Tag: YouTube

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School’s out Friday

Flash mob tribute to Michael Jackson in Sergels Torg, Stockholm.

Same song, same flash mob, this time at Central station, Stockholm. 

Flash mob in London : tribute to Michael Jackson on June 26th, the day of his death.

Wikipedia explains a Flash mob as being;

A flash mob (or flashmob[1]) is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse. The term flash mob is generally applied only to gatherings organized via social media or viral emails. The term is generally not applied to events organized by public relations firms or as publicity stunts.

Michael Jackson’s recent passing has seen a spate of Flash mobs coming together to pay tribute to a singer who had an enormous influence on people the world over. You can find evidence of this by searching on YouTube for ‘Flash mobs Michael Jackson’. It appears there are more to come. On August 9th in London a mass ‘Thriller’ dance is planned as a ‘Goodbye Party’. I’ll have to keep my eyes open for the YouTube footage of that one.

It’s interesting how technology has enabled people from various backgrounds to congregate for action, be it a tribute to Michael Jackson or protests in the streets of Iran. In the videos above, what is most noticeable are the mobile phones raised high in salute, capturing the evidence so that it can be passed on and shared.    

I hope your weekend holds something exciting that you can share with friends and family. Enjoy it.   

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Body Pump via YouTube – forget the gym fees!

Before I dedicated my life to blogging (it seems like that some days!) I used to go to the gym regularly. I was a devotee of Body Pump classes. I got to a stage where I was lifting pretty heavy weights and I was pretty impressed with my triceps and biceps.   

I can’t say that now. Blogging has led to me learning a whole heap, but it is a fairly sedentary pursuit and my fitness level has suffered as a result. I walk regularly with my good friend Nina (who I have converted to blogging along the way) but I’ve felt the need to get back  to the weights. I have my own weight bar and weights but trying to remember the routines when you are at home has been difficult.

I was contemplating getting back to the weights over the weekend when it occured to me that someone might have posted Les Mills Body Pump classes on YouTube. (Don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it a lot earlier.) So off I went to YouTube and there they were. It seems the Germans are the ones uploading so I spent some time over the last day or so using kickyoutube to download them to my computer.

So, if you’re wondering what a Body Pump class is like and the order in which you complete the routines, here is what I’ve been doing for the last hour. Stefan and a couple of other mostly German instructors have done a very good job of taking me through a class. It hasn’t cost me a cent in gym fees and I can do it all over again tomorrow should I choose to. I’m aiming to do three classes a week and that should get my fitness levels moving in the right direction.

Body Pump – the YouTube way.

Warm up.

Squats.

Back.

Chest.

Triceps

Biceps.

Lunges.

Shoulders.

Abdominals.  (This is actually too short, but I couldn’t find a complete track)

Cool down  

So there you have it. Body Pump without the gym fees. Another example of the kind of learning you can do via YouTube these days.  

     

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will.i.am has it worked out -time for school to catch up.

Today I found myself reading a newspaper. An unusual event for me.  These days my access to news is usually via my computer.  I was in a coffee shop with no computer in sight so the newspaper was it.  There was a double page spread about The Black Eyed Peas and included was an interview with will.i.am, frontman for the group.

Interestingly, will.i.am had quite a bit to say about use of the internet and its importance to the record industry today. Much of it has relevance for education and the way we can be teaching our students to harness it to make meaningful connections. Here’s a bit of what he had to say;

   “I was telling my record company ‘It’s all about the internet’ and they were saying ‘No, that’s piracy, we’re suing those people’ and I said ‘No, that’s what you need to do, put the song on the internet’.  They wouldn’t listen. So I executed all the things I was talking about with Yes we can.”

The celebrity heavy video for will.i.am’s Obama ode Yes we can clocked up three million online views in a week. 

will.i.am went on to say;

“It’s about connecting people, giving them tools  to connect, if it’s a song or a blog or a sketch or a speech you’ve turned into a song. As long as they’re passing it around. We did that with Boom Boom Pow.  That was leaked, it was all over the net, DJs played it, radio stations found it. I learned a lot from that solo record. It taught me a lot. We wouldn’t be here had I not gone through that.”    

Boom Boom Pow has had 11,346,947 views on the official Black Eyed Peas channel on YouTube.

(Interestingly, in the same paper appeared a report that an Australian retail store, JB Hifi, has made the decision to stop the sale of CD singles. I can’t remember the exact details, but it was something like only 340 singles were sold in stores of the number one single in the last week. By contrast, it was downloaded over 13,000 times in the same period of time.)  

