OK, if you’re an American, you probably have seen it already as it was one of those ads played in prime viewing time during your Superbowl. Somehow, it missed my radar until last night when my son showed it to me and suggested it should go on my blog. I’ve been laughing ever since. Maybe I just have one of those quirky sense of humours. That, and the fact that I have a soft spot for anything that evokes my memories of that epic experience of seeing Star Wars when I was thirteen. I’ve said it here before, but that image of the Star Cruiser panning across the screen surpassed any cinematic experience I’d had up to that point in my life. It made Jaws look amatuerish. And that was saying something in 1977.
And for those of you with a sense of black humour, take a look at this parody that inserts a Toyota in place of a Volkswagon.
It’s school holidays here in Victoria, and I’ve just spent an idyllic day at the Melbourne Zoo with my children and my Mother. Days like that make me wish I was always on holidays. I hope you have had a wonderful week, and that there is something special awaiting you this weekend
Thanks go to Frances Manning, who pointed me in the direction of this amazing virtual choir, featuring 2052 performances of ‘Sleep’ from 1752 singers in 58 countries, individually recorded and uploaded to YouTube between September 2010 and January 2011. Here’s an explanation of how it all began from the Virtual Choir site;
The Virtual Choir began in May 2009 as a simple experiment in social media, when Britlin Losee – a fan of Eric’s music – recorded a video of herself singing “Sleep” and shared it on YouTube.
After watching the video, Eric responded by sending a call out to his online fans to purchase Polyphony’s recording of “Sleep”, record themselves singing along to it, and upload the result…
…Ever ambitious, for this latest Virtual Choir project Eric called for 900 singers to record themselves singing “Sleep”. At the final tally he received 2052 contributions from singers in 58 countries.
Upon previewing the video at TED 2011, Eric (and the choir) received two standing ovations – testimony to the power of the internet to connect people of all backgrounds and abilities and create something beautiful across time and space.
People are interested in coming together to create something special. If only we could harness this kind of energy in fields like medicine or science, where people could come together to share thinking and make concerted efforts to address issues affecting mankind. Collective action always seems to me to be such an altruistic act, benefiting all, but many people can’t get past the ‘what’s in it for me’ approach.
Been a big week. The CCAEducause conference took it out of me, and I’m glad to see the start of school holidays this afternoon. Time to recharge the batteries. I’m even thinking of starting a mosiac project tomorrow. I just need to clear my headspace and do something that will enable me to see something creative emerge.
Enjoy your weekend. Seek sunshine and soak it up. : )
Did you notice the date? If you didn’t, and you happened to stumble over the above video contained on this page, then I think you might be attempting to compose your mail in a very kinesthetic way by now. You might also be wondering how they managed to collate a top 5 list of viral YouTube pictures from 2011.
Google have been up to their April Fool’s day tricks again, something they are noted for. Here’s my favourite from this year’s batch;
Are you passionate about helping people? Are you intuitive? Do you often feel like you know what your friends and family are thinking and can finish their thoughts before they can? Are you an incredibly fast Google searcher? Like, so fast that you can do 20 searches before your mom does 1?
Every day people start typing more than a billion searches on Google and expect Google to predict what they are looking for. In order to do this at scale, we need your help.
Google’s quality team is looking for talented, motivated, opinionated technologists to help us predict what users are looking for. If you’re eager to improve the search experience for millions of people and have a proven track record of excellence, this is a project for you!
As a Google Autocompleter, you’ll be expected to successfully guess a user’s intention as he or she starts typing instantly. In a fraction of a second, you’ll need to type in your prediction that will be added to the list of suggestions given by Google. Don’t worry, after a few million predictions you’ll grow the required reflexes.
Responsibilities:
Watch anonymized search queries as they come in to Google.
Predict and type completions based on your personal experience and intuition.
Suggest spelling corrections when relevant.
Keep updated with query trends and offer fresh suggestions.
Requirements:
Excellent knowledge of English and at least one other language.
Excellent knowledge of grammatical rules (e.g. parts of speech, parsing).
Understanding of the search engine space.
Proven web search experience.
Good typing skills (at least 32,000 WPM).
Willingness to travel (in order to provide local autocompletions) or relocate to obscure places like Nauru and Tuvalu to develop knowledge of local news and trends.
If you want to see evidence of what they’ve done in past years, check out this About.com page where they’ve collected some of their efforts in years gone by.
