This is ‘Lost Generation’, and it was second place getter in the ARRP U@50 competition. According to its creator, it is based on the Argentinian Political Advertisement“The Truth” by RECREAR.
My friend Nina discovered it a couple of weeks ago and uploaded it to Working together 2 make a difference. (Which, by the way, is starting to take off. I am really excited by the activity and service learning projects that are forming there. Please take a look and get involved if you think it might be good for your students.)
This week my husband dicovered it and suggested it for School’s out Friday. It’s very clever, and excellent for class discussion I think. I’ve uploaded it to our Yr 9 ning and am hoping to use it in class next week. Those of you who teach young people will know, like I do, that they majority of them reflect the representation depicted in the second stage of the video.
While you’re at it, check out Nina’s blog. She’s two months in, has received a swag of hits and is making connections for her prep students. All really good stuff.
I did enjoy Forrest Gump when it came out, but never realised the plot was so thin until I saw this. ‘Forrest Gump in one minute, in one take’, made by students from the University of York filmmaking society.
You know, sometimes you plan to get things done and then life just gets in the way.
It did last night as I was thinking about posting School’s out Friday. My Mum had an ‘episode’ and after calling an ambulance and spending the night at the hospital we found out she’d had a mild stroke. She’s OK, and needs to have some follow up tests, but she has no permanent damage.
Moments like those are wake up calls; I have been so busy and haven’t given Mum the time she needs of late. Facing the mortality of your parents is confronting and makes you reassess things. I’m thankful we’ve had this chance to realise there’s a problem and hopefully something can be done to ensure we avoid further problems.
So, time for listening to a song that makes me feel good about things. Love the music, love the lyrics, love everything about it. It’s Jason Mraz singing ‘I’m yours’. ( and thanks go to Carolyn Wojtera on Twitter who helped me out when I couldn’t remember the artist or name of the song!)
I’ve been really busy this week and hardly had time to post anything. And I should have because some great things happened this week. I’ll get to it tomorrow, I promise.
My husband sent me this video during the week to brighten my day at school. It’s a great study in human reaction to the unknown. Enjoy.
I hope your weekend treats you well. Children’s birthday week for me here – Double digits for one and teenager for the other. Two in the one week. I know, what was I thinking!
Back to my faves this week. Charlie Todd’s improveverywhere crew has been up to their improvising best with this effort. High Five Escalator, involves Agent Lathan giving out 2,000 high fives by standing next to a subway escalator during the morning rush. I just love watching peoples’ faces transform from impassive to animated as they embrace the fun on offer.
It’s a pretty simple task to make people feel good as they go about their day. Try something out next week – smile at your co-workers and say something that makes them feel good. If you wish to remain anonymous, try a random act of kindness. Go on, I dare you. Bet you’ll feel better in the process too.
Even better still, try it out this weekend. Enjoy.
This is ‘Facebook Song’ by Rhett and Link. Our school psychologist had me help her download it from Youtube this week for use with a Yr 11 class. (We used kickyoutube – it continues to impress everyone) They were looking at the idea of personal empires for their Art class. As well as being pretty amusing it’s quite good for developing class discussion about identity and behaviour online.
A cooler weekend here in Australia. Very welcome after last weekend and its devastating consequences. Hope yours is a good one.
*Just got this message on Twitter from Bill Ferriter.
Such kindness being expressed for our country from the international community of educators is overwhelming. Jen Wagner has let me know that donations are coming in for the bushfire appeal we are running through Working together 2 make a difference. Thank you all.
Nowthis is funny. So I’m ordering you to watch it and brighten up your day by enjoying the pleasure of laughing out loud. I’ve watched it a couple of times now and even though I know what’s coming I still find those tears rolling down my cheeks. Happy ones, not sad!
I hope we’ll all still be laughing tonight. Today represents the most extreme weather conditions we’ve seen all summer being faced in Victoria. Melbourne is predicted to reach a temperature of 44 degrees celcius. We’ve been in the grip of a water crisis and our State is tinder dry. Bushfires are a constant summer threat with extremely dry undergrowth. We live with water restrictions and I am saddened by the sight of the glorious Liquid Amber in my frontyard struggling to exist.
