Tag: YouTube

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School’s out Friday

Well, I’m finally home from my 18 day tour of China with the students from my school. Another great experience. Not only great because I had the opportunity to immerse myself in another culture, but great because I had the opportunity to see the students in a different light. When you essentially live with one another for an extended period of time, you forge lasting links. That’s special and something that I value.

One of the linking experiences we had in China was our shared amusement over signage. Despite the best efforts of the English Language teacher in the above video in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese just can’t seem to get it entirely right at times. Now don’t get me wrong, I have a deep respect for the Chinese people. They are friendly, engaging people who work very hard in trying conditions. You would think, however,  that there were some fluent, english speaking people in the country who could vet the signs before they were displayed prominently or etched into concrete. One of our students took nearly 2000 photos. There would have to be 100 or so that are signs displaying English translation that cause much mirth.

My amusement was heightened because I was reading David Sedaris’ latest compilation of essays throughout the trip, ‘When You Are Engulfed In Flames‘.  If you’ve never read anything by David Sedaris then you really need to treat yourself and get a hold of one of his books. He writes about the ordinary and not so ordinary things in life and his observations are often laugh out loud funny. In this book he describes his experiences in Japan and he makes comment about English signage there. Very close to our observations I may add as we would pass yet another highway sign reading ‘Do not follow clowsly other drivers’.

Have a great weekend. Recovery is on my agenda before the start of the next week and my return to the demands of classes, correction and running the Library.   

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School’s out Friday

Thank God for Hamish and Andy. Sometimes it’s really hard to source a School’s out Friday post, but not when Hamish and Andy are around to provide good fodder. This time they are indulging in the good old Australian tradition of knick knocking. This involves going around and knocking on people’s windows or doors and hiding before you are detected.  They’ve added a twist. This time they have a bag over their head when they knock on the door and have only three steps to take to hide. The results are typical Hamish and Andy.

I’ve got a weekend of hard work before I head off to China very early Tuesday morning for 18 days with students from my school. I really don’t know how I’m going to get everything done but I’m going to give it a red hot go. Hope your weekend is nowhere near as busy!!

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Google things to do.

I have to admit to really liking the services Google offers. I love Google Docs and the flexibility they offer for working collaboratively and for storing documents online. I still find myself defaulting to Google as my search engine of choice even though I know there are other search engines doing a great job delivering results in interesting ways. Phil Bradley referred to this page on the Google site in a post recently and I found it pretty cool. It’s called Google things to do.

 

On the page are 52 things to do. They include ‘Watch your favourite YouTube clips in high resolution’, ‘Make your homepage YOUR homepage’, ‘Read a newspaper written in a language you don’t speak’, and there are 49 others for you to check out. What you do is click on the title of the thing to do and you will find a prompt redirecting you to YouTube video or one will appear in the text box on the page. Other options include a Google search box pop up that enables you to search for the answer to life, the universe and everything.

I think this would be fun to use with kids, provided you weren’t hampered by a firewall blocking YouTube!! Imagine setting the task to find a new thing to learn and present back to their peers after a set period of time to demonstrate what they’ve learnt. I think I’d find that a pretty interesting lesson. Just wish the firewall didn’t exist so that I could actually do it with the kids I teach.

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School’s out Friday

Yes, I know it is Saturday. Got a bit behind myself this week due to heaps of commitments. We had the Powerful Learning Practice launch on Monday and my school’s Speech Night last night. I organise all the prizes for that so I was quite literally run off my feet this week.

A funny accidents video this week. Thought I’d go with this because it reminds me of my effort on Monday at our Powerful Learning Practice launch. I sat down only to discover my seat had flipped up and I landed on the floor. Caused much mirth and Dean Groom saw fit on Twitter to nominate the day as ‘Jenny Luca funniest Librarian day’. I could only agree.  

Weather is gorgeous in Melbourne, friends are coming over for a barbie tonight, life is good. Hope the same goes for you. Enjoy your weekend.

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Web Search Strategies in Plain English from Commoncraft – cast your vote.

The latest from Lee and Sachi Leefever – Web Search Strategies in Plain English. In my opinion, another useful video for my students and yet another great tool for me to use. I’m indebted to them both for making my job so much easier over the last year.

 I noticed  a new button on my blog’s toolbar tonight and realised that I could insert a poll. All going well there should be a poll at the end of this post that you can use to cast your vote about the latest offering. All a bit of fun really- I’m just keen to see how it works.

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School’s out Friday

End of the first week back at school for me this week and can’t believe how tired I am. This term looks set to be running at a fast pace from the get go with no likelihood of slowing down. Speech night next week, China for 18 days in two and a bit weeks, then return to correction and reports. Sounds busy just thinking about it!  

I am looking forward to next Monday. That’s when we host the Australian cohort face to face meeting of Powerful Learning Practice. Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson are visiting our school to introduce us to the concept and help us form connections in the learning community we are to become. I’ve been active in the ning that supports the project and am really enjoying getting to know the US counterparts via activities set up by Darren Kuropawta who is a driving force in our learning community.

But the weekend beckons first! Start it by watching the Human Slinky. Someone sent out a tweet to a video featuring this guy this week and I was mesmorised.

Beautiful weather in Melbourne coming our way this weekend and I intend to make the most of it. Enjoy whatever comes your way.

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School’s out Friday

Regular readers will have noticed that last week marked the first time I hadn’t posted School’s out Friday. And why not? I was out on the streets of Shanghai with Jabiz Raisdana and Brian Lockwood, soaking up all that life had to offer.

