Tag Archives: Christmas

Edublogs Serendipity webinar overview – End of year activities!

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Stop Press – last two days of voting #eddies!

We have been shortlisted for the Edublogs awards Thank you so much if you nominated us. And thank you also if you are voting for us.

ONLY TWO DAYS TO GO – deadline 11:59pm US EST Tuesday 13th December. That’s the early hours of Wednesday morning in Europe and late morning/early afternoon Wednesday here in Australia  if you would like to vote for us (Serendipity/FineFocus Webinars in Edublogs award)s click HERE to go to the site, see nominations and cast your vote.

Online End of Year/Christmas Party

We invite you to our End of Year/Christmas Party on 15th/16th December – come along with virtual “goodies” for the festive table, and if you feel inventive bring a game to share and play. Take a look at the overviews for our parties in 2009 and 2010 to see the sorts of things we do. After the party the webinars will be taking a two week break returning on 5th/6th January with the first Serendipity session of 2012!

Introduction

Apologies for the delay in posting – despite starting leave at the end of Friday I have been finishing off a variety of work “loose ends” over the weekend. My holiday begins appropriately with this post. We had a fun session – very Serendipitous and, as always, recorded (though I was a bit late starting the recording – I don’t seem to get a recording reminder in BbC11 as I did in Elluminate10) so you can catch up on what we did it if you missed it!

The Session

We started as usual by putting our topic ideas on the whiteboard and then polling to choose the topic for consideration. The winner was “End of year activities”.

Once the topic was chosen we used a whiteboard to collect some of our ideas and thoughts on this including some links. As usual ideas were also shared via text chat and audio. There were many ideas with Christmas themes around the 12 days of Christmas and collaborative activities such as drawing a snowman. This prompted the sharing of the “Drawastickman” link by Carole (@Coach_Carole).

Never one to pass up an opportunity for playing I opened the link and App Shared it so that we could play out the story collaboratively by taking control of my desktop and taking turns to complete a stage in the story. This was great fun – working via someone else’s desktop is a huge challenge because of the inevitable lag time. Drawing is particularly hard because of this lag and everyone did a great job as we finished the story.

Drawastickman is a nice toy to play with and would be even better if there were a variety of scenarios/themes leading to different stories!

Conclusion

This session definitely put me into a holiday mood! Now I have to come up with a good online game for the party next week.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session, in which we let our hair down for the “End of Year/Christmas Party” Bring “goodies for the festive table and if you feel inventive an online party game and join us on Thursday December 15th at 23:00 GMT/UTC the time for you will vary depending on your timezone (check yours here) Thursday afternoon/evening in the USA, late night Thursday in Europe, and Friday morning December 16thd in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room. Remember we have a two week break after the party and will return on 5th/6th January with the first Serendipity session of the year

The twelve days of a West Australian Christmas!

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I saw @jofrei’s post “12 Days of Christmas gifts from Sprite’s Site”  and it made me think it might be fun to do a West Australian version of “The twelve days of Christmas”. So here goes! If you want a challenge then checkout the flora and fauna included. or leave a comment and ask me. PS sorry about the inconsistent capitalisation 🙂 – its a sign of an indecisive nature 🙁

BronzewingOn the first day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
A bronzewing in a gum tree.

On the second day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Two wattle birds,
And a bronzewing in a gum tree.

.

On the third day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Three Twenty eights,
Two wattle birds,
And a bronzewing in a gum tree..

On the fourth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Four Fairy wrens,
Three Twenty eights,
Two wattle birds,
And a bronzewing in a gum tree.

On the fifth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Five honky nuts,
Four Fairy wrens,
Three Twenty eights,
Two wattle birds,
And a bronzewing in a gum tree.

On the sixth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Six sand gropers,
Five honky nuts,
Four Fairy wrens,
Three Twenty eights,
Two wattle birds,
And a bronzewing in a gum tree.

On the seventh day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Seven snappers swimming,
Six sand gropers,
Five honky nuts,
Four Fairy wrens,
Three Twenty eights,
Two wattle birds,
And a bronzewing in a gum tree.

BluetongueReducedOn the eighth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Eight Blue-tongues gaping,
Seven snapper swimming,
Six sand gropers,
Five honky nuts,
Four Fairy wrens,
Three Twenty eights,
Two wattle birds,
And a bronzewing in a gum tree.

