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The Internet Classics Archive: 441 searchable works of classical literature
MIT Has 441 works of classical literature available online that allow you to create powerful text queries.Also included are "reader's choice" websites related to the texts.
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If you wanted to examine the dead sea scrolls in the past, it would have been a challenge. These scrolls are being shared online now and allow scholars around the world to have access only afforded to exclusive scholars on a limited basis in the past.
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A wonderful list of educational Twitter hashtags by Jerry Blumengarten (@cybraryman1) - such a helpful person!
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Google Advanced Scholar Search
Perhaps the most powerful page in Google Scholar, you can limit your searches to certain fields of study, certain courts of law, certain years. This is a very powerful tool.
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Google Scholar Citations Open To All - Google Scholar Blog
Researchers should use Google Scholar Citations. This is like Google Analytics for your paper or article. You can create links to your work, update your profile, add links to coauthors, and then track how often your article is cited. The modern researcher should definitely set this up.
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Google scholar lets you search articles, patents, legal opinions and journals. It is time to take students into this took, especially now that you can use google scholar citations.
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Twitter Template - Resources - TES
This is a twitter template. Another tool for offline use for those schools who don't get a lot of access but would like to bring some fun social media style activities into the classroom. You do need to join the free TES site to access these, but it is a great site and I'm finding lots of things to use.
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Facebook template page - Resources - TES
Some of use the fakebook tool at classtools.net but if you need to be offline, this is a template to make a Facebook page for a famous character. It is a .doc (Microsoft Word) file and you can download it and use it for your activity. These are great for looking at famous characters and students enjoy them.
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TES collection World War II - Resources - TES
This is an excellent set of world war 2 resources from the UK including videos and lesson plans. For elementary school.
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Shelfster - The Best Research Tool for Writers
Shelfster is in beta and is a tool for writers to collect resources. It is interesting because of how it moves between desktop, mobile, and web. Research is evolving and students should be empowered with social bookmarking and research aggregation tools like this one.
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College Prep: Famous Authors Take The SAT!
Two well known authors subject themselves to the SAT essay and are graded.This would be an interesting case study for students from many perspectives: 1) for understanding the assessment and 2) for keeping perspective. ;-)
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Best individual tweeter2011 | The Edublog Awards
I love how this year's nominations for best individual tweeter include follow buttons. How cool! Thank you for those who nominated me, I appreciate it!
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Best individual blog 2011 | The Edublog Awards
Thanks for the nominations. My blog made one of the very many on the list for the best individual blog of 2011. Of course, I hope you'll vote. I'll share the other ones as well. Lots of great people on these polls. Yes, if you like me, I'd love to have your vote. ;-)
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ipl2: Information You Can Trust
The Internet public library has a great index of resources to help you find information, particularly deep web resources to use in research. This is a place you should refer student researchers.
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Here is the page showing how steve works. I've been digging through their website trying to see how active steve really is and it look as if perhaps this research project is not as active as it once was. However, I do think that letting students tag books and other works could be a powerful way of seeing meaning emerge and to create networks of learning
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Steve.Museum | Steve: The Museum Social Tagging Project
"Steve is a collaboration of museum professionals and others who believe that social tagging may provide profound new ways to describe and access cultural heritage collections and encourage visitor engagement with collection objects. Our activities include researching social tagging and museum collections; developing open source software tools for tagging collections and managing tags; and engaging in discussion and outreach with members of the community who are interested in implementing social tagging for their own collections."
This fascinating website is museum professionals looking into how social tagging can help museum communities and professionals. It uses a suite of open source tagging tools that can be downloaded. -
Here's my diigo tag cloud of resources I've bookmarked on Diigo.
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Social Bookmarking | Common Craft
If you don't understand social bookmarking, here is a common craft video called "Social Bookmarking in Plain English." It explains how social bookmarking works.
Daily Education and Technology News for Schools 12/05/2011
Ripped Game Pants and the School Improvement Dance
Shocked and agast, my son's pants were agape. Last night was the final game on the season and, the 26th straight win for the Westwood Wildcats and my son blocked a 270 pound behemoth with his pants flapping in the breeze.
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| My Westwood Wildcats Football Team 2010, 2011 State Champs winner 26 straight football games |
We were picked to lose by 13 or 20 points depending upon who you asked. They had 10 boys over 200 pounds and one over 300 and we had barely 2, maybe.
My son's pants ripped during the last football game. When I say rip, I mean a big old tear from crotch to way up the back. My son's gray sliding pants were his only salvation from indecent exposure.
Last week I had snatched up the pants and was preparing to mend them when my son interrupted emphatically:
"We're wearing the orange pants for state, Mom, don't touch 'em. They'll get fixed in the off season when they send them in to the shop."OK, so the word "shop" should have let me realize that I was being taken to the cleaners. Imagine my shock when I look at those boys coming out of the locker room and there I see my son's grey sliding shorts and those pants and the big old rip traveling quietly up towards the waist band in the back like spilled syrup on my kitchen counter.
Isn't it funny how we're not shocked at our children as much as we say,
"What is everyone going to say about his Mama, not fixing his pants like that?"But after the game. After we won a second state championship in a 33-21 nail biter (it was tied 21-21 with 2 minutes to go in the fourth quarter), he sheepishly said,
"Mom, it would have been bad luck for any of us to fix our pants. We all agreed to leave the tears in our pants. When you're winning, you keep doing what you're doing until it doesn't work any more."At that point, I didn't care what anyone said about his Momma, I was just glad they won (and very glad he was OK.) But his words echoed in my ears.
Fixing What Works Breaks What Works
Sure, it was to the point of superstition and but all I could think of was some teachers I know caught in very nonsensical situations.
