Forget the stairs - take the slide to the platform - CTA Tattler

Forget the stairs - take the slide to the platform - CTA Tattler

humm... not bad

have a great summer

james

BBC News - Gaming moves in 3D direction at E3 expo

BBC News - Gaming moves in 3D direction at E3 expo:

"Gaming moves in 3D direction at E3 expo"

this is the clickonline BBC program... some great IT news reports... this is about the Kinect (Natal) project from Microsoft... to play and control your game console without using a remote just your body!

have a great summer...

maybe lunch before then???
thanks for the lovely brunch!

james

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

here is a play-list of some songs with lyrics....

have a great summer

james

Renny Gleeson on antisocial phone tricks | Video on TED.com

Renny Gleeson on antisocial phone tricks | Video on TED.com:

Diane spoke of the Ted conferences in today's class (and she brought delicious brownies and cupcakes!). Unfortunately not everyone was there to enjoy them.

Next class is in two weeks and we'll have a guest, an expert in intercultural workplaces. I'll send Tanneguy our guest's biodata so you can introduce him.

Today we worked on an article from Fortune magazine... about linkedin! I'll send you the pdf of the extended article. Hope you'll read all of it!

As promised, here is a short Ted talk (4 minutes) for those of you that enjoy sending texto's and tweets even in social situations!

have a great elevator weekend
james

"In this funny (and actually poignant) 3-minute talk, social strategist Renny Gleeson breaks down our always-on social world -- where the experience we're having right now is less interesting than what we'll tweet about it later."

American Experience | Summer of Love | PBS

American Experience | Summer of Love | PBS

We didn't continue this yesterday but worked more on Norman Rockwell and his American images... nevertheless you might enjoy watching pieces of this!

This afternoon at 3:15 in F900 do come to hear Jan , Lela, Deborah and me. We're talking about American civilization (in French!) and I'm doing a part on American symbols...

YouTube - StanfordUniversity's Channel

YouTube - StanfordUniversity's Channel

here is where we listened to Steve Jobs telling three stories about his life! Very different from the shows we usually see!

An audio book about Dublin!

James Joyce's "The Dubliners":

"The Boarding House (Part One) from the Dubliners...
being read to you!

And here's the e-text... Don't understand a word? Just click on it!

see you tomorrow

james

The Real Canadian Songbook

A collection of ESL Video

In Canada they sing too! Not only in Ireland!

Quizzes for students interested in popular songs by Canadian artists.

A collection of ESL Video Quizzes for students interested in popular songs by Canadian artists.

YouTube - Dublin - 10 Things You Need To Know

YouTube - Dublin - 10 Things You Need To Know: "Dublin - 10 Things You Need To Know"

Don't watch it!

YouTube - U2 - Beautiful Day (with Lyrics)

YouTube - U2 - Beautiful Day (with Lyrics): "U2 - Beautiful Day (with Lyrics)"

maybe you want to listen to this....

YouTube - Discover Ireland Weekend in Dublin in Second Life

YouTube - Discover Ireland Weekend in Dublin in Second Life

This is a pretty nice video of a concert in Second Life Dublin!

I thought we could visit SL Dublin on Tuesday morning but doubt we'll find such a joyful crowd on a workday!

See you there!

james

YouTube - William Tell Overture-Mom Style (w/ lyrics)

YouTube - William Tell Overture-Mom Style (w/ lyrics):


"William Tell Overture-Mom Style (w/ lyrics)"

Happy Mother's Day!

Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen | Video on TED.com

Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen | Video on TED.com:

"Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen"

This is an interesting look at statistics!

Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos Photosynth | Video on TED.com

Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos Photosynth | Video on TED.com:

"Blaise Aguera y Arcas leads a dazzling demo of Photosynth, software that could transform the way we look at digital images. Using still photos culled from the Web, Photosynth builds breathtaking dreamscapes and lets us navigate them"

For those of us that love photos! and it's now subtitled!
james

TED Blog: TED's Open Translation Project brings subtitles in 40 languages to TED.com:

cool!

