I should have waited a bit before blogging my earlier entry, until I’d seen this TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson (a fellow Brit I’d never heard of). Makes a similar point to Michael Rosen but with a lot more power and in less than half the time (20 minutes). (See Ken’s Wikipedia entry and his official website.)
Category Archives: video
Funny ads
Via Google (click on “add more content” to your iGoogle page), I discovered Funny Ads. I’ve had it on my iGoogle page for a few days, but didn’t watch any of them until today. A number are in languages other than English (some of those have English subtitles), and a number are “silent”, where the pictures tell the whole story.
Humour is an element common to all those I saw at a quick glance, and I think they would be great for teaching English, e.g. as prompts for a writing assignment (write the story you saw, create your own ad), or a speaking task (tell your partner what you saw; what is the ad for? Do you think it’s an effective ad? Why/why not?), or a multimedia project (create your own ad, video it, upload to Internet).
My favourite is the Deutsche Postbank one.
Video day
David St Lawrence lives in Floyd County and writes about a festival held there. There I found a link to Spiral Hoop Dancer Vivian.
I could watch this for hours. She is having such fun, and she apparently did not know she was being videoed. Plus it doesn’t hurt that she’s very sexy. (This vid is work- and family-safe).
Dan Meyer, math-teacher extraordinaire and a dab hand at making and using online videos lists some of his resources, amongst which was Ticklebooth, a repository for all kinds of intriguing stuff, one of which is Homeless, a non-verbal CG short with beautiful colours and music, about a bag-lady.
Are you gullible? Let this video be a lesson to you. (Warning: if you have religious beliefs, you might find parts of this offensive).
Making a commercial for your class
Dave Warlick likes using the ad for the game Civilization IV. Then he asks,
What if you had a commercial for your text book? What if you made a commercial for your textbook? Could You?
What if you had a commercial for your class? What ifyou made a commercial for your class? Could You?
Timely thought, as I’ve started a new intensive EFL class and need to pitch it to students, erm, tomorrow. I won’t be burning the candle at both ends tonight fiddling with Powerpoint or ComicLife or whatever, but it sounds like a fun and valuable project. Maybe I can delegate it?
Did you know? A presentation
FarrFeed » Blog Archive » “Shift Happens” Presentation
I saw Karl Fisch’s fascinating presentation a while back, but was amazed to see its slick new look. I discovered this thanks to John Farr’s excellent blog. Karl’s presentation and Scott McCleod’s movie have really gone viral, because John Farr is not an edtech blogger and lives far from the madding crowd in beautiful New Mexico.
Here’s a comment I posted to John’s blog entry:
FYI, the movie in its final form was edited and posted by Scott McLeod, and the original was created by educator Karl Fisch at Arapoahoe High School (wherever that is) as a presentation for his school’s start-of-the-year faculty meeting. History and background are at Karl’s blog The Fischbowl here and here.
The music apparently comes from the movie Last of the Mohicans (starring one of my favourite actors, who has an equally interesting father). The content comes from a number of educators and writers who write about this shrinking world and the role the Internet is playing in that.
The movie is well made and thought-provoking, but it rings a little US-based nationalistic to me. Unlike much of the (US) edtech blogosphere, I’m not a Friedman fan. I am excited about the possibility of a world grass-roots community linked by optic fibre, getting themselves informed and making their voices heard, because global warming and peace are global issues and it’s been blindingly obvious for the past 10 years that our leaders are both unwilling and incapable of leading us where we humans on this beautiful blue planet urgently need to go. (A panel of top scientists were on TV recently debating Prof Lovelock’s Gaia theory on which there were many differing views. On one issue only were these scientists unanimously agreed: governments and political leaders will not make the right decisions in time to save the planet.)
I think we will survive as a species, but that it will be touch and go right up to the last minute. And that minute may come sooner than we think.
Tech support
Where would we be without it?
YouTube video