Around the Web

This blog post is dedicated to Peter Eglinton of the Portland Maine Public schools. Not only is social media and streaming video banned in school, Peter is working to install filtering software that will ban it from school issued computers at home. 

I'm an enormous proponent of both social media and streaming video. All of the following videos were gathered through social media from 100s of different sources. None of the following videos are intended for instructional or educational purposes. I hope that by viewing the creativity of others, it will encourage you to create something you're passionate about and share it with the rest of us. But, for now, after you finish tonight's homework, I don't think watching these is the worst thing that you could be doing.

More on that whole ordeal later, I'm in the process of circling the wagons.


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1. Incredible Time Lapse 
Each one of the tiles on the following slide is it's own 24 hour time-lapse video of the sky.

Video Link 2. A special thank you to Frans Hofmeester's kids for letting their dad take a picture of them every day for 12 years. As annoying as that must have been, the results are pretty astounding. Parents, think your kids grow up too fast? How about 12 years in just under 3 minutes.

3. It's called "tricking" and you should know about it.

Video Link

4. Speaking of rocks and minerals, for some time the prediction has been that the world's first trillionaires will be the ones who figure out how to mine rare "earth" minerals from space. Think Avatar. Except, it's looking like this reality might just be "on the horizon." And no, this is not a movie trailer!

5. Here's the premise: Guy buys an island about 50 years ago for a few thousand dollars. He plants 16,000 trees builds a few miles of nature trails and now lives alone on the island now worth about 40 million dollars. Well, he lives alone if you don't count the 120 giant tortoises. The island is now considered a national park.

We talk about often about the power of doing things because of your love for it... "We weren't doing it to become a national park, we were doing it to make the place habitable for me."

6. And now for something completely different... video of people jumping off of high things. 

7. Melvin and the Mini Machine. Well, this one's pretty awesome. While these Rube Goldberg machines are pretty cool on their own, it's the mini story that brings it to another level. Think OK GO; not just a machine, a music video!

8. This one's for Olivia and Grace. Grace is researching pointe shoes; Olivia, the New York City ballet. So, I guess this breaks my rule of "no video for educational purposes." But I promise, I didn't intend for you to learn. 

9. Spellbinding time lapse of Yosemite National Park. 

10. Okay, I'm out of videos that don't relate to what we're doing in the classroom. So for our final selection of the week, I guess we'll learn a little more about search engines. 

Video Link