"'TED’s mission is to spread good thinking globally, and so it’s high time we began reaching out to the 4.5 billion people on the planet who don't speak English,' says TED Curator Chris Anderson. “We’re excited to be using a bottom-up, open-source approach that will in time allow all our talks to be translated into all the world’s languages. A web-empowered revolution in global education is under way. We’re not far from the day when anyone on Earth can directly access the world’s great teachers speaking to them in their own language. How cool is that?'"

TED Blog: TED's Open Translation Project brings subtitles in 40 languages to TED.com

TED Blog: TED's Open Translation Project brings subtitles in 40 languages to TED.com:

cool!

"'TED’s mission is to spread good thinking globally, and so it’s high time we began reaching out to the 4.5 billion people on the planet who don't speak English,' says TED Curator Chris Anderson. “We’re excited to be using a bottom-up, open-source approach that will in time allow all our talks to be translated into all the world’s languages. A web-empowered revolution in global education is under way. We’re not far from the day when anyone on Earth can directly access the world’s great teachers speaking to them in their own language. How cool is that?'"

presenting in English... ppt to download and view

Some of you have asked for help with upcoming presentations in English.... ;-)

Here you have a short presentation inspired by Mark Powell's book "Presenting in English". It's a book with lots of helpful advice and vocabulary and that I use a lot with my professional communication classes.

Go through it and let me know what you think!

see you soon!

james

Final Short-list - The Best Job In The World

Final Short-list - The Best Job In The World

We talked about this earlier in the semester! In 13 hours they'll announce the winner! (Tomorrow... Wednesday!) Have a look at the finalists' videos! There's even a Frenchman! The Indian, Anjaan is good too!

How about a comment! (hint, hint...)

james

Everyone at Tourism Queensland is very excited to announce that these Final 16 Applicants will be coming to Hamilton Island from May 3 to 6 for The Best Job in the World’s final selection process. You can get to know our final applicants by viewing their profiles.

YouTube - Matt Confesses: Where the Hell is Matt? Video an 'Elaborate Hoax'

YouTube - Matt Confesses: Where the Hell is Matt? Video an 'Elaborate Hoax': "Matt Confesses: Where the Hell is Matt? Video an 'Elaborate Hoax'"

"Where the Hell is Matt?" Here is Matt explaining his project! Is it really a hoax?

YouTube - Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)

YouTube - Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)

This is the video that Jean-Michel wanted to share with us all.

comments??

more soon

james

UbuWeb

UbuWeb: "Search UbuWeb

UbuWeb is a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts.

Matthew Childs' 9 life lessons from rock climbing - 1 Translation(s) | dotSUB

Matthew Childs' 9 life lessons from rock climbing - 1 Translation(s) | dotSUB:

Games people play!
I promised to send this to some of you... It's about life, not just rock climbing...

(Notice that it's a TEDtalk on the dotsub.com site so it's subtitled for you!)

"In this talk from TED University 2009, veteran rock climber Matthew Childs shares nine pointers for rock climbing. These handy tips bear on an effective life at sea level, too."

hope to see you all soon

james and lorna

Susan Boyle...

YouTube - Susan Boyle - Singer - Britains Got Talent 2009 (With Lyrics)

here is the video that we watched this morning.... and here's the link to the NY Times article....

Is this instant celebrity a passing fad?

What do you think? How about leaving a comment?

Sorry that some of you had to miss the session....

Twitter in Plain English on dotSUB.com

Twitter in Plain English - 61 Translation(s) | dotSUB:

Micro-blogging for the rest of all.... gadget or tool?

We watched this (subtitled) explanation at the end of class this morning. The CommonCraft collection presents lots of things in "plain English".
Remember, more and more interesting videos are subtitled on the dotsub.com site!

