Monday, June 5, 2017

Today is a good day to try something new

I don't wear makeup - not because I'm a natural beauty, although that's what my husband tells me, but because I never learned how. My mom, bless her heart, blinks rapidly when anything goes near her eye, so applying anything like eye shadow, mascara, or eye liner was nearly impossible for her. My daughter was complaining about being mistaken for a boy by strangers, so we decided that one possible solution was to try wearing makeup, and that meant learning to wear makeup. On the weekend, we headed to Sephora at the mall to get a tutorial. Romina was our makeup artist / coach and she was wonderful! We decided to go very simple and discover the wonders of eye liner. Romina explained the two main types (pencil and liquid). She answered our questions, showed us how to apply it, and provided tips on how to put it on. She used a different tool and technique on my daughter than she did with me, because we are two very different people (with 30 years between us). Romina even let me try to finish one of my eyes myself, providing feedback as I made the attempt. Here's the results.

Fresh eyes, courtesy of Sephora!

A selfie of me wearing (gasp) eyeliner!
After returning from our adventure, a new one awaited me on my computer. My good friend Lisa Noble tagged me online and encouraged me to add to this fun Flipgrid, singing a song for a Feel Good compilation. Flipgrid is an easy way to crowd source short videos for a topic. Would you do karaoke for the world to see? It helps that a) I used to sing at weddings and funerals, and b) in university, my friends and I would spend many an evening at our favourite pub singing karaoke. (My signature song back then was "These Boots are Made for Walking".) I'm not sure if I know how to embed it in my blog, but here's the link (and the initial tweet mentioning the link) below.



What do these two events have to do with education? It's all in my blog post title - today can be a great day to try something new. Now that (hopefully) all the curriculum requirements have been covered, evaluated and reported, we still have a few weeks left with our students. Instead of playing DVDs for them to watch, why not try some activities that you've heard about but never had the time or inclination to try before? On last week's #tdsbEd chat, Arianne Lambert and Larissa Aradj led a session on green screen technology. I've done green screen before, but it's always educational participating in this Twitter chat so I jumped in  and learned something new - how to do green screen with Google Suite tools! Here's my sample attempt.

It can be scary, or anxiety-provoking, or nerve-wracking, but think about what might be possible. At my school, we are going to try running a fashion show (on June 15) to honour some of the outfits created by our Grade 1-5 learners during the second term of media studies. This is a new endeavour for all of us (although I modelled briefly when I used to participate in baton twirling competitions) and I'm excited to try this (and wearing makeup semi-regularly!)

2 comments:

  1. Oh, you are so an inhabitant of my planet. Thank you for being brave, and trying new things. You need to teach me how to do the green screen Google Suite thing.
    The experience of the Flipgrid yesterday also made me realize how singing is that big, scary thing for so many people. Part of me wonders whether too many people got told they couldn't sing somewhere along the way. Maybe it's not just try something new, but try something again.

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  2. Great post and great push to try new things! Loved your Flipgrid karaoke; I sat back and watched all of you and finally jumped in when I thought, what the heck? So thank you! ox

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