So, I hope tonight I’m sharing a glass of wine and good conversation with friends and not glued to the TV (or internet) tracking the progress of bushfires.
Enjoy your weekend, Go on, watch lost luggage again. I promise you’ll laugh second time round too!
My husband sent me this video during the week and it brightened the day for a colleague and myself. It was uploaded to YouTube in 2006 so you may have already seen it. How they put this together intrigues me -there are definitely some very clever people out there.
We are melting here in Melbourne right now. The temperature has been 41Degrees celcius + for the last three days and it looks like there is another one heading our way tomorrow. There is little respite next week with temperatures forecast to be in the 30’s all week. Of course, school began back this week, just when the heat of summer set in. The kids are restless and tired and we are all searching for the elusive sniff of a breeze but there is none in sight.
The Library I work in is not air conditioned but home is, so I intend to hibernate! Enjoy whatever comes your way this weekend.
School will really be out for me next Friday. It’s a return to work for me next week; a dose of reality after the heady days of nothing on my agenda. Enjoy this ditty fromWeird Al Yankevic as he ponders the wonder of Ebay to the tune of the Backstreet Boys ‘I want it that way’. Nearly 20 million people have viewed it already on YouTube.
Probably nice to revisit a Weird Al Yankovic effort from the past while we’re at it. Here he is with ‘Eat it’, his parody of Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat it’.
I have to confess that I went to a Michael Jackson concert at Olympic Park here in Melbourne in the mid ’80s. It was far and away the best concert I’ve ever been to. It was at the height of Michael Jackson’s career; Thriller had been released and he was in the white glove phase. His dancing was brilliant and the show was nothing short of spectacular. Pity that 20 years on his reputation is not what it used to be.
I hope your weekend holds something special for you. Enjoy.
One of the best ways to start converting colleagues to the wonders of the Web is to introduce them to the vast array of content on YouTube that is suitable for education purposes. If you work in a school with a slow connection then you will be familiar with the circular loading indicator that can stay like that for what seems an eternity. Not conducive to good classroom practice unfortunately. By the time it loads your kids are in their next class!
Solution. Download the video from YouTube using a conversion tool. I’ve spoken of keepvidbefore which has been my preferred option. This has involved me going to the keepvid site and copying and pasting the YouTube url once I’m there.
Better solution. Alec Couras, ably assisted by Melanie Gibb, alerted me on Twitter to kickyoutube. It is quite simply the easiest method I’ve seen yet to download a video to a different format. All you need to do is delete the ‘au.’ (or www.) in the url and type the word ‘kick’ in front of the word ‘youtube’ and then press enter. Kickyoutube is enabled and you are presented with a toolbar with differing options for file conversion. You select your preferred option and press go and your download begins. Dead simple. There are even options for conversions for the iPhone and PSP as well as the garden variety options. Some options may not be available at the time and they will not be highlighted if that is the case.
The followingscreencast gives a good visual explanation of how it works;
Richard Byrne, who writes at Free Technology for Teachers, (and just quietly Richard, you are a blogging dynamo! Do you ever sleep?) has posted recently about YouTube’s new initiative with downloads. Here’s what he reported;
YouTube is introducing a download option on some videos. I haven’t seen any official announcements from YouTube, but there are some videos on YouTube that now have a small download link located just below play menu.
This is an even easier option, but like Richardsays, it’s not available for all videos at the moment. All you need to do is click on the download link and a file download to MPEG 4 format begins.
It will be nice to return to school with some new and very easy options for downloads from YouTube to share with my colleagues. We may not even need to do this with some changes that are afoot. We are moving from a 2mg internet connection to 20mg and I can’t wait to see what a difference that is going to make for our school and our connectivity. I’m expecting great things!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://i0.wp.com/img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png)
Lucacept - intercepting the Web 