Today is for education!

How to make the news for TV?
That is just what I try to teach and explain every day, and then I found this high quality example on the video sharing platform some days ago.
I think you deserve to see and learn as well.





I do excuse some parts of the language used in this news clip, but there is no way I can change that.

Music clip of the 22nd 11enth.

"OK go" from Chicago, Illinois. Never heard of them, until today.

How did they make it to the music clip of the 22nd 11enth then?

Well, working with young people gives you a lot of impulses and inspiration, and this was one of those kinds of thing happening.

Some of the students are working on a film from the swimming gala a while back, and then we were talking about music and then searching for some inspiration on that major video sharing platform you know, you can find on this internet.

The music is all right, but that is not why I've chosen to put this up. No, I put it up because of the videos and the amazing choreography in them, and that it is all done in one shot, in one take so to speak.

It is a very cool concept and so full of fantasy and surprises and I wonder how much time they must have been rehearsing and how many takes they had to go through, to make it all come out like it did.

Enough of talking, enjoy.

They even do different video versions of the same song, here exemplified by the song: "This Too Shall Pass".

Again the one shot strategy and some planing and timing.

and then it gets even more weird and nerdy, but very entertaining.

Bali Blog.

Since the last post, my routines has for sure changed. At this moment I'm sitting at a beach hotel in Seminyak on the southwest coast of the Indonesian island Bali. But this is also a change of routine from the previous four days. Since we -me, a colleague and 13 young students- arrived in Bali on the 12th, we have been living on an organic farm on the northeast part of Bali. The farm was run by one family, who has decided to go completely organic and offer room to visitors who would like to experience the traditional Balinese farming life. The farm was placed between the rice paddy fields in a rural district and only accessible by foot over narrow pathways between the rice fields.
At the farm we were sleeping in small typical stilt cabins, which during daytime was open to all sides, and at night time got closed by rolling bamboo curtains. There were some electric plugs there, but no internet. For the students this was maybe the biggest challenge and even bigger than the one cold shower and the one not flushing toilet, which furthermore also was with out a roof and placed quite central not far from the small houses where we all slept, ate and spend the time when we were not doing hard manual labor in the fields.
To be honest, I was quite nervous myself how I would adapt to this environment, and I was certainly thinking how the students would adapt. Coming from the highly developed and quite sterile world of Hong Kong, where every possible facility to ease human life is available, and where facebook is a more natural mean of communication than the face to face dialog, I for sure had my doubts and was just waiting for the mutiny to start. To this fear came the real hard labor we were doing under a merciless burning sun. We were digging holes in the ground and planting banana trees. 33 was the number. And not that we were only digging the holes, we were as well digging out compost behind the pigs and the cows stables, transporting it in buckets and sacks to fill into the holes around the new banana trees.
But no mutiny came. The students stood the distance and also helped each other keeping up the spirit and a positive atmosphere and work ethic. Best of all, they came to me in the evening and said how much they enjoyed their opportunity to try out this kind of life., and even when the task for the next day was announced -turning a plain grass field into flower beds to growing carrots- there was no angry response or any argument, that this was to hard and they would not do it.

Sorry, but I have the next task on in a few minutes, so I have to stop for now. We have to go to the beach for 3 hours of hard surfing.

It is Friday the 11th of the 11th and tomorrow is the 12th of the 11th. And so what?

Bali Blog.

It is Friday again and that is nice, no mistake about that, but this Friday has been a bit weird and so awful busy.

It is now 20 minutes past 6 in the evening, and I am still sitting here at the school while some of my film students are filming at a kind of music carnival. It will go on until about 8 PM I think. Then after that I have to get home and sort out some clothes for the coming week. Just some shorts and t-shirts, underpants, flip-flops, some old shoes I wouldn’t mind to loose, and some other light stuff. This has to go into my bag pack, and then next morning at 6:30 I will be heading to the airport to catch a plane for yet another work trip.

This time I will join a colleague and 13 of the young year 12 students on a trip to Bali. We are going to spend about 8 days there, and will be working on an organic farm in the north of the island, but will as well get some time at a surf school at the beaches in the south.

We will be blogging from there and from the other destinations in Southeast Asia, where our year 12students are working on different projects in the week to come.

If interested the link is here:

http://casweek.rchk.edu.hk

What a hard life it is!

It's Friday!

Todays little youTube!

It is a film from my own backyard -or is it front-garden?
Unfortunately it wasn't me who made this little film about peoples wishes and visions.
It is a nice and positive little document from a very busy and crowded area; Mong Kok.

Go and animate!

Go online and sign on to Goanimate.com. This is an online tool which claims that you can make animations, and that it is easy and fantastic.

As it is my job to try to find new ways and tools for education, I tried to knock on that door and got the acceptance to step in and develop my own little animation.

At GoAnimate, you get some templates to work with, like a set of different locations and some different figures as actors.Then you just have to type in a sort of a dialog and then after 2 minutes -says the introduction- you can publish your own super animation.
Well, all of that isn't quite right. It takes way longer and you have to hope that not a lot of other students or teachers have the same idea at the same time, coz then it is a killer.
I managed to make a wee 12seconds animation about some pool balls talking, and as I hit the button saying publish it was with a slightly uneasy feeling. It all just sounded too good to be true; "create an animation in two minutes?"

And it was too good to be true. After having shown the progress indicator saying "publishing" for about an hour, the computer I was working at, lost the connection to the internet and I had to start all over again.

I did and managed to kind of recreate the little film, and this time it was successful saved and published.

If you feel like it you might be able to watch the wee film here.

GoAnimate4Schools.com: Talking numbers by Jorgen Mortensen

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate4Schools. It's free and fun!

Old style LP Cover Design of the day!

That is just so embarrassing right now. Here I tell you that it is the old style LP cover of the day, and then it turns out that it is a CD released in 2009.

I thought it must have been older as I saw it, as it reminded me of the comic with the "Fabulous Freak Brothers".

So here is a little taste of of it then.

"Poor Old Dirt Farmer".