Have a good week! james

"So, what are you doing? It's one of the first questions we often ask friends and family.
Even if the answer is just mowing the lawn or cooking dinner, it's interesting to us.
It makes us feel connected and part of each other's lives.
Unfortunately, most of our day to day lives are hidden from people that care.
Of course we have email and blogs and phones to keep us connected.
But you wouldn't send an email to a friend to tell them you're having coffee.
Your friend doesn't need to know that.
But, what about the people that want to know about the little things that happen in your life?
Real life happens between blog posts and emails. And now, there's a way to share.
This is Twitter in Plain English."

Clare, Taiwan - The Best Job In The World

Clare, Taiwan - The Best Job In The World

Clare is the wildcard candidate, chosen by visitors to the page with the short-listed candidates... She is among the 11 finalists to be announced on April 2... for the Best Job in the World...

CORPORA: 100-385 million words each: free online access

CORPORA: 100-385 million words each: free online searchable access

an interesting place to see how English words are really used...

(also Spanish and Portuguese corpera)

see you next Tuesday...

remember to let me know if you're coming or not...

nonplussed - definition of nonplussed by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

nonplussed - definition of nonplussed by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.


here are some nice words when you feel a little perplexed... or baffeled or nonplussed...

CORPORA: 100-385 million words each: free online access

We talked about how you can see how words like "freak" or "nonplussed" are being used today thanks to online corpora....

interesting.... what do you think?
---------------

CORPORA: 100-385 million words each: free online access: "ONLINE CORPORA

The following are some of the freely-available linguistic corpora that have been created by Mark Davies, Professor of Corpus Linguistics at Brigham Young University."

This is my favorite: http://www.americancorpus.org/

The corpus is composed of more than 385 million words in more than 150,000 texts, including 20 million words each year from 1990-2008. For each year (and therefore overall, as well), the corpus is evenly divided between the five genres of spoken, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, and academic journals. The texts come from a variety of sources:

• Spoken: (79 million words) Transcripts of unscripted conversation from more than 150 different TV and radio programs (examples: All Things Considered (NPR), Newshour (PBS), Good Morning America (ABC), Today Show (NBC), 60 Minutes (CBS), Hannity and Colmes (Fox), Jerry Springer, etc). [See notes on the naturalness and authenticity of the language from these transcripts).

• Fiction: (76 million words) Short stories and plays from literary magazines, children’s magazines, popular magazines, first chapters of first edition books 1990-present, and movie scripts.

• Popular Magazines: (81 million words) Nearly 100 different magazines, with a good mix (overall, and by year) between specific domains (news, health, home and gardening, women, financial, religion, sports, etc). A few examples are Time, Men’s Health, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Fortune, Christian Century, Sports Illustrated, etc.

• Newspapers: (76 million words) Ten newspapers from across the US, including: USA Today, New York Times, Atlanta Journal Constitution, San Francisco Chronicle, etc. In most cases, there is a good mix between different sections of the newspaper, such as local news, opinion, sports, financial, etc.

• Academic Journals: (76 million words) Nearly 100 different peer-reviewed journals. These were selected to cover the entire range of the Library of Congress classification system (e.g. a certain percentage from B (philosophy, psychology, religion), D (world history), K (education), T (technology), etc.), both overall and by number of words per year"

What is BlogThis! ? - Blogger Help

What is BlogThis! ? - Blogger Help

how you can quickly post something to our blog!

TED's new translation program using dotSUB - introduced by June Cohen TED 09 - 5 Translation(s) | dotSUB

TED's new translation program using dotSUB - introduced by June Cohen TED 09 - 5 Translation(s) | dotSUB


this is great news... Ted talks will be subtitled!!!

