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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
Obama's Support for the Arts- Propaganda of the State
What is the purpose of art? I'm not an art history or philosophy major, so I don't really know the answer to that, if there is truly one answer, but I can tell you this- I don't think the purpose of art is to promote the state's interests.
At one time, this was believed to be the purpose of art. Many regimes around the world felt that literature should serve the national interest or it had no inherent right to exist (source). These regimes felt that art should be used by a regime to promote their beliefs. In particular, these regimes felt that posters especially could be used as a way to blatantly present the beliefs of their political party party. These people felt that art should be used to convince the people of the beliefs of the state. The posters this regime wanted created were usually simple and got to the point, and it was intended to target the emotions of the people that looked at it (source).
Enough history. Today, Barack Obama is attempting to promote art that does the same thing. Recently a blogger writing at Big Hollywood was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to take part in a conference call that invited a group of rising artist and art community luminaries “to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda - health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.”
The call was hosted by the NEA, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve. The call would include “a group of artists, producers, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, taste-makers, leaders or just plain cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change!” There were approximately 75 people participating, including many well respected street-artists, filmmakers, art galleries, music venues, musicians and music producers, writers, poets, actors, independent media outlets, marketers, and various other professionals from the creative community.So, to summarize, our President, through a group called United We Stand, is organizing artists and giving them guidelines on what sort of art to produce. The art will promote the interests of the Democrats and try to persuade voters to support their views. This is propaganda, and as the group was informed, Obama regarded propaganda as very important, perhaps even calling it "a weapon of the first order".
Backed by the full weight of President Barack Obama’s call to service and the institutional weight of the NEA, the conference call was billed as an opportunity for those in the art community to inspire service in four key categories, and at the top of the list were “health care” and “energy and environment.” The service was to be attached to the President’s United We Serve campaign, a nationwide federal initiative to make service a way of life for all Americans.
We were encouraged to bring the same sense of enthusiasm to these “focus areas” as we had brought to Obama’s presidential campaign, and we were encouraged to create art and art initiatives that brought awareness to these issues. Throughout the conversation, we were reminded of our ability as artists and art professionals to “shape the lives” of those around us. The now famous Obama “Hope” poster, created by artist Shepard Fairey and promoted by many of those on the phone call, and will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” song and music video were presented as shining examples of our group’s clear role in the election.
Obama has a strong arts agenda, we were told, and has been very supportive of both using and supporting the arts in creative ways to talk about the issues facing the country. We were “selected for a reason,” they told us. We had played a key role in the election and now Obama was putting out the call of service to help create change.
The machine that the NEA helped to create could potentially be wielded by the state to push policy. Through providing guidelines to the art community on what topics to discuss and providing them a step-by-step instruction to apply their art form to these issues, the “nation’s largest annual funder of the arts” is attempting to direct imagery, songs, films, and literature that could create the illusion of a national consensus. This is what Noam Chomsky calls “manufacturing consent.”
This website has some good ideas on the sort of posters that Obama would like created. Check it out to get a taste of what is to come under an Obama administration. Oh, and if you haven't guessed it yet, you'll have to click on the links to find out what sort of regimes of the past saw art the same way that Obama does.
The Development Jet-Set
Rasna Warah writes (reg reqd) in the Nation:
THOSE OF US WHO HAVE worked for, or are working within, the development industry are familiar with the many poverty-reduction conferences, seminars and workshops that we have to attend as part of our work, or for what development professionals like to call “networking opportunities”...The “hottest” topics on the international development agenda these days is Africa...I mean the Africa that development professionals love to dwell on – the poverty-stricken, disease-ridden Africa that is being managed by kleptomaniacs and dictators...IN OTHER WORDS, THE AFRICA that is the raison d’etre of the international development industry, the one that makes Bono, Bob Geldof, Madonna and Angelina Jolie shed real tears...At almost all poverty-reduction seminars and conferences, the word “poverty” is used interchangeably with the word “Africa”. To some extent, this association is justified. Africa has the largest proportion of people living in extreme poverty (over 40 per cent), and 34 of the 50 poorest countries in the world are African...Countries that have managed to reduce poverty have done so through improving economic management, adding value to their products, increasing investment in infrastructure, specialising and investing in key profitable industries, making distribution of wealth and services more equitable, and ensuring that governance structures are accountable and sustainable.