For example, in the state of Georgia, there were some schools that were climbing in Math scores but the state required them to move from Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, etc. to Math I, Math II, and Math III and many of the best math teachers were lost in some districts.
They tried to fix what wasn't broken for some schools to fix what was broken for others.
In the south the saying goes,
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."But we don't listen to that in education. Here are just a few examples I can think of:
- An amazing teacher does a great job at a certain grade level. She hits her stride and is really doing a great job after a year or two. But "they" decide it is time for a change and give her a new grade level even though she's already taught that grade level at another school and knows it isn't a great fit for her.
- A reading program works incredibly well but there is a new curriculum director and she wants to change it because she's "heard" another one is better.
- A history teacher has a phenomenal history program and has a book he loves. He's aligned the book with videos and has written quite a bit of content to go along with the book for his students. It is "time' to update the book and "they" go with another program and he looks at the new curriculum to decide if he really feels like starting over. The new book isn't just a new book but a whole new way of teaching it.
- A school decides that everyone is going to now be "on the same page" so the teacher who loved to quickly teach more "boring" topics (which were mastered, by the way) to accelerate into some great things that are more advanced is held back because the other teachers in the group don't want to do it that way.
- A good teacher is now given a script so administrators can know exactly what is being taught in every classroom over the complaints of those teachers who feel scripts stifle the good teaching they've been doing for more than 20 years. These teachers are told they will be replaced if they can't go with the new turn teaching has taken.
- I teach keyboarding with a class average of over 70 words per minute (or gwam as we say.) I use the same textbook my Mom did and teach it the "old fashioned way" because it works. We don't go into software until after I've taught them all the keys. My friends in other schools who were forced to move to a software-based approach run about 30 words a minute and the kids look at their fingers. Many don't care about the right way to teach typing, only that software makes it easier. I'm happy with my circa 1994 textbook and don't want a new one! I'll do it the old fashioned way because it works but in many schools, I wouldn't be allowed to be so "backwards." My students are still blogging, making videos, using QR Codes and doing incredible things but I just need a book to teach typing. (See my 8th Grade keyboarding portfolio using QR codes)
"When you're winning, you keep doing what you're doing until it doesn't work any more."
"Get better and better every day in every way."
If it is working, we make it better. If it is broken, we fix it.
Westwood Wildcats State Champs, Vicki Davis
The Real Children of Orwell are Occupying Wall Street Today
Originally I was going to put together a post about how the Occupy Wall Street movement has been endorsed by the American Nazi Party. It was news-worthy- the ANP said in a statement that
The fact that its these “lefties” as you call them, who are picking up the ball and running with it – only shows how much more in tune THEY are with the fed up masses of White Workers, than the fossilized, reactionary “right-wing”. WHO holds the WEALTH and POWER in this country – the JUDEO-CAPITALISTS. WHO is therefore the #1 ENEMY who makes all this filth happen – the JUDEO-CAPITALISTS. WHO therefore do WN need to FIGHT? My heart is right there with these people, perhaps someday the “movement” will SHOW the same COURAGE and DEDICATION that these people OUT THERE FIGHTING are SHOWING!Yeah, so there is that out there, the fact that the fascists in the Nazi party clearly recognize that this movement fits into their goals and agenda. But really this isn't so much what I want to post about today, because when I was doing research for this post, I came across something more stunning, something that I had written about before after Obama's election as President and something that I think is relevant today.
In December 2008, I linked over to a piece at the American Thinker from Bruce Walker called Orwell's Children, and I think we should all take a minute to re-read it today, because it describes this Occupy Wall Street movement very well. Picture the people at these protests and rallies as you read the following (edited for brevity)...
It has been sixty years since George Orwell wrote his chilling dystopian classic, 1984....Go back and look at the Occupy Wall Street movement with this lens- listen to the interviews from these people, look at the signs they hold up, and have conversations with them. They are inarticulate slogan-shouting, God-hating, lying children who endlessly talk about 'oppressors' that need to be overthrown by empowering an all powerful government to take property from those who they do not like, attack and kill those who they hate (like Jews), and control all of our choices through regulations and taxes. The people who go to these Occupy Wall Street rallies and support them and talk favorably of them are Orwell's Children, and are the enemies of the protection of life, liberty, and property, and deserve nothing but the full and complete opposition of all true patriots.
...We are drifting into the sort of horrific future he described. Too many of us for comfort or solace have become just like the denizens of Jonestown: Orwell's children -- a new generation of creature enraged into constant militancy against eternal enemies, oblivious to the notion of a Blessed Creator, melded into the consciousness of the party hive, divorced from history, hypnotized by images, inoculated against reason, stripped of family, and existing only to serve the cause...
...There were specific elements necessary for nations with a heritage of freedom to slide into the most absolute and abject slavery. These elements existed in Nazi Germany, they existed in Soviet Russia, and they exist in our free democracies today. What are the characteristics of the Orwellian state?
Start with God. He must go.... A generation of Orwell's Children are growing up without thinking about God at all or thinking that God is a silly idea cherished by sillier old fogies.
Truth must go too. Nazis embraced the "Big Lie." Soviets denied that honesty, per se, mattered. In Orwell's Oceania, the Inner Party members learn to even lie to themselves and to hold utterly contradictory beliefs at the same time. Truth and honesty have little meaning to Orwell's Children in our world. All truth is relative, all honesty a sham.
Language must be brought to heel... Politically correct language is rampant.
Image and symbols replace words... We live in a word of symbols and images. Conservatives succeed in books and talk radio, media that deal in words- but Orwell's Children live in the realm of symbols and images...