This week’s School’s out Friday highlights someone who soaks up all life has to offer. Matt Harding says this about himself on his website;

Matt is a 31-year-old deadbeat from Connecticut who used to think that all he ever wanted to do in life was make and play videogames. Matt achieved this goal pretty early and enjoyed it for a while, but eventually realized there might be other stuff he was missing out on. In February of 2003, he quit his job in Brisbane, Australia and used the money he’d saved to wander around Asia until it ran out. He made this site so he could keep his family and friends updated about where he is.

A few months into his trip, a travel buddy gave Matt an idea. They were standing around taking pictures in Hanoi, and his friend said “Hey, why don’t you stand over there and do that dance. I’ll record it.” He was referring to a particular dance Matt does. It’s actually the only dance Matt does. He does it badly. Anyway, this turned out to be a very good idea.

A couple years later, someone found the video online and passed it to someone else, who passed it to someone else, and so on. Now Matt is quasi-famous as “That guy who dances on the internet. No, not that guy. The other one. No, not him either. I’ll send you the link. It’s funny.”

The response to the first video brought Matt to the attention of the nice people at Stride gum. They asked Matt if he’d be interested in taking another trip around the world to make a new video. Matt asked if they’d be paying for it. They said yes. Matt thought this sounded like another very good idea.

I’m with Matt. If someone was going to pay me to fly around the world and record myself dancing in major cities and famous locations I think I’d take up the offer. The video above is Matt’s latest effort and involves others dancing with him, his earlier vids just involved him. I love the spirited sense of community that shines through this – people are people and dancing, laughter and good fun cross cultural boundaries.

Check out Garr Reynold’s post about Matt. That’s where I discovered him. Thirty million + people found him before me on YouTube. As the kid from Clarence Fisher’s class said; “You don’t have to be a rich old guy from New York to have a voice anymore”.

Hope you have a great weekend. I intend to!

 

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School’s out Friday

This week has been a killer for me. We’ve had all of our Year 7 students working on an inquiry week project project called ‘We’re making history at Toorak’. They interviewed old girls from the school and canvassed archival material to collate information for their digital story presentation. The students used flip cameras to record their interviews and used Windows Moviemaker to put the stories together. To say we encountered technical difficulties is an understatement. We didn’t just encounter them, they hit us in tsunami like proportion. Flip video files didn’t work in Moviemaker, we had to convert them and then we encountered difficulties with that. It was a very long three days to say the least.

Nonetheless, the students continued to impress me. Despite the difficulties they forged on and found ways to work around their problems. They didn’t let adversity get in the way and did their level best to get a digital story  happening. My own daughter was one of these students. Her group had no video files that were useable and Moviemaker just wasn’t working on their computers. They reverted to Photo Story and used Audacity to capture the audio file of their interview. I was so proud of her determination to come up with a result despite the fact that she was not well and really shouldn’t have been at school today. I saw a side of my child that I hadn’t anticipated; a determined young woman with a strong resolve to do the best she could for the sake of her group.  I couldn’t have been more proud.

Next week I’m attending Learning 2.008. I fly out on Wednesday for Shanghai. Right now, I’m totally exhausted and don’t know how I’m going to do everything that needs being done by next Tuesday afternoon. Big weekend ahead I’m guessing.

Next Friday is ‘Talk like a Pirate Day’.  Here in Australia it’s a fundraiser for cancer research. A couple of Library staff at my school are going to be running the event from our Library. Maybe I’ll get something going at the Learning 2.008 conference – nothing like a bit of pirate talk to forge productive working relationships!  Take a look at the ‘I’m a pirate’ song to help you get into the swing of things.

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Large Hadron Collider – physics teachers take note

I read an article today in a newspaper (I was at my in-laws house, where no internet exists and all information is relayed in newsprint or from TV services!) about the Large Hadron Collider, an incredible engineering feat that is going to be switched on this Wednesday. According to this article, we all better be making the most of the next few days because they could be our last.  

I’ve read a bit about it since, and I’m not even going to pretend that I fully understand what it’s purpose is. My limited knowledge can tell you that scientists are trying to gain a greater understanding of the origins of the universe by pinpointing particles of Dark Matter which are thought to permeate the universe. The article that I read today suggested that switching it on could result in earth being sucked into a giant black hole instantaneously. Cheery stuff really. Other news reports are saying there is nothing to fear. Canada.com in an article titled ‘Wednesday not doomsday’, reports this about what will happen on Wednesday;

The LHC, installed in a 27-kilometre (16.9-mile) tunnel on the French-Swiss border, is to start unleashing a beam of protons next Wednesday in the first stage of its commissioning process.

Two parallel beams of particles, one going clockwise and the other anti-clockwise, will blast around the underground ring.

At four locations on the ring, superconducting magnets will bend the beams so that groups of protons smash into each other in a giant chamber which is swathed with detectors to record the resulting sub-atomic debris.

It goes on to say we have nothing to fear;

The new Safety Assessment Report says that any black holes produced by the collider would be “microscopic” and decay almost immediately, as they would lack the energy to grow or even be sustained.

“Each collision of a pair of protons in the LHC will release an amount of energy comparable to that of two colliding mosquitoes, so any black hole produced would be much smaller than those known to astrophysicists,” it says.

I’ll be interested to see the media coverage that results on Wednesday, assuming we’re all around still to be taking notice! What’s also interesting is this LHC Rap that has been posted on YouTube explaining what the Large Hadron Collider is all about. Kate McAlpine put this together – I think Physics teachers around the world should be sending her thank you notes for doing this. What a great way to transfer meaning about what to me is a complicated idea. It makes me think that this would be a great activity for students to do – explain a process as a rap, act it out and post it to YouTube. Share it with the world and help students everywhere gain understanding of concepts and enjoy it at the same time. 

When I was searching for information for this post I used Silobreaker, a search engine with a focus on news results. Great returns, interesting layout with lots of visuals; well worth adding to your list of alternative search engines to use.