YouTube - Top Ten Super Bowl Ads 2008 - Commercials from Super Bowl 42

YouTube - Top Ten Super Bowl Ads 2008 - Commercials from Super Bowl 42:


"Top Ten Super Bowl Ads 2008 - Commercials from Super Bowl 42" Here's the exercise we did today!

james

YouTube - Oprah Winfrey's 2008 Stanford Commencement Address

YouTube - Oprah Winfrey's 2008 Stanford Commencement Address

here's another pretty good commencement speech! the "cc" are the subtitles...

james

YouTube - Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

YouTube - Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address


this is really inspiring... be hungry and foolish

The Inauguration of President Barack Obama - The Big Picture - Boston.com

The Inauguration of President Barack Obama - The Big Picture - Boston.com:

Jean-Michel found this great collection of photos and suggested I share it with the group.... Voilà.
Have a nice strike day tomorrow!
james

"Yesterday was a historic day. On January 20th, 2009, Barack H. Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America - the first African-American ever to hold the office of U.S. Commander-in-Chief. The event was witnessed by well over one million attendees in chilly Washington D.C., and by many millions more through coverage on television and the Internet. Collected here are photographs of the event, the participants, and some of the witnesses around the world. (48 photos total)"

How To Behave At The Office Christmas Party (Modern Manners: Party Etiquette)

How To Behave At The Office Christmas Party (Modern Manners: Party Etiquette):

How to behave at the office Christmas party: VideoJug presents a guide on how to survive that inevitable Christmas ritual of the office party. We show you how to behave at the office Christmas party.


This is a little Christmas present for you. I gave you the script this morning, but you can also read it online.

merry happy

james

(you can leave a comment to say if you think it's funny!)

The IT Crowd - Yesterday's Jam

The IT Crowd - Yesterday's Jam:

"The IT Crowd - Yesterday's Jam"
This is the British sitcom we began watching this morning ...

And here is the BBC website with the script of the first episode...
http://www.theitcrowd.co.uk/script/



happy holidays!

james

listening comprehension

listening comprehension games...

songs and youtube videos.... with some interactive gapfills!

I particularly like Don McLean's "Vincent" there's a "gap fill" game to play to see if you understand!
(Patricia might like it too....)
james

"Sometimes, you will have to jump back to stop the video if it’s too fast for your writing - and we advise you to watch the video!

Warning - close one video before opening the next!"

TED.com - Johnny Lee demos Wii Remote hacks | dotSUB

TED.com - Johnny Lee demos Wii Remote hacks | dotSUB:

"Building sophisticated educational tools out of cheap parts, Johnny Lee demos his cool Wii Remote hacks"


Games people play.... with Wii Remotes!

This TED talk has subtitles!

see you tomorrow, james

interesting or lame?

Deirdre’s phone call

Highlights and vocabulary

What is the most British:
The Queen has been on the throne a long time. The Royal family is very British.
Fish and chips, though a survey showed that most British people prefer very spicy curry.
The climate is becoming more French or Continental. England has a unique climate system.

The pace of life is quick/fast/commercial.

In London, she likes the art, theatre and food.
Her stepson is half French.

She’s involved in a choir. She goes to the gym. She’s part of the Lion’s Club.

She eats porridge, made of oats or a fruit smoothie.

I don’t like beer, but I like Guinness, it’s not beer, it’s a stout.

A tea break at 4pm.

She goes to a capital city each year. Perhaps, she’ll come to Paris for a romantic weekend.

The City of London is the financial center of London. Her building is close to Lloyds. You would know it, because it has all the piping on the outside.

She’s an accounts manager for a company who deals with outsourcing to manage insurance companies’ back offices. We run their back office for them. We have operations in India and France and Germany, so we’re quite widespread. I don’t travel; I stick to the City of London. I thrive on having plenty to do. I try to insure that a particular relationship remains stable.

IE Global: Freeze Events in London and Toronto at Improv Everywhere

IE Global: Freeze Events in London and Toronto at Improv Everywhere

here is London! frozen for just 5 minutes....

Frozen Grand Central at Improv Everywhere

Frozen Grand Central at Improv Everywhere:

a quick return to NYC

"On a cold Saturday in New York City, the world’s largest train station came to a sudden halt. Over 200 Improv Everywhere Agents froze in place at the exact same second for five minutes in the Main Concourse of Grand Central Station. Over 500,000 people rush through Grand Central every day, but today, things slowed down just a bit as commuters and tourists alike stopped to notice what was happening around them. Enjoy the video first and then go behind the scenes with our mission report and photos."