On the ninth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Nine marron crawling,
Eight Blue-tongues gaping,
Seven snappers swimming,
Six sand gropers,
Five honky nuts,
Four Fairy wrens,
Three Twenty eights,
Two wattle birds,
And a bronzewing in a gum tree.

On the tenth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Ten ‘roos a-leaping,
Nine marron crawling,
Eight Blue-tongues gaping,
Seven snappers swimming,
Six sand gropers,
Five honky nuts,
Four Fairy wrens,
Three Twenty eights,
Two wattle birds,
And a bronzewing in a gum tree.

On the eleventh day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Eleven marris growing,
Ten ‘roos a-leaping,
Nine marron crawling,
Eight Blue-tongues gaping,
Seven snappers swimming,
Six sand gropers,
Five honky nuts,
Four Fairy wrens,
Three Twenty eights,
Two wattle birds,
And a bronzewing in a gum tree.

On the twelfth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Twelve jarrahs flowering,
Eleven marris growing,
Ten ‘roos a-leaping,
Nine marron crawling,
Eight Blue-tongues gaping,
Seven snappers swimming,
Six sand gropers,
Five honky nuts,
Four Fairy wrens,
Three Twenty eights,
Two wattle birds,
And a bronzewing in a gum tree.

All of the flora and fauna are found in Western Australia and are bound up the the culture and ecology of the state. So although I did this for fun it could be used in many educational contexts in Australia and globally. For example in my own current teaching context with literacy students I would use it as a challenge for them to find an image and write a little about one or more of the animals/plants – preferably choosing one where they had a personal experience to relate. In a previous teaching role in environmental science I could have used it to highlight adaptation of the flora and fauna to the West Australian environment.

Increasingly as I continue as an educator it seems to me that almost anything I design or develop for whatever purpose can be used or adapted and used as a resource in myriad educational contexts. Thus my personal and professional “selves” are  merging and perhaps giving an increased “richness”and depth to my work.

Edublogs webinar overview – End of year party

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Introduction

First an apology for my tardiness in posting this overview. Since the webinar my impending (and now arrived) Christmas visitors have tended to take priority.

We had a great party this year – as always, and also as always it was recorded.

The Session
We started as always with some chat in audio and text while people were arriving. Then we moved on to the “goodies” table inviting everyone to share  yummy edibles and drinkables on the whiteboard.

XmasPartyGoodiesResize

Once we had eaten and drunk our fill (virtually of course – so no negative impacts on waistlines!) we moved on to share and play a variety of games and activities. These included: a spot the differences cartoon from Kipper and Flipper; decorating the Christmas tree; a variant of Mr Squiggle; a trivia challenge; and characterising ourselves with an image. All of these were great fun and we were enjoying ourselves so much that we over-ran! As always you will get a much better idea of how the games worked in an Elluminate context by catching the recording!

Conclusion

This was a great session for the end of the year with everyone entering into the spirit of the party with enthusiasm. I would love feedback from anyone who has attended any of our webinars (Fine Focus or Serendipity). Please add your comments about past sessions, suggestions for how we can do it better and ideas for future topics! I hope to post some thoughts and reflections about this year’s webinar series at the beginning of January – once I can actually find time to reflect!

I would just like to wish everyone a very happy, peaceful and safe holiday season from both myself and Phil. Here is our happy holiday message – this will be unavailable after February 2011 – that we hope will make you chuckle 🙂

Next Webinar

SerendipitybsmallWe a are taking a break over the holiday, and will be back in 2011 with an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday Jan 6th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (6pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday Jan 7th at 1am CEST, 7am West Aus, 10am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room. This is one of our fortnightly unconference sessions where we invite you to bring along your “hot topics” and “burning issues” for our poll on the topic of the day. If you want to propose a topic in advance then visit the Serendipity Wallwisher and add your topic.

In the Future

If you are a regular visitor to our webinars you will know that we alternate “Fine Focus” sessions on specific topics with “Serendipity” the unconference sessions where we choose a topic by poll at the start of the session. Sometimes the very fact of being asked for “hot topics” or other ideas for discussion or learning tends to make our minds blank. This has prompted me to start a Serendipity Wallwisher for topic suggestions. Please visit the wall and add your ideas for Serendipity topics so that we have more choices to consider. Some of these ideas might also form the basis for future “Fine Focus” sessions.