Some visual material my classes and I have enjoyed recently:
Video
- The opposite of sucking on helium.
- High speed skateboarding down Claremont Canyon in Berkeley, CA.
- A shockingly elegant skateboard reel, the first thirty seconds of which are required viewing for my graduate course in vodcasting. The silhouette photography makes the rest of it eminently watchable also
Sorry, but I have to make sure you understand how valuable it is that my RSS reader has pushed me a skateboarding reel which my students – some of which students will insist they have seen every skateboarding reel released to DVD or YouTube – have never seen. Or how much classroom management capital it buys me that I can point to a specific shot – sincerely – as my favorite, that I can ask them – sincerely – for their favorite. Wish my ed classes had included some coursework in “Pedagogically Profitable Ways To Kill Time.” . - Mushrooms and mold growing very quickly.
- A UK schoolgirl breaks a Guinness World Record for balancing the most snails on her face at one time, remains unkissed for decades, inspires several of my students to take up snail hunting.
Photo
- We’ve been on something of an Iceland kick lately.
- Plus Dubai, and the Burj, the tallest skyscraper in the world.
- Brittny Badger rips appliances apart and puts ’em under glass. Probably tore the wings off flies as a kid too. (I mean, maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. Is it so wrong to suggest she did? Just tossing it out there. Maybe the voting public picks it up. Maybe I clean up the next news cycle. Can’t hurt to try.)
4 Comments
Kate
September 16, 2008 - 1:32 pm -Where do you find this stuff? Do you have a way to have your reader return keyword results?
Unfortunately youtube and vimeo are blocked at school (no end of frustration, there), but me and my projector will be jumping all over those exploded small appliances.
Snails on face, not so sure.
dan
September 16, 2008 - 2:01 pm -Lessee. There’s a few from Boing Boing there, a few from Coudal. I dunno. I cast a wide net when my RSS reader. I’ll do a better job noting my sources from here.
Ben
September 19, 2008 - 10:45 am -I haven’t been doing my little “fun breaks” much yet due to my busy-ness starting up at a new school, but this helped me realize how good of a relationship building exercise it can be. Definitely worth the 5+ minutes of non-academic work.
I’ve come across a couple fun photosets that I thought you might enjoy as well:
1. AgeMaps: Two photos of the same person spliced together, one photo as a child, one as an adult. Interesting & weird at the same time.
2. Mystery Meat Macrophotography: Extreme close ups to salami and breakfast sausage. A little gross factor here. Might make vegetarians of ’em.
Ben
September 19, 2008 - 10:46 am -Crap. Poor html skillz.
Here’s the link for AgeMaps: http://www.bobbyneeladams.com/age3.html