Unfortunately, these issues are rarely discussed at poverty-reduction seminars and conferences.
photo courtesy of the bbc
Rhee Delivers Mass Terminations of DC Teachers, Begins Today
Updated news @ 10 p.m. with post from a terminated teacher
Teacher Firings up to 12 at CHEC, Mostly Probationary Teachers
Did you know that some DC Teachers have started receiving notices of terminations today ? These notices have been sent out to some teachers via email. Some teachers were given a copy of their termination letter in hand mid-day signed personally by Michelle Rhee .
Here's what two DC teachers from Columbia Heights Education Campus (CHEC) had to say about today's terminations:
"I am one of the probationary teachers who was terminated at CHEC today. My frustration at the situation does not, as many of you suggest, have to do with Michelle Rhee or her mission. Instead, my frustration is focused entirely on the administration at CHEC, for the way that they are handling the firing process, and for the amount of truly amazing professionals they are terminating. One of you suggested in an earlier post that the probationary teachers who are being fired at CHEC (both DCTF and otherwise) are under performers, but this is not the case. The amount of extra work required of teachers at CHEC is unbelievable, and all of the people that I know who have been fired embrace that extra work because it will ultimately benefits students. There have been several terminations that I know of where teachers were not even placed on any sort of improvement plan. (I was not on any sort of a plan...no 90-day, no anything...). I just find the entire situation sickening, because the people at CHEC work extremely hard and receive this sort of treatment. All throughout the year, I felt under appreciated, unsupported, and unfairly treated. This termination just comes as the final straw. I do not want any of you to get the idea that the teachers who are being terminated at CHEC somehow deserve what they are getting because I can assure you, they do not. The work environment at that school is poisonous, and this is just the latest thing. May this just be a lesson to everyone that as educators, we need to stick together, support each other, and remember that we are ultimately all here for the kids. They are what kept me going all year, and they will continue to keep me going in the future. " Signed Terminated Teacher
Second quote from a teacher who still remains at CHEC :"This year at CHEC, there was an obvious shift in the way the administration "graded" the PPEP rubric and evaluated teachers. Teachers who "exceeded expectations" in the past were given "meets expectations" or "needs improvement" and the overall morale in the school was gravely effected by this seemingly arbitrary and change in rating teachers. To me, this sounds like pressure coming from powers higher above? This shift definitely created an US vs. THEM mentality in the school and I can't see how that will diffuse much after the way things have been handled. Many of us don't feel like we are being treated as PROFESSIONALS and we have a very diverse, talented, and caring staff. We have made great strides in the quality of the education being implemented due to the hard work of the great teachers (past and present) that have developed curriculum and challenged our students.
That being said, many teachers have been harassed, disrespected, unsupported, and pushed away due to unprofessional pressures from some of the administration. I find it very disheartening to see SO many of my fellow talented and hard working teachers leave my school each year (voluntarily and involuntarily). I am also VERY frustrated that each year the dramatic turnover results in retraining and reinvesting in new staff which also GREATLY effects the school's potential to grow and improve. When and how are the administrators evaluated? Is teacher retention considered in the way a school and administration is evaluated? If so many probationary teachers are being terminated at my school... what does that say about those hiring them and the supposed amazing pool of people available for hire? So many questions, so little answers, but plenty of finger pointing towards the teachers... including unfortunately, many good ones." Signed DC CHEC teacher
Chancellor Rhee is following through on her promise to get rid of a significant share of her teacher workforce as outlined in her 5 year educational plan. Rhee also makes good on her threat (plan B) of firing teachers when she couldn't gain approval for our DC teacher contract. (known as the red and green tiers)It seems like it's not only veteran teachers that Rhee is giving the axe to but also newly hired probationary teachers. Sound eerily familiar to what happened to DC's 78 probationary teachers who were fired last year without regard to their performance ? What perplexes me is that I thought that it was the 'newbie teachers' that Rhee was aggressively trying to recruit ? Hmmm-Some how no one is safe regardless of their job performance or years of experience. Would you agree ?
