me a very happy woman.
I hope the sun shines on you this weekend, wherever it is you are in the world. Enjoy. : )
By now, you’d all be aware that I love a good flash mob. I love the shared commitment, the synchronised dancing, the sheer enjoyment of watching people loving life. But this week’s flash mob really takes the cake. This is the Sock Summit 2011 Flash Mob. Here we see hundreds of knitters coming together to dance for the love of yarn. I never knew people could have such a passionate relationship with a ball of wool. Obviously, I’ve been missing something all these long, lonely, yarn free years. Maybe I need to re-evaluate my life? These people look really happy. One YouTuber has left a comment with this video, saying,
That’s it, it’s official: I’m taking a skein of yarn to Prom this year and slow-dancing with it.
This could be the start of something!!
No other postings this week is testament to a full on week where I’m feeling overwhelmed with what needs to be done. I don’t know about you, but I seem to be chasing my tail all the time of late and just never seem to be able to find the time to dedicate to a good blog post or two. Hopefully, I’ll get another post happening before the weekend’s end, but if not, so be it. Maybe I’ll take up knitting instead, and find happiness and fulfillment with a ball of wool!
Hope your weekend’s memorable. Have the time of your life, with wool, or without!
I wish I was at Columbia University Library when this flash mob descended on a normally serenely quiet library environment. Great fun!! If you want to create your own Barbra Streisand moment, check out GOBARBRA.com, where you can customise your own version of the song. If I ever get to have the 40th birthday I wish I’d had, then I’ll be cranking out the Jenny Luca version over the sound system!
Hamish and Andy’s antics really appeal to my sense of humour. My kids love them too. Not so my husband. He can barely raise a smile while we chuckle away at what they get up to. Right now, they are having a Gap Year in New York City, and are recording an hourly show for a television network here in Australia. They were a bit flat last week I thought, but this week they returned to some good form. In this clip, Hamish is exhibiting his skills as a love doctor for Andy, with very little success I might add. See if you share my sense of humour and find this amusing. If you don’t, you belong in my husband’s camp!
I clipped this Youtube video using SnipSnip, an incredibly easy cropping site for YouTube vids. Give it a go if you want your students to see a particular part of an extended clip. All you need to do is paste the url into the site, and determine the start and end times of the clip. Type these times into the appropriate field and click ‘snip it’. You’re then given embed code and a link to share. Easy peasy.
I’m so pleased to see Friday today, especially considering I woke up yesterday morning and said to myself, “At least it’s Friday”. Rude awakening came my way upon realising it was in fact Thursday! It’s not good when you’re a day ahead of yourself during the working week. We’ve had some glorious weather here in Melbourne this week, and I hope some of it reappears over the weekend.
Hope your weekend fills you with joy. Make the most of it. : )
I’ve just returned home from a trivia night at my son’s school, where my table performed pretty well. I love a good trivia night- it’s the information junkie within me who enjoys the challenge of a random question or two thrown my way. On one round we missed out on full points by half a point because I couldn’t for the life of me remember the name of the band who sang ‘Jump‘, the video featured above. I managed to drag out of the recesses of my brain the lead singer’s name, David Lee Roth, but Van Halen eluded me. It frustrated me no end when Van Halen came to me just as they were about to announce the correct answer! It was loads of fun anyway, just the thing for someone like me who has hoarded tonnes of trivial information away in my brain cells, with their only real function being the perfect fodder for such a thing as a trivia night.
Hopefully this weekend will see me get a couple of posts up here. I’ve lost my blogging mojo of late, and really need to get it back. I’ve got plenty to say, but I’m finding the writing process stalling on me, and for the first time ever, I have half finished draft posts awaiting completion. I still feel like I’ve got plenty to say, but I just don’t seem to have the motivation to get fingers to keyboard. I’m going to try and push myself this weekend to get those draft posts published.
Wish me luck! Enjoy whatever comes your way this weekend. Hope it involves sunshine and a good cuppa (or maybe a glass of the good stuff). : )
I’ve returned from a really wonderful holiday in Port Douglas with my family. We had the opportunity to visit the Great Barrier Reef where we snorkeled amongst the coral and fascinating sea life. I didn’t encounter any creatures quite like those featured in the video above, but I did see a truly marvellous array of colourful sea life, all basking in their own private world and probably none too thrilled about the intrusion of human forms into that idyllic space.
At this time of year, humpback whales are migrating along the coast of Far North Queensland, and we were hoping we would have the opportunity to see one. On the boat ride out to the reef, I thought I saw a large shape in the water further out, and they stopped the boat trying to spot it. Rather embarrassingly, there was nothing there. On the way back I thought I saw another shape in the water, and once again, other passengers were fixated on the spot, until we were informed by the crew that it was a reef with waves washing over it. Yet another embarrassing moment! After this, I gave up on the whale spotting, figuring there would be no encounters for us.