I’m heading to Sydney over the weekend for the CCA-Educause Conference. Its focus is Higher Education, and I’m going to see what the thinking is so that I can gauge how we best prepare our students for the environments they will experience in their post secondary school life. There is a library strand for the conference, and I’ll be listening intently to discussions surrounding the future of libraries and the integration of ebooks and new devices.
I hope your weekend treats you well. Have fun. : )
The improveverywhere crew are at it again, this time in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This time, Agent Elliot, who bears a striking resemblance to King Philip the IV of Spain (from the 17th Century), spent time dressed as the King standing in front of his portrait. The scenario this time was that Agent Eliot was the actual King, and was there to sign autographs. It never ceases to amaze me how many people out there take what’s being presented to them as the gospel truth, or maybe they were all just going along for the ride.
As is often the case, the story behind the story is the most interesting one. In this case, Charlie Todd tells on their site how he asked their user base for any ‘special skills’ people had that they could build a mission around. This was the response he got from Agent Elliot;
“The mission I would like to propose is to cause a scene in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the museum there is a painting of King Philip the IV of Spain and I look identical to him.”
He does too!
I spent today at the SLAV conference here in Melbourne and might try and write about it ove the weekend. Right now, I’m looking forward to laying my head on my pillow and drifting off to a sound night’s sleep.
Have a good weekend everyone. I hope good times find you. : )
My family and I were roaming YouTube on our television last night, when we stumbled on this video from Key of Awesome. (You have to watch an ad at the start – a way to monetise what they do I figure) They’re a group who create a weekly musical comedy show on YouTube spoofing celebrities, pop-culture and the latest internet memes. We all really like Bruno Mars, and found this one particularly funny. Compare it to the original video and it gets even funnier. (IMO anyway!)
Something else we stumbled onto while on the Bruno Mars trail, was footage of him as a four year old impersonating Elvis Presley in the movie, “Honeymoon in Vegas”.
I feel a little guilty highlighting mirth and merriment, while we see Japan and its people struggling with the devastation of the Tsunami and the nuclear crisis unfolding at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Brian Farrell, a Teacher-Librarian who works in Japan has written a post eloquently describing the reaction of the Japanese people to their situation. I encourage you to visit his post. Here’s an excerpt;
Amidst this chaos, the Japanese people have shown me just how incredibly disciplined, calm, and selfless they are. There is no panic in the air, just a saddened calmness and resolve as people try to go about their lives. There have been shortages of food, but there’s been no pushing or shouting in the shops as people try to buy what little they can. After the earthquake, people walked for hours on end to get home, but would never have considered stealing a bicycle (many of which can always be found sitting unlocked) to shorten their journey. There have been lineups at gas stations (those that have managed to stay open) with several hundred cars in them, all waiting to get even a few litres of fuel, but no one is honking their horn, no one is demanding that they somehow be treated differently from everyone else.
My thoughts continue to be with the people of Japan. Let’s hope the nuclear situation doesn’t get any worse.
I hope the weekend treats you well. I’m off to see Chris Isaak tomorrow, with Joe Camilleri and The Black Sorrows as the support act. Should be a good night! : )
It seems entirely inappropriate to me to post a funny video tonight. Not when we are watching devastation unfold in Japan and other countries anticipating the effects of Tsunami waves crossing the Pacific ocean.
I’ve spent this evening watching scenes I could only have imagined might have been possible. The incredible push of tonnes of sea water crossing the coastline of Japan demonstrates to us all the vulnerability of mankind when nature unleashes its force. It was like watching a scene from a Hollywood studio, only the houses, ships and cars being lifted and propelled forward were life sized, not balsa wood models. You know there are people in those houses, ships and cars, and you know that we will hear of massive loss of life in the coming days.
If you’ve been under a rock these last few hours or so, visit the ABC Australia news site, where they used Storify to collate links, pictures and video to relay what has been happening.
Once again, as has been the case so many times these last few weeks, Twitter has been an incredible news source. I knew of the Earthquake and impending Tsunami before news media on commercial stations had made mention of it. I will be watching the Twitter stream closely over the weekend for updates and links to information our commercial stations never seem to find.
My thoughts tonight are with those in affected countries.