As educators, we need to be paying attention to what will.i.am has to say. Who knows? We may just have the next big thing sitting in one of our classrooms.  And even if we don’t, shouldn’t we be imparting this kind of knowledge along to all of the students we teach? Let them showcase what they do, share it around, give them an audience. Who knows where it might take them and the meaningful connections they may make in the process?   

Given the success of The Black Eyed Peas latest release I’d say they’ve figured it out. Time for school to catch up.   

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Everywhere is here – is that the school library of the future?

This is Guy Adam Ailion’s animation, an introduction to his Architectural Masters Thesis called EVERYWHERE IS HERE. He has posted it to YouTube and has included this explanatory text to accompany it;

What is a library when ‘everywhere is here’? This architectural animation explores the question of the role of the public library when digital information is everywhere and is everything. What happens to the spaces of books? and how should traditional spaces of information change for a digital world? Even better… in the developing world, how could the library nurture an information society, when people don’t have access at home? Could the future of the library be an urban information bar? or a theatre of knowledge? and what does that really mean anyway?

These are question not just for public libraries, but for school libraries too. I like his ideas. Thinking of libraries as ‘Urban information bars’, or ‘Theatres of Knowledge’ conjures images of busy bustling centres for all. Just the kind of environment that is equally important in a school setting. It’s important that students have a space where all are welcome, where everyone can congregate and share ideas, where everyone can ‘fit’ without worrying about cliques and social strata.

These are considerations that will occupy my thinking over the next six or so months. Our school has received funding for redevelopment of our School Library. While we have the exterior building design pretty much sorted, it’s the interior design and functionality of space that has me excited. As a library staff, we are looking to create something special that will meet our needs for the long term. We want comfort, a space that that is welcoming and creates a sense of belonging for our school community. We want to find new ways to utilise space, creating learning nooks and relaxing recreational areas. We want to be creative with signage and we want to rationalise our collection to meet the changing needs of our community of users. 

These are ideas we have been knocking around, but I think we need to go to our users and ask them what they would like to see happen in the space. We have a large display board, circa 1960’s I’ll have you note, and I’m going to create a banner to adorn it asking;

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE IN YOUR NEW SCHOOL LIBRARY?

I’m going to invite our students to share with us their thoughts and post them on this display board. I’m interested in finding out what they see as important.  They’re a creative lot, it’s more than likely that they will generate some ideas that we haven’t contemplated. What would be great would be if they could be really creative and produce designs for us to contemplate. I’m sure we could come up with a competition idea to support this with a prize or two that will help to get some creative juices flowing. Our kids learn how to create design briefs in their design and technology classes so we might as well give them a real life scenario to work towards. Perhaps we’ll be pleasantly surprised and find that they meld with our thinking or we may be even more surprised and find that they take our thinking to new places.   

Thanks to Marianne Lenox for pointing me in the direction of Guy’s animation. 

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School’s out Friday

 

How could today’s School’s out Friday be anything but Michael Jackson. His death today shocked the world. Despite the controversy that dogged him over the last 10 or so years, he was the consummate showman when he graced a stage.

I know, because I was lucky enough to go to his concert at Olympic Park here in Melbourne in 1987. It was the concert that coincided with the the Thriller Album. I’ll never forget the opening sequence, as the stage opened up and the zombie like figures made their way up stairs onto the stage.

Another unforgettable part of that concert was the figure dancing in the rooftop turret of Government House. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know if he or she was a random person who had access or if they were strategically placed there, but I’ll never forget their shadow dancing to the music. It was mesmerising.

This song, Man in the Mirror, is my favourite Michael Jackson song. Personally, I think it was when he was at his best.

Deepak Chopra has written a tribute to Michael Jackson on the Huffington Post. It is worth reading. It reveals a man not many of us saw in the media maelstrom that haunted him wherever he went.

Listen to some of Michael’s music this weekend.  I have no doubt we all hold memories of good times spent listening and maybe even dancing to the songs he penned and performed.

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School’s out Friday

Thanks to the generosity of my husband’s cousin, last night we saw Pink in concert at the Rod Laver Arena here in Melbourne.  This excerpt on Youtube is from the opening number. The concert was part of Pink’s, ‘Funhouse tour’ and it was incredible. It was one of the 54 shows she is performing in Australia over a  period of four months. Her athleticism and amazing voice outstripped the spectacular staging. You were focused on her performance from beginning to end. Far and away the best concert I’ve ever been to. To top it off, we got to watch it from a corporate box. Free and luxury surrounds. Doesn’t get much better than that!