Literally no more than 10 minutes later, the boat pulled up and we were in the midst of a pod of humpbacks who were rising out of the water and giving us all an opportunity to marvel at their size, especially their magnificent tails as they arced down into the depths. At one stage, we were privy to 8 or so dolphins rising in unison through the waves, and then a humpback rose alongside them right next to our boat. My son was lucky enough to capture a really clear sight of the barnacles and scratches on its skin. It was a display of nature at its finest, and it was truly humbling to be there to witness it. There was this feeling of camaraderie amongst those of us viewing these whales; I think there was a collective feeling of exuberance, but also a sense that we were privileged to be in the company of such creatures. It certainly made an already wonderful day even more memorable!
Alas, all good things must come to an end, and it’s the end of my school holiday break. I can’t complain, because I am fortunate to teach in a school that gives us a three week break at this time of the year. I feel refreshed and invigorated, ready to meet the demands of term three.
I hope you’re ready to meet the demands of your weekend, and truly hope that it brings mirth and merriment for you. Enjoy!
I’m in Port Douglas, having a much needed break with my family, so this will be a short and sweet School’s out Friday post. I’m sure you’ll be amazed to hear that I have been offline for much of the last three days, and I’ve loved every minute of it. Life does continue unplugged, and I’m enjoying the less frenetic pace of life where my biggest decision surrounds where we will eat dinner.
I have to thank my parents, in-laws, and great friend Helen, who are looking after our much loved animals and ensuring we cam travel knowing they are being cared for. My son has quizzed me every day wanting me to ring to see how they are faring. When you love your animals, travel can be stressful if you think they are not being properly cared for. I know ours are, and am so grateful to the people who help us have that peace of mind.
I’m not sure if this video will embed because I’m relying on my iPad to get this post written, so please forgive me if it doesn’t. I’m sure you’ll forgive Noni Hazelhurst too, as she reads Adam Mansbach’s “Go the #%$# to sleep’. If you’re a parent, I think you’ll relate. I’m grateful my kids are past this point!
I’ll be enjoying the rest of my stay in Port Douglas, and I’ll be offline for most of it. I hope the weekend ahead is a good one for you.
George Couras sent our a tweet this week to this Google Chrome video. It’s the embodiment of what the Web allows; the crowdsourcing of material inspired by someone who has the ability to inspire and motivate people to create content. In this case it’s Lady Gaga, someone who understands that you don’t need record companies to spend millions of dollars promoting your material now. If you’re smart, you engage your audience, you talk to them through channels of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, and you make them feel like they matter to you. Your fans feel like they have a personal connection to you, and they promote your product and make you a superstar in the process. Lady Gaga gets this. So does Justin Beiber, and Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas. If you’re an aspiring musician, you better start understanding how social media works, because if you’re going to make it big, you need to find and talk to your audience, and get them to do the promotion that record companies did in the past.
How clever of Google to link with Lady Gaga to promote their products. They are a company working very hard right now to crowdsource users to promote Google+, their new social network going up against the monolith that is Facebook. I wrote a post earlier this week talking of how I don’t think I can manage another social network. It took all of two days for me to succumb to the lure of Google+.
Pathetic, isn’t it.
I still don’t think there is room in my life for another social network, but I have to say there are some things about Google+ that I do like. The circles feature, where you group people into categories, is something I like. You can post content in your stream to specific circles and I like the perceived element of control that appears to come with that. I tried out Google Hangouts with a group including Joyce Valenza, Judy O’Connell, Cathy Jo Nelson, Linda Nitsche, Rob Darrow and Chris Betcher the other morning(see screenshot below). It worked really seamlessly. We could all see and hear one another – there was very little lag and you could conduct a conversation just like you were hanging out with this group in any social setting. No-one had to pick up the microphone like you do in Elluminate; it was a much more natural experience. There are so many possibilities here for education. If you can create circles for specific groups of students, you eliminate the problems that come with sharing content across all of your social groupings. Can you imagine end of year revision before VCE exams taking place in a Google hangout? I can. At the moment, there is no ability to upload a presentation or share a screen, and it’s limited to 10 people. If they work on it though, this presents a real challenge to a company like Blackboard that recently acquired Elluminate.
Thank goodness Google released Google+ while we are on school holidays here in Australia. It’s given me a bit of room to play. Next Wednesday, I leave for Port Douglas with my family on a much needed holiday. While I have no doubt I will check into my networks, I intend to do the right thing by my husband and kids and focus on them. There may not even be a School’s out Friday posting next week!
(And just for a bit of sheer indulgence, take a look at Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera singing ‘Moves like Jagger’, my favourite song right now.)
Have a great weekend. I’ll try not to play too much with Google+!
Improveverywhere’slatest mission took place on June 27th and was located in Bryant Park, New York City. It looks like a lovely day there. My experience of Bryant Park was in the dead of winter, just as they were disassembling a portable ice rink! It was freezing cold; nothing like the delights of summer on show in their latest video.
It certainly is a genuine School’s out Friday this week. Victorian school holidays have just begun, and I am fortunate enough to be looking in the eye of three weeks of holiday bliss ahead of me. One of those weeks will see my family venture to Port Douglas, a lovely holiday location in the state of Queensland, closer to the equator and warm at this time of year. Cannot wait to soak in some sunshine and feel warmth in my bones!
So, the weekend ahead will be relished, deep in the knowledge that I can sleep in Monday morning too!
Lucacept - intercepting the Web 