Doodle: our TGIF intensives

Doodle: our TGIF intensives

here is the doodle.ch site that will help us plan our sessions... please go to the site and edit your entry so we know who'll be there...

next session is Feb 19th.... depending on the numbers we'll either do a full day or a half day...

see you then..

YouTube - Friends - Going to London

YouTube - Friends - Going to London

sorry that some of our friends aren't making it on our trip to London tomorrow! hopefully you'll be there for the second leg of our trip!

james

Di_and_Ralph.jpg (JPEG Image, 1016x677 pixels)

Di_and_Ralph.jpg (JPEG Image, 1016x677 pixels)

Pearly Kings and Queens
wikipedia...
(feminine form Pearly Queen) is a person dressed in a traditional cockney costume covered in mother-of-pearl buttons. These costumes were treasured heirlooms, hand made and sometime representing much of a family's material worth.

Traffic's Pearly Queen on YouTube

Weekend in Hollywood - The New York Times > Travel > Slide Show > Slide 15 of 15

Weekend in Hollywood - The New York Times > Travel > Slide Show > Slide 15 of 15 Lots of cool pics of the inside of Hollywood.

Marjorie Valbrun - Will They Play the Race Card? - washingtonpost.com

Marjorie Valbrun - Will They Play the Race Card? - washingtonpost.com The article we discussed about Hillary's views on race...

the dhlovelife show | exploring inspirational and cutting-edge developments in green culture and lifestyle

the dhlovelife show | exploring inspirational and cutting-edge developments in green culture and lifestyle We watched Weeks 9, 10 and 12 on the South Central Farm. There are lots of other great podcasts from Darryl Hannah here.

US political debates -- video & interactive transcripts

Politics on the Internet! Who will be the next president of the US? Judge for yourself...

Also... how online media is different from the traditional print media.
comments??
happy new year.

class next Tuesday Jan 15 9:30 -- 17:00


james


Republican Debate in New Hampshire Jan 5th, 2008 - The New York Times

Democratic Debate in New Hampshire

-------------------------

Video and interactive transcripts!

--------------------------

Republican Debate: December 12th -- Iowa

Democratic Debate December 13th, Iowa

------------------

Republican Debate November 28th

Democratic Debate November 15th

YouTube - 老媽子之歌

YouTube - a mother's day... from dawn to dusk!

merry and happy

New York...lyrics Nina Hagen

New York City is the hottest place
For a honeymoon in a hotel room
New York City is my favorite place
'Cause I know so many people with a golden face
Uh-huh

It's always late at night when I wanna go out
And New York City has for sure the horniest crowd
Especially for me, this is true,
I have the best time when you're there too
Honey, after the show, when we are ready to go
We are going disco
But before we hit East 7th Street
We are going to another disco
Disco after disco
And shaking our hair to the disco rap
AMPM, Pyramid, Roxy, Mudd Club, Danceteria
The newest club is opening up (repeat x3)

New York, New York (repeat x4)
Yeah!

New York City is the hottest place
For a honeymoon in a hotel room
Uh-huh
New York City is a place so nice
Everybody says it so they had to name it twice
New York my happy love's you, I love you very much
I could not live without you, so let's always keep in touch
New York City has the fanciest rule
When you want to live in this town you just have to be a fool

After the show when we are ready to go
We are going disco
But before we hit East 7th Street
We are going to another disco
Disco, after disco
And shaking our hair to the disco rap
AMPM, Pyramid, Roxy, Mudd Club, Danceteria
The newest club is opening up (repeat x3)

New York, New York (repeat x8)
Yeah

It's going hop hop hop hop hop hop
Straight up to the top
Hop hop hop hop hop hop
Straight up to the top
Let there be light
'Cause David Bowie's gonna be here tonight in New York
I create ecstacy in my world
I know who I am
And I am willing to declare myself to the world
I am a star!
I

New York City... the Big Apple

New York, New York!