..Immutable oppressors are the final nasty element in dystopia. Hitler blamed Jews for everything. Stalin blamed kulaks and his enemies in the party for everything. Subjects of Orwell's Oceania saw Emmanuel Goldstein as the eternal, immutable enemy of the party. Today there is a drearily predictable list of oppressors. Christians, men, white people, the "rich" (whatever that is supposed to mean), America, and Israel are oppressors and nothing can ever change that.
Orwell even told us, by name, the professionals who would lead us into the nightmare of 1984: "sociologists," "teachers," "bureaucrats," "journalists," "professional politicians," "scientists," "trade union organizers," "publicity experts," and "technicians." (The term "community organizer" was unknown to him.) Those who enslave were those who taught students, who created the news, who sat in the halls of government power, and who defined official "truth" (at least truth de jour.)
Orwell's Children live among us now, not in tiny numbers in weird Marxist cults like Jim Jones' People Temple, but as leaders of Congress, as the establishment of academia, as the producers of news and entertainment, as the administrators of public schools, as the "experts" in a thousand myriad and odd fields of putative "expertise." They infatuate our bored children with the only reality and the only diversion that many can find. They wait for the rest of us to grow older and to die....
Education, science, technological gadgetry, good medical care - all of this can not stop us from sliding into a massive Jonestown, a realized Oceania, a place marked by Dante's grim caution "Abandon hope, all you who enter here." We are all anchored in belief, but it is what we believe that matters. We can believe in the lies of Big Brother, which change each day with the needs of the party or we can believe in the truth of a living God. We can become the children of Orwell or the special creatures of God. Everything -- our nation, our world, our families, our communities -- flows from that choice.
Wisconsin Teacher Retires Rather Than 'Lose' 8K From Her 60K/Year Job
Ginny Fleck, a teacher from Green Bay with 30 years of experience, is among nearly 5,000 teachers who retired recently after all the hysteria in Wisconsin- double the amount that normally retire. "It wouldn't make sense for me to teach one more year and basically lose $8,000," she said (the Huff Post is the source). Fleck would still be paid $52K/year to teach German, but under the new laws, she would have to take part of her $60,000 annual salary to pay for a part of her own healthcare and kick in for her own plush retirement, and that would add up to 8K/year.
Fleck is a great example of the sort of entitlement that is reflected in public employees- while the rest of America struggles to hold jobs and people face reduced salaries and reduced hours, she would rather quit than take a pay cut of 8K a year. Rather than say 'I'm just happy to still have a job in this environment and would love to continue to be paid 52K/year to teach young children German', she sees making 52K but not 60K as 'losing 8K'. Although she doesn't teach math, it is clear she has eaten up liberal rhetoric which regards growing the budget at slower levels as 'cutting' and believes that 'Bush cut the size of government' (which he did not- he grew it by large amounts with his unsustainable spending).
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| An Angry Entitled Teacher Waves a Union-Made Sign Instead of Doing Her Job and Teaching Children |
According to the Huff Post, the departure of 69-year angry liberal entitled Ginny Fleck has now opened up a position of employment for a young, technologically savvy teacher trained in new methods and just eager for the chance to teacher. 'I would love to have a job teaching middle school students German for 30K/year plus benefits plus retirement plus vacations' this new hypothetical teacher might say.
In Green Bay, Fleck said about 140 out of 1,700 of the district's teachers retired this year. She said another 50 or so planned to retire in the middle of this school year, cashing in vacation days saved over the years to retire in January and yet be paid their full salary until the end of their contract year (do any of you have this sort of set-up in your jobs?), and leaving the district in a scramble to hire long-term substitute teachers to fill the loss.
But above all, Fleck bemoans the fact that "All of the leadership is gone"- as if by leadership she means people like her who illegally strike to demand higher wages and salaries while refusing to pay anything for retirement and healthcare, at a time when Wisconsin's economy, like the rest of the nations, is struggling. Her leadership of screaming hate at people so she can keep her own is the kind of leadership that apparently will now be leaving Wisconsin, being replaced by professionals who will perhaps be more willing to work with the community and more recognizing of the situation that others from Wisconsin are in.
Thank you Huff Post for posting this article and bringing my attention to Ginny Fleck, a great example of everything that is wrong in the education world, and someone who I think should be lucky to continue to be making a fine retirement package paid for by the taxpayers.
The Start of a Discussion on Teacher Evaluations
Teachers, like other employees in every other company everywhere, need to be evaluated, and the current process of evaluation is broken. By way of example, here are the results of some of my evaluations, and keep in mind that I work in a good school district with a pretty good administration.
My first year of teaching, even though by the end of my first year I was teaching 5 different classes and 3 of them Honor or AP level and my students test scores showed improvement over the previous years, I received a mixed evaluation in the only time I was evaluated because the vice-principal said that I always looked worn down and was always in a rush. My second year teaching, even though the average scores of my students on the AP were a dramatic improvement over the teacher who taught the class in previous years and even though I was on several important committees and running several clubs, a couple of which I wasn't paid for, my review as again mixed, as my vice-principal felt that my room didn't have enough color and posters in it. It wasn't until my third year teaching that I actually had a vice-principal who stopped in my room more than the one or two times they were contractually obligated to, and during our conversations this person actually referred to data and common assessments and such, and under that measure, I received high evaluations across the board. In recent years, I don't think I've really been evaluated at all.
Teachers need to be evaluated better than this. We are professionals and should be provided with regular feedback so that we can continue to grow and improve our teaching. Every year I go through my numbers on common assessments and AP exams and identify where I am weak and where I can improve, but I do this in isolation with no encouragement or recognition and little help from those who may provide me with additional help and resources that I may need. Evaluations can provide schools with information that they need when making hiring or firing or compensation or placement decisions. And evaluations can help focus and direct teachers into producing results that are measurable and concrete- teachers can no longer simply measure one another based on height but instead should measure one another based on how high their students go.
