“Closest I’ve come to going out with friends in a long time!” – “THANK you for everyone’s lovely energy and enthusiasm. You are an amazing community!” – “Thanks for a lovely evening everyone!”
Thanks to everyone who came along to our party and joined in. Many countries were represented (including Jennifer from NYC and Kevin in Poland) – ALL Committee member Liz managed to come hotfoot from a real time Christmas concert (such envy!) – the array of Christmas costumes was impressive (Kerry’s possibly the classiest!) and the appearance of the occasional pets (introduced by Natasha and Judy) made us feel even more ‘at home’.
Special thanks to those who put together games and songs:
Ester Borin – created a lovely collage of assorted Bitmojis [could you match the Bitmmoji to the person?!] – then gave us a fun activity / lesson in using Mentimeter – including a new voting facilty. She shared the strangest Catalan scatological tradition!
Laura Danese – provided two delightful Italian Christmas songs which mean so much to her as they remind her of her childhood: Tu scendi dalle stelle (text here) and Bianco Natale (White Christmas) with Text here. Laura was moved to see us all singing along – music has such power to stir emotions (and fix language of course!). As Judith said – ‘Grazie, Laura. It is special to hear this and enjoy this all together here in this wonderful community, more so this year when it is impossible to go home.’ Here is an up-dated PowerPoint with YouTube links, Italian and English. Italian Christmas songs
Julia Morris – what a great Textivate Matching Exercise featuring incredible pictures of cats and clever, hilarious captions! Julia has a knack for finding the most imaginative uses for the tech available. Thanks to everyone who took part in the challenge including Marie Odile, Morgane, Sarah and Uxia.
Steven Fawkes – after revealing his special ‘Christmas shirt’ which drew shrieks of admiration, we were privileged enough to witness a Steven Fawkes premiere of his own cover of ‘White Christmas’ (homework set by Rachel) -multilingual, clever, appropriate .. oh, just so many adjectives! And clever Sophie Mills was the first to rise to the challenge of the information gap, supplying the phrase to describe all those Santas (answer not given here so we can challenge others next year …!). Kevin Dunne wants it to represent us at Eurovison, and Jo Barber wants it to go towards evidence for a Speaking Endorsement. Judith Rifeser has declared this our ‘anthem’ to be sung every year – a constant in our ALL lives! [For the record (!), Rachel awarded Steven 10/10 for his homework.]
Danièle Bourdais – A special ‘Who wants to be a British Citizen?’ game, in which Dr Rachel Hawkes and ‘the company’ were faced by the frankly ridiculous questions people have to answer! The decision was unanimous: Rachel must remain a British Citizen. (Tho’ Rachel declared she would be quite happy to to go to Spain actually!) Thanks for enlightening us Danièle (even if it did raise our blood pressure!), and thanks for being such an important part of our community! Here’s the PowerPoint millionnaire british citizen V3 if you want to relive our fury or if you fancy having a template for a game which can be guaranteed to elicit plentiful Communication and Interaction along with many opinions and justifications!! (Most of them communicating incredulity …!)
Helen McFarlane – What a pleasure to hear Helen recite the words of a Welsh Christmas song before playing it to us on YouTube
Here’s the text:
Helen says: ‘The story of Hedd Wyn is very moving and a real call to peace between all nations. The harp is a lovely instrument. Several of my students play and sing, keeping local Welsh musical traditions well and truly alive.’ Helen told us how important it is to her to show respect for her community by learning its beautiful, ancient language. And of course, the music stirred memories and emotions – this time of university days for Jo. Judy is adding it to her Christmas playlist – the first Christmas song in Welsh she has ever heard.
Richard Margerison – though unable to be with us, Richard did his usual sterling job of providing entertaining questions for us. Thank you! We did two of the four rounds – so have some spare for next time!
Joe Dale – offering helpful tech tips throughout (e.g./ insert a hyphen after the ‘t’ in any YouTube address to enter full screen and hide history / suggestions – really appreciated by Laura Howes – ‘awesome tip’) and trying out his newly discovered ‘buzzer’ games which we will all be using next week! Cosmobuzz worked well, but we need to spend longer trying to work out the one which awards points: Gamenight buzzer.
And thanks to ‘the company’ for the lovely chat and the general warm, supportive atmosphere.
To end with Helen Macfarlane’s words:
Nadolig Llawen! Joyeux Noel! Herzliche Weihnachtsgrüße! Feliz Navidad! Buon Natale!
Party Pics
Ready ….
Set ….
Go!
Your challenge: To find ‘The Escape Room Gang’ – Adeline, Esmeralda, Ester, Helen, Judith, Julia, Marie and Natasha !
Mentimeter Masterpieces: Christmas words
Strange traditions (but strangely, the strangest one presented by Ester [the scatological one, to put it politely] is not here …!
Words pupils notice we use …
Julia’s Textivate Matching Game, featuring moody cats!
Getting ready for Steven’s cover version of ‘White Christmas’ – a world premiere, and the future anthem of any of our Christmas gatherings.
Original invitation….
ALL London invites you to enjoy social time together in an online Christmas Party on Saturday 12th December 8 pm – 9.30 pm.
We already have some ideas for entertainment in the evening: music, games (including a pub-style quiz from our very own quiz master, Richard Margerison), and chat.
If anyone has anything to offer or suggest, please let us know on the registration form for this event. Don’t worry – no-one will be pressured to do anything!
This party will not be recorded unless anyone wants their party piece to be recorded!!!