Hope your weekend treats you well. School holidays have begun for me so rest and relaxation will be the order of the day – make that days!

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School’s out Friday

I know half the world has probably seen this, but the fact that my entire family stops and watches when the Cadbury Eyebrows ad appears on television, has got to mean something about its appeal factor. Last night I went to my son’s school concert. Two of the students replicated this ad; it was a standout highlight.

Plenty of others on YouTube have had the same idea. Here’s a selection of examples.

Here’s Lily Allen on Channel 4 (not a patch on the kids);

And another;

And finally,  to demystify the whole thing, here’s a tutorial showing you how to make a replica of the ad without having to have your actors move their eyebrows;

No reports to do this weekend so sleeping in will be the priority! Enjoy whatever it is you are doing.

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School’s out Friday

Anyone else experience this. Usually happens at about 4.am in my house. My cat doesn’t annoy me in bed, instead she flicks the wooden blinds or kneads anything that makes a sound until I rise to let her out. I’m past worrying about the native animal population she may be decimating in the hours before dawn. If I don’t let her out there’s no sleep to be had. She’s in again when I take the dog for a walk and settles down to sleep for the next few hours – after a feed that is! Interestingly enough, she seems to know when it’s raining and then there’s no budging her from the bed. I think it’s true – cats own you, not the other way round.

A student shared this video with me this week; I really like it when they seek you out to show you something they enjoy. It led to a really pleasant exchange where we shared our cat stories.  They’re the kind of small ‘balloon’ moments I love about teaching. They’re the moments that lift me and make me really grateful to be sharing my days with young people who appreciate life.    

I’m settling down to a pleasant weekend of correction and reports. What fun! Hope your weekend plans sound more promising.

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School’s out Friday

This is The Crevasse – Making of 3D Street Art.  It’s the work of Edgar Mueller, German street painting artist. Take a look at some of the images below that show what he can do with a can of paint. The Daily Mail has  written an article explaining the motivation behind ‘The Crevasse’. It’s worth reading. Here’s a snippet where Mueller explains what he was trying to achieve;

He spent five days, working 12 hours a day, to create the 250 square metre image of the crevasse, which, viewed from the correct angle, appears to be 3D. He then persuaded passers-by to complete the illusion by pretending the gaping hole was real.

‘I wanted to play with positives and negatives to encourage people to think twice about everything they see,’ he said.

‘It was a very scary scene, but when people saw it they had great fun playing on it and pretending to fall into the earth.

What incredible creativity. I love work like this; something that makes you stop in your tracks and marvel at what human beings are capable of achieving.

So go forth and embark on doing something remarkable this weekend. That’d be nice wouldn’t it. Maybe getting my house clean will be my remarkable feat, but I don’t know if I’m capable of achieving such a complex act!  

 artstreet art

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The Wilhelm Scream – movies will never be the same!

Alec Couras has written a really useful post ’80+ videos for Tech. and Media Literacy’.  And it is really useful so you MUST follow the link. He has pulled together an amazing array of links to videos and has catergorised them just to make the list even more useful. Alec makes mention of a plan to transfer the list to a wiki  – a very good idea, but I’d understand if it doesn’t happen; he seems a very busy man. Perhaps it could become a collaborative effort as all wikis should be! 

The Wilhelm Scream is one of the videos I’ve stumbled upon thanks to this list. I love it; can’t wait to see another George Lucas film to lie in wait for the scream’s appearance. I’m going to upload it to our Yr 9 Ning because I’m pretty sure my students are going to get a kick out of it too. It ‘s something that I think is bound to promote some fun, connective conversation.

It reminds me of the way Stephen Spielberg used the same sound effect in his first movie Duel and his mega hit Jaws. The dying moments of both films see the end of the beasts terrorising man, a semi trailer in one instance and a white pointer shark in the other. I can’t find a video on YouTube that captures both moments for a side by side comparison, but the video below captures the final scene from Duel with the music from the final scene from Jaws.

Thankfully, Wikipedia can verify that I’m not making this up;

  • The dinosaur roar sound effect that is heard as the truck goes over the cliff is also heard in Jaws, also directed by Steven Spielberg, as the shark’s carcass sinks into the ocean. Spielberg has said that this is because he feels there is a “kinship” between Duel and Jaws, as they are both “about these leviathans targeting everyman.” He has also said that inserting the sound effect into Jaws was “my way of thanking Duel for giving me a career.”[1]

    • Don’t feel sorry for me knowing seemingly unimportant information like this. I’m a hit at trivia nights, truly I am.  

     

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