Peter Beens
I attended a Piazza demo session yesterday. Considering the demo was only an hour and there was no time for clarification, my comments may not be entirely accurate. Please let me know if I’ve made any mistakes.
Piazza is a lightweight Learning Management System which is available at https://piazza.com. It is much less comprehensive than D2L, more like Google Classroom but with a nicer interface for students (in my opinion). Continue reading “Piazza (LMS) Demo Session – My Comments”
This will be a running tally of my BMW R1200RT motorcycle mileage, in imperial MPG. Yup, I’m a geek.
From a recent OTF mailing:
Thinking of using a copyright-protected work in your classroom? First, you must determine if you need permission from the copyright owner. Continue reading “Teachers, Copyright, and Fair Dealing: Know your rights and know your limits!”
Welcome to the 3rd in my series of “snippets” blog posts. See here for previous ones.
Is it ethical for a company to buy ads to deny climate change? Exxon thinks so and Google is gladly taking their money. It’s easy for me to boycott Exxon about this because I don’t buy their gas but Google is a little more difficult to boycott, as I’m totally reliant on their online ecosystem. Continue reading “Snippets #3”
For many years, these awards have recognized the excellence of our teachers in publicly funded education. There are three categories of awards: elementary school teacher, secondary school teacher and beginning teacher in the first five years of teaching. A teacher may be nominated by anyone – professional colleagues, students, parents, or the general public.
Nominations are now open for the 2020 awards. The deadline for receipt of nominations is March 31, 2020. Further information is provided on the attached PDF and is also available at www.teachingawards.ca. If you have any questions, please contact Jason Healey at OTF: Jason.healey@otffeo.on.ca.
It would be appreciated if you would highlight and promote these awards within your organization. We are proud of the excellence of teachers throughout the province. These awards allow us to recognize and celebrate outstanding contributions that our members make to their students’ education, to their schools, and within their communities.
Thank you for your cooperation and assistance in promoting the OTIP Teaching Awards program!
Is there anyone out that won’t admit that a-ha‘s Take on Me is a great pop song? Or that the video is one of the best pop music videos ever produced? I’ll bet even the most die-hard punks or metalheads will admit they’ve tapped their toe to it once or twice.
Here’s a great series of videos I found that document the making of the hit version of the song (some versions were flops) and the video that was made famous because of its extensive use of rotoscoping:
Here’s the music video, which Rolling Stone declared as one of the best music videos of all time:
If the original pop version is too catchy for you, here’s the unplugged version:
When searching for other versions of the song I came across Weezer’s version, which I admit I hadn’t heard before and had never seen the music video. It was nice to see that it also had parts of it rotoscoped, and it was even nicer to see an Apple ][ at the end (yes, I’m a geek).
I also found a swing version which I’m not a fan of, but I’ll include it for completeness:
And one more, this time by Andie Case.
If you’re a ska fan:
…or a metal fan:
And another metal version, this time by the amazing multi-instrumentalist Leo Moracchioli (also check out Leo’s Sultans of Swing cover):
Any dixieland fans?
And we’ll end with a rock version (I wonder if the Michael Jackson poster in the background diminishes the band’s street-cred at all):
There are other versions out there as well, including an extremely bad one (NSFW), Jimmy Fallon’s classroom instruments version, a ukulele version, an acoustic guitar version, and of course many live versions.
Any fans of this song? Do you remember when the video came out, and did it have an impact on you? Do you prefer any of the cover versions more than the original? Please let me know in the comments below!
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“Another day, another scam.”
That’s how the article starts, and it’s so true. If you’re a Shoppers customer and if you have their membership card, be sure to give this article a read.
You may also wish to read some of the comments on this Facebook thread.
Bottom line? Be very wary if you receive a phone call from Shopper’s and they ask for any personal information. It’s a good bet you’re being scammed.
So it was with interest that I read the article “Did Google Just Deliver A Death Blow To Waze?” this morning. Continue reading “Oh No! The Death of Waze”
Ontario has a large number of really great AQ providers, but sometimes it’s difficult finding information from them such as registration deadlines, who to contact, etc.
To help with this, I’ve created a resource which can be accessed and edited by anyone, provided you have a login account. I’ve decided to put this resource on GitHub, which is an excellent (and free) website for sharing resources and collaboration that I’m trying to teach other educators about.
Continue reading “Please Help Me with the Collaborative AQ Providers Resource for Ontario Teachers!”
Single Rider Vehicles Could Be the Future of Urban Transportation (video)