#Epic selfie around the world

What a fantastic video to use in class when talking about 'The Multicultural World'! Why not ask your students to try to identify the 36 countries where the guy in the video has taken such fantastic selfies? I'm sure enthusiasm, and a little bit of jealousy, will spread along the class and you'll have fantastic moments of interaction with your students, especially if they are privileged enough to have already traveled around some countries!...

To contextualize the adventure, you might like to take a look at this interview with Alex Chacon, the lucky globe trekker, for CBS, or look into Chacon's blog The Modern Motorcycle Diaries, which has fantastic pictures of this beautiful planet! 

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#Global Selfie for Earth Day

#Global Selfie for Earth Day

Today is Earth Day and NASA is asking us something very special: take a selfie, post it online and NASA will use it to create a mosaic image of Earth. This is how it works: 

'NASA today is asking fans to submit their photos for the agency's Earth Day #GlobalSelfie effort. NASA has plenty of satellite images of our planet taken high above the Earth, but "for Earth Day we are trying to create an image of Earth from the ground up while also fostering a collection of portraits of the people of Earth." "Get outside and show us mountains, parks, the sky, rivers, lakes - wherever you are, there's your picture," NASA said. Spell out where you are using rocks, sand, or a print-out from NASA's website, which is available in several languages. Post your photo to Twitter, Instagram, or Google+ using the hashtag #GlobalSelfie, or post it to the #GlobalSelfie event page on Facebook or the #GlobalSelfie group on Flickr. Once the images are collected, NASA will "create a mosaic image of Earth - a new 'Blue Marble' built bit by bit with your photos."

"NASA scientists have helped identify thousands of new planets out in the universe in recent years. But the space agency studies no planet more closely than our own," the agency said. "On this Earth Day, we wanted to create a different picture of our planet - a crowd-sourced collection of snapshots of the people of Earth that we could use to create one unique mosaic of the Blue Marble." (Source: pcmag.com)

Well, I didn't miss the call, so here goes my selfie, taken this afternoon with my schoolmate Gorete Borges, at PineTree School, 

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I couldn't finish this series of posts about the 2014 Oscars, without mentioning that hilarious and unique moment when Ellen DeGeneres took a selfie with some of the celebrities at the Academy Awards Ceremony. It was a very informal and funny moment, rather unusual in that kind of ceremony that made  me love watching it live more than ever. Yep! I was one of those that stayed up until dawn, 5 a.m., Western European time, to watch the whole show live! And one of the techies that immediately retweeted the selfie, as Ellen challenged the audience to make it the most retweeted image ever! And WE did it! The photo was retweeted more than 2.5 million times within a matter of hours - a record, surpassing the one held by President Barack Obama's photo, embracing the First Lady when he won the American Presidential elections for the second time.

The picture was taken by Bradley Cooper, star of American Hustle,
not by DeGeneres herself, and was posted the@TheEllenShow Twitter account,
which the audience at home could  immediately see on their phones,
or the tablet computers on their laps.

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2013 is nearly over and I wouldn't like to finish this year's posts without mentioning two events that usually strike my attention: the election of the 'Person of the Year' by Time Magazine, and 'The International Word of the Year' by the Oxford Dictionaries.

'Pope Francis has been named Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2013. Pope Francis, who gained world praise in 2013, became the first Jesuit pope in March 2013 following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. Time's managing editor Nancy Gibbs explained the magazine's choice, calling the Pope 'a new voice of conscience. In his nine months in office, he has placed himself at the very center of the central conversations of our time, about wealth and poverty, fairness and justice, transparency, modernity, globalization, the role of women, the nature of marriage, the temptations of power,' she said. 'When he kisses the face of a disfigured man or washes the feet of a Muslim woman, the image resonates far beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church.' Read the full article HERE. As usual, cartoonists portray these venues in a very hilarious catchy way.

A cartoon by Randy Bish

'On November 19th, 2013, the Oxford Dictionaries announced SELFIE as the international Word of the Year 2013. The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a word or expression that has attracted a great deal of interest during the year to date. Language research conducted by Oxford Dictionaries editors reveals that the frequency of the word selfie in the English language has increased by 17,000% since this time last year.' You might like to continue reading HERE. TIME Magazine also presented an article on this matter, entitled: Word of the Year 2013 - Twerk was robbed!'

As for me, 'selfie' is the well deserved winner of this title, due to its popularity in the social web. James Franco discloses 'The meanings of Selfie' in a fantastic opinion article for The New York Times: «We all have different reasons for posting them, but, in the end, selfies are avatars, mini-Me’s that we send out to give others a sense of who we are. In our age of social networking, the selfie is the new way to look someone right in the eye and say, 'Hello, this is me.'» Read the full article HERE. Selfies have become so popular that every celebrity takes and posts lots of them either on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. But what were this year's most viral selfies? The first ever 'Papal selfie' and the 'Obama selfie incident' at Nelson Mandela's memorial service, respectively.

Pope Francis has his picture taken inside St. Peter's Basilica with youths from the
Italian Diocese of Piacenza and Bobbio. Photo: AP

Michelle Obama looks away as (L-R) British Prime Minister David Cameron, Danish
Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and US President Barack Obama take a selfie
 Photo: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

The phenomenon has become so intense that even Nativity scenes haven't escaped the 'selfie' craze.

A cartoon by Blower for Daily Telegraph

As a 'selfie' practitioner, I love this topic! I think these self portrays are a very funny amusing way of taking pictures, either of yourself, your family and friends, and even your pets! I take loads of them, and I can assure you those 'selfies' taken with the ones I love are moments/memories that I dearly treasure! Having said this, I hope you have had a Merry Little Christmas, and that you were on Santa's good list!

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