Red Bubble Art Gallery

Hey,

I've just come across a wonderful site called RedBubble - an online artist's community. If you want to see some amazing photos check it out here.

I enjoy looking at images and meditating on them as part of my quiet time with God... many of these are perfect for the purpose. I love photography... this also inspires me to get the camera out and start taking some pics!

Here's one of mine just for fun - the stuff at Red Bubble is heaps better - but of course can't copy them here due to copyright. I hope you enjoy. It's the oft photographed eilean donan castle. No water in the moat in mine though! :-)

Cheers
SB

What we've been up to......

Hi all,
BB has written a very good summary of the wonderful Agape service we were involved in last weekend - to read it look HERE.

I'll share the assembly reflections I've presented at school recently in the near future too... interesting to hear what people think!
Take care,
SB

I'm Miss Piggy!!

When I was in Grade 3 I loved The Muppets - and Miss Piggy was definately my fave!! I'm sure I still have Miss Piggy's Aerobicise album somewhere gathering dust - what a pity I no longer have a record player to play it on! :-)

You Are Miss Piggy

A total princess and diva, you're totally in charge - even if people don't know it. You want to be loved, adored, and worshiped. And you won't settle for anything less. You're going to be a total star, and you won't let any of the "little people" get in your way. Just remember, piggy, never eat more than you can lift!

The Muppet Personality Test

YouTube: The pros and cons

It's funny how you have a day where you come across one thing several times... today for me it was YouTube. I've been thinking for a while that I should check it out and hadn't got around to it. Today I've been thinking about the pros and cons of Youtube and exploring the same.

So firstly Barney Zwartz in his blog The Religious Write explored the issue of the melbourne skaters who filmed a terrible encounter with a Melbourne Catholic priest and posted it on Youtube. You can read it here. This raises all kinds of questions for me about the appropriateness of publishing material with no checks and balances. Whilst not condoning the disgraceful language used by the priest, it would seem that the kids have baited him in order to film it. They are hardly innocent here. Another incident like this happened at a Melbourne School earlier in the year when kids staged a bullying incident and put it on Youtube - the media got wind of it, blew it out of proportion and a great deal of damage was done before the kids admitted that it was a hoax. Incidents like these make me wonder about the issues related to such technology where there is no controls over what is published.

However, we had a notice from our Deputy Principal today to say that Youtube was being unblocked for staff at school (up until now it was a banned site at school) and that we were free to explore the educational possibilities. So, I've had fun finding Chinese learning tools on it tonight. Try searching "Learn Chinese" on Youtube and you'll see what I mean. Some ordinary stuff, but also some really cute videos and cartoons in CHinese, produced for teaching purposes which I'll certainly be able to use in the classroom.

So what this says to me is this: Youtube is just like MSN, Skype, Facebook, Wikipedia, and dare I say it, Blogger. All of these tools that allow people to communicate easily with people known and unknown are open for abuse and misuse. They are also wonderful tools with enormous benefits if used wisely. We need to explore these new technologies with our eyes open - and make sure the kids do the same!
SB