Evaluations should all meet certain central guidelines. They should be conducted annually, they should be based on clear and rigorous expectations, they should be based on multiple measures, they should rate teachers multiple ways, should provide feedback to teachers, and should be used to make significant decisions in the education world.
One guide that I found that does a good job of discussing teacher evaluations and dispelling a lot of the fear and myths that surround them was guide put out by the New Teacher Project called Teacher Evaluation 2.0. I encourage anyone who is interested in learning more about teacher evaluations to read this short guide and ponder it- we need to move forward with better evaluations for teachers and this guide helps.
The Other Africa
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| Image of Marie Georgina courtesy of The Other Africa |
Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals Book/CD
Audio productions are made or broken by the quality of the recording engineer's ears. The ability to properly discern sounds, identify subtle problems, and act accordingly to apply the necessary fix makes all the difference in the quality of the final tracks and master. The good news is that these crucial skills can be learned. The ability to instantly identify frequencies, hear hidden distortions, and instinctively reconcile conflicts in the EQ of instruments, audio elements, vocals and more are traits of those who have mastered the art of audio production. The best engineers have trained their ears to immediately recognize audio problems that the consumer and those new to recording arts would likely not hear, but that, if left unresolved, would result in an amateurish final product. For more than two decades, students of F. Alton Everest's Critical Listening and Auditory Perception courses have rapidly developed these skills by using the intense lessons found in this book and on the CD. Unfortunately the books and CDs included with the course were usually too expensive for aspiring engineers to purchase and were often available only in colleges, universities, or school libraries. Now for the first time these indispensable training sessions are available with this release of Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals. Through hundreds of illustrations and an accompanying disc containing high-resolution MP3 files with nearly five hours of narration of the entire course, you can acquire the audio discernment skills of a seasoned recording engineer by studying this course at your own pace, in your own home.
How can I Paint Light from Life like the Impressionists?
Painting from life will present the problem of the constantly shifting light. The artist might be tempted to keep altering the shadows in accordance with reality, working over the painting until it loses its freshness. In other cases, the light might change before the painting is complete, the sun disappearing behind cloud or sinking behind the house. A painting that remains incomplete is the likely result. How can the artist capture the fleeting light in paint as did the impressionists?
Natural Light in Painting
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| Technique for Painting Quickly Rachel Shirley |
- Not planning ahead for the painting session.
- Conceiving, sketching and preparing the composition all on the same day, leaving the artist little time to lay down the paint before the light fades.
- Employing one or at most two brushes during the painting process. Cleaning the brushes between mixes and mixing repeated colours may rob the artist of valuable time.
- Deliberating over detail or dithering too much over the painting in the pursuit of perfection.
The key to capturing the fleeting light from the life is preparation. This means having the composition ready-sketched and the location decided. Setting up the art materials, such as the palette and easel can also take valuable time. The following pointers serve to elaborate.
- Prepare the painting surface and the composition on a separate day. Make a note of where the sketch took place. This means that the optimum light is saved for the painting alone.
- A white canvas can be off-putting and create bright reflections. To counteract this and to make tones easier to judge, I will apply a thin acrylic wash of a neutral colour, such as brown or pale blue over the canvas prior to painting.
- If painting out of doors, such as in the garden, make a note of where the shadows creep on certain times of the day. Does the house cast a shadow at teatime?
- Make a note of the weather report if sunlight is sought after. A bright morning can often be followed by heavy cloud, which could put a premature end to the painting session.
- Use several brushes during the painting. This saves valuable time from repeatedly cleaning the brushes or mixing the same colours. I often employ several brushes at once: one for darks, one for pales, another for bright colours and more for soft blending.
If time is the essence, I will block in the larger areas of the painting first. This might be areas of simplified light and dark in the background. The paint will be applied thinly at this stage so that I can add detail or make adjustments on top without the brush picking up surplus paint.
I will often render several areas of the painting simultaneously rather than one at a time. This means picking up a “dark” brush, closely followed by a “pale” brush as the painting is worked over. I will record the most transient areas of light and dark first, making snap decisions on hue and tone. This means being decisive. Does that shadow contain blue or brown? Is that patch of sunlight crescent-shaped or triangular? Once the shadows have been rendered satisfactorily, don’t be tempted to change them later. Leave them and move on.
Technique for Completing a Painting
Work into the detail as the painting progresses. Don’t worry if the setting no longer resembles the painting. Painting from life means capturing the essence of a day rather than illustrating one moment in full as in the case of a photograph.The final stages of the painting will often involve neatening and soft blending. This means knitting the painting together with a soft brush. Standing back from the painting at regular intervals will help the artist make honest comparisons with the setting. Absolute accuracy is not important, but the capturing the mood of the day.
Painting Impressionist Style
Capturing fleeting moments in painting entails planning ahead and using the paints in a certain way. Sketching the composition on a separate day means the artist may use the time for painting alone. Using several brushes at once will save time on cleaning them and remixing colours. Making strategic decisions on where the painting will take place will prevent un-preceded shadows from creeping across the setting before the painting is completed. And lastly, allow robust brush-marks and colour streaks to remain. It is pointless to pursue perfection in painting if time will not allow; the light will not wait.
Links to Oil Painting
My Paintings Lack any Sense of Light or Atmosphere
The artist may set up a still life without due thought to the lighting. Shadows being non-solid may be overlooked, and may appear to fall off one side of the canvas when painted. This may compel the artist to fade them out as though diffused by strip lighting. The artist may further forget that pale objects may appear dark if lit from behind, portraying instead the object’s local colour. Such treatment may result in a painting that lacks atmosphere. How can the artist make best use of the light in painting?
