Today is our last day before vacation and we just learned that we need to move our office. That means I will be packing up my office today and will then head back to our apartment to pack our car to spend time with family for Christmas (hopefully, ahead of any stormy weather). This post is a bit short in terms of written content, but I hope you agree it is strong in terms of visual content. Take time to pause, reflect, and smile as you take a rest from your packing, baking, and celebrating! Enjoy!

George Michael-George Michael – December Song – a whimsical, somewhat off beat December story set to George Michael’s single, December Song.

Stop-Motion “A Sylverados Christmas” – smile and enjoy this marvelous little stop motion film as the Sylverados experience the trials and tribulations of preparing for the holidays

December – a tribute to the music of George Winston and the beauty of December.

Happy Christmas (War is Over) – wouldn’t it be lovely if all wars were over this holiday season?

You can also peruse a number of online Holiday videos using the links found on the Fanpop blog Another Big, Big List of 101 Christmas Videos to Watch and Enjoy (the post is a year old, but most of the links are still active). Feel free to share your online video favorites using the comment link below.

I recently discovered Vidque, a site where you can build a customized library of videos for personal use or as a vehicle to share with students and friends. I love this site when I use it from home as it makes it very simple to access my personal collection of videos that I have discovered across the web. Sadly (but not surprisingly), any of the YouTube videos I included in Vidque were blocked when I tried opening them in an educational environment that blocks YouTube. It’s a bit disheartening when YouTube is blocked in schools because I can not share some of the marvelous short videos that are very appropriate for lessons and school use with my teachers and students. Still, I do understand the concern administrators and schools in general have regarding YouTube and some of the other video sites…there is a lot of bad mixed with the good. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I sure do miss Fliggo.

While Vidque does not serve as a replacement to Fliggo, it is a powerful tool to include in your bag of techno-organizational tricks. Creating a video library that is accessible using the tags you assign is very powerful and sharing the great videos you collect and add to your collection is simple and useful. Send links to students, friends, and colleagues or simply twitter the video link (based on your Vidque address) to your followers. You can save up to 20 videos a day once you have registered for a free account and set up your profile. Saving a video from any site is as simple as clicking on a button (once you have installed the Vidque bookmarklet in your browser) or you can add videos to your account manually using the Add Video Page. Currently the bookmarklet works in the following browsers: Chrome, Foxfire, Safari, and Opera.

I am gradually building a new library of videos using Vidque.

There are a number of online resources that relate to the holidays and I’ll no doubt mention some additional holiday-related resources over the next couple of weeks. Today I discovered several of my favorite holiday cartoons and clips on Clicker, a site that claims to be a complete guide to Internet Television. Information found on the site…”As massive amounts of programming move online, consumers are entering a world of infinite choices, all on-demand. Great! Finding the show you want to watch? Painful. Thousands of episodes from thousands of shows are housed on thousands of different sites, mixed among billions of random clips and videos…Clicker catalogs all broadcast programming online, along with TV-quality Web originals, from these silos and delivers them in one seamless, organized experience so you can easily discover what’s available to watch (and what isn’t) online, where to watch it, and what’s worth watching.”

Check out this marvelous collection of videos (including my nostalgic favorites) and be prepared to enjoy hours of free entertainment. Here are some direct links to some of the holiday favorites I discovered on Clicker…

• Vintage ToonCast: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• Santa’s Surprise
• Vintage ToonCast: The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives

Please note…you may be directed from Clicker to the site where a film/video resides. This is a site that should be monitored if you are using it in an educational setting. By the way, if you are an educator check out the Education section…good stuff!