The TED Conference is being held right now in Long Beach California. This year’s TED Prize winner is JR, an artist from France, whose incredible artwork has been seen in the slums of Kenya, in Brazil, in India and even in Israel and Palestine. Here’s what they say about JR on the TED site;
Working anonymously, pasting his giant images on buildings, trains, bridges, the often-guerrilla artist JR forces us to see each other. Traveling to distant, often dangerous places — the slums of Kenya, the favelas of Brazil — he infiltrates communities, befriending inhabitants and recruiting them as models and collaborators. He gets in his subjects’ faces with a 28mm wide-angle lens, resulting in portraits that are unguarded, funny, soulful, real, that capture the sprits of individuals who normally go unseen. The blown-up images pasted on urban surfaces – the sides of buildings, bridges, trains, buses, on rooftops — confront and engage audiences where they least expect it. Images of Parisian thugs are pasted up in bourgeois neighborhoods; photos of Israelis and Palestinians are posted together on both sides of the walls that separate them.
JR has been awarded the prestigious TED Prize. His wish? To use art to turn the world inside out.
His work has such appeal he just might be able to inspire people to run with this idea. Imagine if our schools connected, and we worked cooperatively to make an impact on issues our world faces using art as our impetus.He has started Inside Out: a global art project. I think it will be amazing.
“INSIDE OUT is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Everyone is challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world. These digitally uploaded images will be made into posters and sent back to the project’s co-creators for them to exhibit in their own communities. People can participate as an individual or in a group; posters can be placed anywhere, from a solitary image in an office window to a wall of portraits on an abandoned building or a full stadium. These exhibitions will be documented, archived and viewable virtually.”
There’s something in that, and considering the art faculty of our school were thinking of including the work of JR in the curriculum, maybe this is something we need to discuss next week!
Enjoy your weekend. Spend some time on the TED site and get inspired. : )
I’m off to a wedding tomorrow, and I’d love it if it went something like Brian and Eileen’s Wedding Music Video. What a great way to remember such a special day. Better reliving the day watching something like this rather than a two hour extravaganza of the whole box and dice.
Before the wedding though, I’m off to work to await delivery of a custom built piece of furniture that will (hopefully) be the signature piece of our new library. I hope it looks as good as I’m expecting it to, because I’ve built it up to such an extent amongst staff and students that it’s going to be a massive letdown if it doesn’t live up to expectations!! According to the furniture supplier, it’s pretty specky, so look for a post on Monday with pictures so you can make up your own mind.
Enjoy your weekend. Hope there’s something special in it for you. : )
Aaahhh…. another joyous flash mob moment to lighten our hearts and remind us all that good exists in our world. This time, two schools joined together for a flash mob performance to deliver the message of acceptance in honour of International Anti-Bullying day. Very nicely done.
It’s the end of another busy week, one that saw our Year 7 students working on a wiki and embedding their Google My Map creations into it. They get it. They just need to be shown once, and off they go, ready to figure it out and make it work. It’s so confirming for me. Seeing them embrace the task (connected to their geography curriculum) and enjoying the work involved helps everyone to understand the need to adopt new technology and make it part of our school curriculum. When I canvassed the classes about how they and their family find their way to places it was overwhelmingly Google Maps and Navman GPS locators. No-one mentioned a paper street directory such as a Melways (a very Melbourne book of street maps). They really loved understanding Google My Maps and learning how to emded HTML code to enable pictures and video to appear. The following video from Google was really helpful, and even showed me a thiing or two I was unaware of.
This weekend I intend to spend a bit of time following the 21st Century Learning Conference from Hong Kong. The hashtag on Twitter, #21CLHK will help update me as to what’s happening. It’s not as good as being there, but it’s probably the next best thing. Already I’m gearing up to watch Stephen Heppell’s keynote, that has been loaded onto the conference site already. I can share it with you!
Have a great weekend. Get some sleep. It’s what I’m aiming for!
Apologies for this one! I’m not a huge Twilight fan, but I have been watching it on television for the last hour and a half or so, and was struggling to find a video for this week’s School’s out Friday. Hence, the literal version of the Eclipse trailer. I promise I’ll try harder next week. : )
I’m a tad disappointed right now (alright, more than a tad I’ll admit!), having found out today that I wasn’t accepted into the Google Teacher Academy being held in Sydney in April. I thought I had a lot to offer, but Google obviously thinks otherwise! Henrietta Miller didn’t get in either, and has written a great post tonight about disappointment and it’s offshoot, resilience. I’ve got plenty of that in store, so I’ll move on and do what I do do best; share my knowledge with all of you through this blog. : )
Lucacept - intercepting the Web 