Poor use of Light in Painting
The Best Use of Light for Painting
Both paintings were completed alfresco on two identical consecutive afternoons. The painting above was completed facing north; the painting below was completed looking west. Notice how different the colours are for both. The pudding basin is white, yet in both paintings, different colour palettes were used. The apple is bright red in one picture, yet it is almost black in the other. The actual colour of the objects is known as the “local colour” and will not always agree with the eye actually sees.
When it comes to painting, it is best to ignore the local colour but to record the perceived colour: If the apple is red but appears to be violet, paint violet rather than red.
How to Paint Light
The same object may often require a different palette when lit in different ways. Objects lit from behind will often feature tonal contrasts and subdued hues; a setting lit from the front will feature more definite hues and less shadows. In the case of the paintings, one required, ultramarine, burnt umber and liberal amounts of white; the other, burnt sienna, viridian, permanent rose and moderate amounts of white.
Shift the objects around under a light source and see how the shadows change in colour, tone and intensity. The hues of the objects will appear to shift too. Look for definite hues in white objects and bright colours in black objects. Natural light, particularly sunlight will emphasise these effects.
Painting Light from Life
Shifting shadows create challenges for the artist wishing to capture their essence, but being transient, time is a factor. I often record the shape of the shadows quickly and then block them in. Making snap judgments in colour mixing is often required. Once the shadows have shifted, don’t be tempted to alter them accordingly, for this could mess up the painting. Ignore them and continue with the other subject matter.Painting light is more about capturing many moments in time, as opposed to photographing one moment.
What Art Techniques can I use to Paint Textures in Still Life?
Diverse textures on a still life, which may feature furry toys, smooth brass, crumbly bread or delicate rose petals, may confound the artist wishing to capture all these qualities on canvas. Oils being versatile may also seem bewildering to the beginner who is unsure of which application to use for optimum results. What are the main oil painting techniques to suggest any texture in a still life?
Oil Painting Techniques for Still Life
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| Textures in Still Life Rachel Shirley |
Oil Painting Techniques to Suggest Smooth Textures
Smooth objects, including waxy fruit, porcelain, plastic toys or stoneware can be suggested by the application of a series of oil paint washes, otherwise known as glazing. Glazing is a widely-used technique, most notably perfected by the old masters who wished to attain a high finish with deep colours. Applying paint in a series of translucent layers via a soft sable enables the artist to smooth over imperfections and modify the colour beneath. Each layer is applied as though it will be its last, i.e. as perfect as possible, and then allowed to dry. The overlying glaze works with the last to achieve an ever smoother finish. I find three glazes often suffice.
Blending with Oil Paint
Achieving smooth gradations between two colours or tones can be achieved by soft blending via a sable. Wipe surplus paint from the bristles each time the area is worked over. Smooth tonal transitions can also be achieved by gently smudging the oil paint via a soft cloth. If combined with glazing, ultra smooth finishes, akin to an airbrushed effect can be achieved for ceramics or china.
Oil Painting Techniques for Fur
A furry teddy bear or velvety fabric can be suggested in similar way to glazing. Begin by blocking in the oil paint in a generalized way, simplifying the furry object into basic areas of colour and tone. Allow to dry and then apply the paint on top with a fine sable, moving the paint in the direction of the fur. Work towards the highlights, keeping each brushstroke soft. Finish off with the darkest areas, soft blending any harsh lines. Dragging the paint in a neat layer offers an effect similar to a crayon.
Techniques for Shiny Surfaces
Metallic reflections on silverware, glassware or brass can be emulated if oil paint is mixed with a little linseed. Runny paint applied onto a wet glaze will give the paint added fluidity, which may encourage “happy accidents,” ideal for the smudgy quality of distorted reflections found on glass or silver.
Technique for Painting Bread
A crusty loaf, crumbly cheese, orange peel or splintered wood can be suggested by scumbling. Scumbling involves dragging a thin, neat paint layer over a rough under-glaze of dried impasto (a thick, uneven paint layer) or coarse canvas. A broken glaze will result, ideal for suggesting rough textures and rustic effects.
Techniques for Jagged Edges
Impasto can be used to emulate tough evergreen leaves of potted indoor plants or cacti. Impasto involves applying the oil paint in a thick layer via a stiff brush, leaving brush marks and ridges. Impasto can also be used to inject movement and energy into any area of the still life, even if it is an empty portion of background. Ladling the paint via a palette knife will leave crisp edges to the paint, ideal for suggesting broken vases or embossed jewellery.Simple Technique for Still Life Art
Of course, the artist may opt for simple alla prima, which is the application of one layer of paint and in one go. Alla prima is ideal for quick oil sketches comprising of a simple study, which might be a single fruit or bowel. I have often completed a still life painting in alla prima with the use of just two brushes, three colours, a small canvas and no mediums except artist spirits. For this reason, alla prima is perhaps the ideal technique for the beginner.
Relevant Links to Still Life Painting
In Order for the National Government to Save Education, It Has to Let it Go
If the national government wants to save education in America, I have become increasingly convinced that it needs to let it go, and for that matter, if the states want to save education in America, they have to let it go to. The education of children needs to be shoved as hard as it can be shoved to the lowest local level of our governmental system so that parents, local community leaders, and stakeholders in the educational system can regain the power and control over the education of their children's lives. What made our nation great was decentralization, local control, and personal responsibility, and by moving more and more control to the state and national levels we have lessened the very things that made us great.
