Bluey in the Myer Christmas Windows

After our first failed attempt to get Peter to witness the spectacular Myer Christmas Windows, we went in for a second attempt. The audio was not that good but here is our journey along the Myer Christmas Windows. You can check out the Bluey ABC website here.

Okay actually this is a video in three parts… Part one is the failed visit to see Bluey and Peter the Owl’s subsequent day out with my nieces.

After this day out, we tried for another attempt where Peter got to see the Myer Christmas Windows. It does include some lead up from the previous day and your children (or you) are not interested in seeing us munching on a borek, you can skip to the Bluey part right here.

Here is a video of Peter’s visit to the Myer Christmas Window starring Bluey. Peter wanted to share this video with children who may not have had a chance to visit Melbourne. It started with our failed first visit to the Bourke St Mall – Actually, we got there, but we were way too early for Bluey and the crew and had to come back the next day. All was not lost in that we got to sample a tasty borek at the Victoria markets as we walked down Elizabeth St.

Luckily I had my superfast bicycle so was able to get into town quickly the next day.

For those of you who don’t know Bluey, Bluey is an inexhaustible six-year-old Blue Heeler dog, who loves to play and turns everyday family life into extraordinary adventures, developing her imagination as well as her mental, physical and emotional resilience.

You can check out cool videos and activities on the ABC website, all for free.

Because we had a hoot taking Peter around, we decided to take him to Taiwan. To appreciate this video you need to have viewed the one with the nieces and fridge knocking demonstration. The large closed doors Peter is trying to open are the doors into the main memorial hall for Chiang Kai Shek in Taipei which were shut on the day we first visited. Just some silliness.

One of the reasons I like writing blog articles and creating videos or collages from the photographs I take on the trips that we make is that the skills learned or practised carrying out these tasks are translatable to the classroom. Multimedia storytelling is my favourite way of sharing a story. It might be an audio only podcast or a YouTube style vodcast or produced video in premiere pro or a blog article combining words pictures, sounds and moving images just like this one.

Of course I love travelling and capturing images and stories about that travel. With every story that’s created and shared there are skills that sometimes have to be learned but definitely need to be practised in order to create something that people are going to want to listen to or watch.

Where is this blog is the destination for the story my learnshifting.com blog is the destination for the behind the scenes experiments and practise that go into bringing these stories to your screen. I purposely try a variety of applications and techniques because I’m constantly looking for tools that will make a difference in the classroom. This is both from a teaching point of view and also from a content creation perspective.

This is also why I consider our travels to be a kind of quest. Of course part of that quest is to enjoy yourself and I enjoy myself by learning new things. Those new things maybe about the places that we visit, their natural beauty, the cultures and histories that are woven through those lands. Part of the learning is also how to capture and share that using the tools that are available while we’re on the road and also after we return to our home. Experiencing the technical challenges of being on the road and trying to produce content is different but similar to a teacher trying to use technology in a classroom of 30 students.

I’ll let you guess what my preferred choice is.

So in this series on Taiwan the tools that I use are of course from the Adobe suite of products and I can narrow that down to Premiere Pro, Audition, Adobe Express and Lightroom. Techsmith’s Snagit along with Plasq’s Comic Life are two other slightly obscure tools that I use to create my stories. My WordPress blogs other preferred repository for my stories and if I had access to a larger Vimeo account I would use that in preference to YouTube. The icloud storage system and apple ecosystem provides me with comfort and flexibility as I capture photos and videos and having a limitless SIM card to use when overseas makes life so much easier for backup and communication.

Livecode provides me with a programming language to build tools to assist with my imaging workflow.

Microsoft 365 and Windows forms the communication and operating system background I use on a daily basis.

I struggle with the social media options including Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, YouTube, Linkedin… I don’t do TikTok or Wechat. My struggle is that I am not an influencer and have a day job so I can’t live on these formats. The famous saying (for me anyway) “Catch bait or fish” I translate to making the choice to live your best life enjoying the moment rather than creating moments for others. “Aha hypocritical are you!” My jedi master spidey sense picks up… No, I do this to keep my skills relevant so I can share professionally with my colleagues. No apology for loving what I do and if it looks like a busman’s holiday – it never feels like one. I remember capturing getting my first Covid Jab in the Royal Exhibition Centre in Melbourne and a young person looked at me and asked if I was a vlogger… I don’t think I have ever felt so proud. Doesn’t matter if it is calving glaciers in Argentina, a fast lap over grasslands in my ultralight or eating a borek hot from the ovens of Victoria Markets – it is the transformation process from analog experience to digital memory and all of the thinking that packages something that might be a travel story without a call to action on one level, offering a break from work related accolades and achievements, or maybe an unspoken work-life balance message for some and then for the educators how they might incorporate a quest into a school excursion or their own holiday…

I digress…

Whereas before I would take a DSLR camera with me on trips now it is one GoPro camera and an iPhone. My entire studio along with wallet and passport fits inside a bum bag. This is pretty handy because when we travel we only carry a backpack. So if you are interested in the tech side of our stories as much as the places we visit I recommend you check out learnshifting.com which is not just about technology associated with their travels but also practical technology that you can use in the classroom as it does have an education focus related to my day job.

None of these sites have a commercial connection and I have no affiliation with any of the vendors with the exception that I am a volunteer Adobe education leader with Adobe and quite proud of that recognition. My opinions about products, solutions etc are mine and not necessarily that of my employer – although it is fair to say that it would be silly for me to work somewhere that doesn’t share many of my thoughts on education technology. 🙂

I don’t own any shares in any tech companies I talk about and the direct shares in companies I have purchased with the exception of some etf shares have been a sad experiment confirming that my strengths do not lay in the stock market.

That said, I do recommend your children and if you are as good at investing as I am read any or all of the barefoot investor books or subscribe to his blog posts. You can google it if interested.

There will be more posts coming covering our recent trip to Taiwan and here is a comic life screen shot from a draft story…

Stay tuned…