America is not China, nor is it Finland, nor is it Germany, nor is it Singapore- those nations, although perhaps doing well lately, didn't conquer a continent, win two major world wars, and in recent years become the world's sole superpower. So we should not look to them for solutions on how to build and design and run an educational system for our nation- we should instead take those things that made America great and helped it to become what it is and modernize them and improve them and build on them, and that means not adopting statist models built on communistic principles designed to suck massive amounts of wealth from the system and funnel it through large bureaucracies to favored politically connected groups within societies. That's not our model to follow- our model is to return power over education back to the local level, which will then experiment with public policy solutions and funding models in order to achieve a democratic solution to providing high quality education at minimum cost to society with little loss of efficiency.
Rules regarding what is taught in each district need to be returned back to the district. Funding for each district needs to be returned to the district. Rules regarding discipline need to be returned back to the district. Control over hiring and regulations over hiring and rules regarding hiring need to be returned to the district. School districts at the local level must once again be where the education of children is designed, set up, and practiced, and this power and money and decisions should no longer to sent off to far-away places where faceless bureaucrats who don't know your kids make decisions that are very important to your children and their futures.
Democrats and Republicans alike make the mistake of trying to fix education by moving more and more power to the national or state levels, killing any innovation that local districts may experiment with to build better educational systems in favor of trying to adopt one-size-fits-all models that not everyone wants and so no one adopts. Creativity, growth, and great ideas come from people who actually work in education and manage education professionals and whose children go through the education system, and yet in our nation, more and more of decisions, funding, and power is flowing rapidly away from those people to unelected bureaucrats, childless professors, and scheming politicians. Republicans and Democrats alike need to reject this siren song of government power fixing everything, and take a deep breath and a leap of trust and once more empower the people of our great nation to do what needs to be done to fix and improve education by returning powers and funds that once were at the local level- once when America was great- back to the local level.
FCC Seizes Power to Regulate Internet
Until now, I haven't really commented on the FCC's latest ruling granting it control over the internet. For those of you who don't know, last week citizens for the first time got federally approved rules regulating what they view on the Internet. These rules are not based on any sort of constitutional provision and clearly do not fit with our tradition of a limited and defined national government. The new regulations will likely lead to future regulation, control, censorship, and taxes of companies and citizens that use the internet. The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday voted 3-2 (3 Democrat appointments vs 2 Republican appointments) to back (Democrat appointed) Chairman Julius Genachowski's plan for what is commonly known as "net neutrality," or rules prohibiting free companies from deciding how they run their businesses in an environment of competition and openness. Democratic President Barack Obama, in classical double-speak, said that having a limited number of unelected rules control our behaviors in a free society will "help preserve the free and open nature of the Internet."
The move to take freedom and future property from free citizens was prompted by liberal groups that love power and authority over freedom. Recently private companies have begun to experiment with ways to handle the growing problem of network congestion. But the Chairman of the FCC felt that instead of having private industry experiment with the best way to run its business that he wanted to instead control that business, even though he lacks the long record of experience and accumulated wisdom of being in business of all of those trained professionals whose whole life is running internet companies. In politically-appointed Mr. Genachowski's opinion, instead of selectively slowing certain traffic to cope with congestion he thinks providers could consider charging consumers for how much data they consume, but no one was listening to him, so he issued a royal decree to make people listen to him. He doesn't have to live with the consequences of that decision or have thousands of employees salaries be dependent on that position, and is unaccountable to voters, and thus this move marks yet another way that our nation slips into tyranny and oppression.
Our elected branch of officials, who are given the just and moral power to make decisions such as this, decided not to give this power and authority to the FCC. But the FCC didn't like that, and so unjustly and immorally seized this power and authority. A tyranny is marked by such behavior and such decisions. Decisions that were made by Democrat appointments. Vote appropriately next election, and for fun, read this book: Law and Disorder in Cyberspace: Abolish the FCC and Let Common Law Rule the Telecosm.
Thoughts from Michelle Rhee on Educational Reform
My earlier post was about Michelle Rhee the person- what she did and what the results were of her actions. But this post will focus more on her actions with regards to educational reform and my thoughts on these issues.
Via Newsweek I saw this article- "Why Michelle Rhee Isn't Done With School Reform." Here are some selected passages from it:
...When I started as chancellor in 2007, I never had any illusions about how tough it would be to turn around a failing system like D.C.’s; the city had gone through seven chancellors in the 10 years before me. While I had to make many structural changes—overhauling the system for evaluating teachers and principals, adopting new reading and math programs, making sure textbooks got delivered on time—I believed the hardest thing would be changing the culture. We had to raise the expectations that people had about what was possible for our kids.Rhee offers up several structural changes to the system, increased efficiency in both facilities and in human resources, and changed the culture of the biggest aspect of education, the teachers. All of these proposals are fascinating, but it is the teacher's pay one that I am the most interested in.
I quickly announced a plan to close almost two dozen schools, which provoked community outrage. We cut the central office administration in half. And I also proposed a new contract for teachers that would increase their salaries dramatically if they abandoned the tenure system and agreed to be paid based on their effectiveness....
According to wikipedia, Rhee had two proposals:
In 2008, she also sought to renegotiate how the school system compensates teachers. Rhee offered teachers the choice of: being paid up to $140,000 based on what she termed "student achievement" -- but losing tenure; or, retaining tenure -- but earning much smaller pay raises. This controversial move to end teacher tenure and promote "merit" pay was strongly contested by the teachers unions.As a teacher whose students achieve superior results on AP tests (I've taught 3 different AP courses in recent years and steadily raised test scores and enrollment in these courses) and on common assessments (I've taught 4 other classes in recent years and had my students (including mainstreamed students) outperform other teachers on our common exams), I'm quite comfortable with being judged on student achievement. And my worth isn't just measured in the classroom- I run the most popular club in the school, volunteer on our teacher leadership team, run several charities, mentor students during my prep hour, and coach part-time. It would be nice if I was rewarded for this sort of effort rather than watching teachers who perform at a much lower level make the same amount as me.
In 2010, Rhee and the unions agreed on a new contract that offered 20% pay raises and bonuses of $20,000 to $30,000 for "strong student achievement," in exchange for weakened teachers' seniority protections and the end of teacher tenure for one year. Teachers were observed by administrators and outside professionals for five 30-minute sessions during the year, and the teachers' performance was rated during those sessions. Teachers who received fewer than 175 out of 400 points were deemed ineffective and were dismissed. Teachers who received between 175 and 249 points were deemed minimally effective and given a one-year warning to improve their performance. Under this new agreement, Rhee fired 241 teachers, the vast majority of whom received poor evaluations, and put 737 additional school employees on notice.
To think that I could be being paid like the professional that I am- with several advanced degrees and extensive background experience- rather than as a factory drone that simply moves students through the system! It is an exciting thought, but I don't want to dwell on how it would benefit me personally- imagine how exciting it would be to my fellow teachers who also perform exceptionally in the classroom. Because I'm going to let you in on a little secret right now- there are a lot of exceptional teachers in education, who haven't been drained and wearied and discouraged by the system and who make my efforts pale in comparison. I'm driven by these other teachers, who I am in competition with for test scores and achievement, and we are driven in spite of the system and not by it. It makes me excited to think that these other teachers could be rewarded for their tremendous efforts in education!
And the downside? Bad teachers lose their jobs. Teachers who are unqualified, teachers who do a poor job of teaching their students, teachers who do not achieve measurable results, and teachers who everyone in the building knows are bad will lose their jobs. Oh, it's no big secret who these people are- ask anyone in my building who would be fired first, and they'd look knowingly at you, since they know who these people are. There are not a lot of them, but they are there, sucking up resources and sucking down students, bad apples ruining the bunch, souring students on learning, while giving teachers a bad name. They'd lose their jobs.The union shouldn't be protecting them.
So what's the next step? Continuing from the Newsweek article...
....When you think about how things happen in our country—how laws get passed or policies are made—they happen through the exertion of influence. From the National Rifle Association to the pharmaceutical industry to the tobacco lobby, powerful interests put pressure on our elected officials and government institutions to sway or stop change.We have to exert our influence. That is why I blog- to change the system so that students and good teachers both can win, and by winning will make our nation greater.
Education is no different. We have textbook manufacturers, teachers’ unions, and even food vendors that work hard to dictate and determine policy. The public-employee unions in D.C., including the teachers’ union, spent huge sums of money to defeat Fenty. In fact, the new chapter president has said his No. 1 priority is job security for teachers, but there is no big organized interest group that defends and promotes the interests of children.
You can see the impact of this dynamic playing out every day. Policymakers, school-district administrators, and school boards who are beholden to special interests have created a bureaucracy that is focused on the adults instead of the students. Go to any public-school-board meeting in the country and you’ll rarely hear the words “children,” “students,” or “kids” uttered. Instead, the focus remains on what jobs, contracts, and departments are getting which cuts, additions, or changes. The rationale for the decisions mostly rests on which grown-ups will be affected, instead of what will benefit or harm children.
The teachers’ unions get the blame for much of this. Elected officials, parents, and administrators implore them to “embrace change” and “accept reform.” But I don’t think the unions can or should change. The purpose of the teachers’ union is to protect the privileges, priorities, and pay of their members. And they’re doing a great job of that.
What that means is that the reform community has to exert influence as well....
For more on Michelle Rhee, check out THE BEE EATER: Michelle Rhee Takes on the Nation's Worst School District.
My Mountain Art Resemble Traffic Cones
The artist striving for drama may paint mountains as a backdrop to a village or creek that resembles an idealised Alpine scene of pointed cones with cartoonish snowy caps rather than a convincing portrayal of mountains that suggests bulk. How does the landscape artist paint mountains with realism?
Problems with Painting Mountains
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| Oil Painting Mountains Rachel Shirley |
Making assumptions about the appearance of mountains that harp to symbolism. This might be: all mountains have flanks that are angled at forty-five degrees; all flanks converge neatly to a sharp summit; all snow caps are white; all mountains are bluish-grey and the contours of all mountains are jagged, etc.
Painting mountains in isolation to the other elements of the landscape painting instead of keying them in. This might result in mountains that appear too faint, too dark or out of scale with the rest of the painting.
Using mountains to fill an empty space, to hide a mistake or provide a backdrop to a landscape painting. This might tempt the artist to paint the mountains from memory which could result in the aforementioned idealised portrayal of mountains.
Treating mountains as cut out shapes and filling them in with one hue. The resultant featureless slopes are unlikely to grant the viewer any of sense of depth or scale to the landscape painting.
Tips on Mountain Painting
In order to make improvements to a painting with mountains, all assumptions about how mountains “should” look must be dispelled. This means looking at mountains images, either in real life or photos with fresh eyes. The artist will soon discover that some mountains have bizarre outcrops, protrusions and cols, the contours of which could be jagged, smooth, curved or bulbous.
How to Paint Mountains
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| How to Paint Snow Caps Rachel Shirley |
When brightly lit, mountains exhibit a weird and complex jigsaw of colour and tone. Some lower flanks resemble crumpled tissue paper; others undulate from a flat plain. In such cases, it is important to simplify the mountain form into its most basic elements first, and then to work into the detail.
Many mountains do in fact resemble inverted cones, but some might be lopsided, pyramidal or flattened. Build upon this basic shape by observing and adding other shapes to this basic shape to suggest a complex three-dimensional form. Compare one shape with another and record whether it is darker, paler, bluer or more crimson than a neighbouring area.
Half-closing the eyes will unclutter the scene and help the artist capture the basic essence of the mountain. Detail such as trees or ravines can be added last.
The Colour of Mountains
The same mountain will appear different under diverse lighting, weather and seasons. Autumn will exhibit pinks, reds and rustic colours from fern that on other occasions look bland. Grim weather will bring out slates, greys and violets that add drama. Snow caps exhibit arctic blues and creams if sunlit, creating focal points. Never disregard a colour if it can be seen on the mountain, regardless of how bizarre it might seem.
How to Paint Mountains with Drama
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Rather than view mountains as a convenient backdrop, use them as a focal point to a landscape painting. Dramatic photos of mountain ranges such as the Himalayas, the Alps, the Rockies or the Appalachians offer great opportunities to use bright colours and contrasting tones. Kilimanjaro or the Eiger are also worth exploration.Oil Painting Techniques for Mountain Art
Any art technique can be used for painting mountains. Impasto oil pasted via palette knives will suggest thick snow and sharp peaks; blending over detail with a thin glaze will suggest mist over the mountains; or simply painting alla prima via wide bristles is great for expressing, energy and movement to a mountain painting. Applying detail via a fine sable is ideal for suggesting cracks, icy rivulets or pinnacles.
Links Relating to Mountain Painting
Kibera Film School
Founded by the Hot Sun foundation the Kibera Film School is an institution:
...where trainees learn all aspects of filmmaking from script, acting, casting, camera, production, editing, and distribution. Professionals from the Kenyan film and TV industry work as instructors in the KIBERA FILM SCHOOL.
Kibera Film School
How do I Paint Blonde Hair on My Portraits?
The portrait artist faced with painting blonde hair may automatically reach for titanium white and vary it with black or dark brown for shadows in the belief that these colors will create convincing blonde hair. Instead, the hair looks muddy and flat. What colors should the artist use for blonde hair?
How Not to Paint Blonde Hair
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| How to Paint Blonde Hair Rachel Shirley |
- Making blanket assumptions about blonde hair in that it always contains lots of white paint, and allowing this to reflect in the painting.
- Darkening pale colors with black or dark brown for the shadows, resulting in dirty darks.
- Applying the dark areas prior to the pales, contaminating the pale colors when they are applied afterwards. In an effort to put this right, the artist may add more white on top, resulting in an overworked painting with dirty pales.
- Painting the blonde color mix onto a white painting surface, which appear dark by comparison. The artist may inevitably make all the color mixes paler, which has a knock-on effect upon the painting, resulting in a washed-out representation of a blonde haired person in the portrait.
Close observation of blonde hair will reveal that it often contains lots of dark color mixes which can be found between strands and on the dark side of the head. Ash blonde, for instance often contains earth colors; platinum hair contains a little blue.
Rather than use black or dark brown to darken blonde hair, use a complimentary color. Warm blonde hair, for instance such as honey blonde or strawberry blonde can be darkened with a little blue and earth colour. I often use ultramarine and burnt sienna or ultramarine and a little burnt umber.
Cool blonde hair such as ash blonde or dirty blonde hair can be darkened with a little burnt umber and pthalo blue.
Work onto a toned ground rather than white when painting a blonde subject. A mid-toned neutral color such as pale brown or smoky blue is ideal. This makes it possible to key in the pale color mixes with the darks more accurately and prevent a ghostly painting of blonde hair. Working from dark to light is also a great exercise in gauging tonal variations accurately.
Art Techniques for Painting Blonde Hair
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Apply the pale colors prior to the darks. This preserves the clean color mixes for blondes highlights for example, from being sullied by a neighbouring dark color.Create soft gradations between pales and darks with a soft clean sable. Keep wiping the surplus paint onto a clean rag with each stroke to prevent unwanted tonal bands from appearing on the hair.
Work from thin paint to thick, finishing off with highlights. I express light catching strands of hair by dragging neat white paint onto selected areas of the portrait with a fine sable. I use the same method for expressing outlines of the hair, such as flyaway stands or rogue locks falling over the face. Remember to express the shadows cast from the hair, such as on the cheeks and brow. Doing so will make the hair look in keeping with the subject.
Blonde Hair Colors for Painting
Although many color mixes can be found in blonde hair, the following suggestions may help guide the artist on which oil pigments to use for the base colors. Lots of creams, beiges and greys are not necessary. In fact, I use only the following colors for blonde hair: titanium white, ultramarine blue, pthalo blue, burnt sienna, permanent rose and burnt umber. Remember to always observe the subject for chromatic accuracy. Colors are ordered in largest quantity first.
Platinum blonde hair: Titanium white, ultramarine and burnt umber.
Ash blonde: Titanium white, pthalo blue and burnt sienna.
Golden blonde: Titanium white, burnt sienna and ultramarine.
Honey blonde: Titanium white, burnt sienna and burnt umber.
Strawberry blonde: Titanium white, burnt sienna, permanent rose and ultramarine.
Dark blonde: Titanium white, ultramarine, permanent rose and burnt umber.
Highlights in Blonde Hair
Rather than use neat white for highlights to blonde hair, use pale color mixes. White mixed with a touch of burnt sienna creates warm yet intense highlights for hair. Other pales to look out for are pale blues, violets, eggshell and pastels. Such definite hues will suggest form and depth of color to blonde hair instead of just white.
External Links Relating to Painting Hair