Keep your emails coming about terminations of DC teachers and principals c/o saveourcounselors@gmail.com
News Flash
12 DC Teachers fired @
Columbia Heights Education Campus (CHEC)
Also known as Lincoln MS and Bell Multi-Cultural HS
3101 16th Street NW
Washington, DC 20010
Principal: Maria Tukeva
Of the 12 teachers to be fired, 10 are probationary teachers and 1 teacher was on a 90 day plan. It is suspected that there is a 2nd teacher on a 90 day plan but this must be confirmed.(Posted by The Washington Teacher).
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.
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
African Axis
African Axis is"...committed to mobilizing and harnessing the intellectual and financial resources of professionals of the African diaspora to contribute to public debate and policy making on Africa at the European level and to the development of the African continent...."
What Would the Poor Say?
Excerpts from participants at a recent Development Research Institute conference:
Yaw Nyarko:
"No nation has ever developed because of aid and outside advice".
Andrew Mwenda:
“Aid money makes African governments accountable to the aid agencies rather than to their own people.”
June Arunga:
"Aid money is diverting African skilled professionals away from private enterprise to writing proposals for NGOs.”
The Other Africa
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| Image of Marie Georgina courtesy of The Other Africa |
Art Moves Africa
Art Moves Africa's objectives include to:
- Facilitate regional and transregional cultural exchanges in Africa for individual artists/cultural operators and cultural organisations and encourage the mobility of artists and cultural professionals to exchange experiences, information and ideas
- Encouraging artists and cultural operators to work towards shared projects and artistic collaborations across the continent
Technical Ability vs Entrepreneurial Ability
Chronicles from a Caribbean Cubicle writes:
The problem is that we mistake that importance of technical ability, and vastly underestimate the importance of entrepreneurial ability. Our schools are organized to produce technicians in all fields, and from age 16 a student must narrow down their course of formal study (for life in most cases) to four subject areas and General Paper.via GlobalVoices
The truth is that educating another lawyer, doctor or accountant is unlikely to contribute much to our GDP. Narrow technical abilities are admirable, but nowhere near as vital to countries in which the large mass of people cannot afford to use them.
What most developing countries need are not more professionals with masters degrees in contract law, but more entrepreneurs who are willing to hire ever increasing numbers of ordinary people.
In the Caribbean, we have developed First World values that have no basis. In other words, we cannot afford to produce more and more sophisticated cardiologists, when the people who need them are selling icy-mints and steering-wheel covers on the corner.
Peters Votes for Gov/Union/Business Partnership, They Pony Up Campaign Funds
Although Michigan's US House of Representatives 9th District has historically been a Republican district, in 2008 it elected a Democrat named Gary Peters. According to CQ Politics, in order to defend his seat, Peters has raised a whopping $2 million in receipts through the first quarter of 2010, which is considerably more than any of his GOP challengers (Raczkowski, Welday, Goodman).
People give money to candidates for two main reasons. One reason that people, businesses, and organizations give money to candidates because they believe in the candidate personally or support their policies. The second major reason that people, businesses, and organizations give money to candidates is because they feel that by giving the candidate money it buys them access to power or control over the candidate.
Although Gary Peters is one of the few elected officials who refused to take the Project Vote Smart Political Courage test (a test where a candidate makes known where they stand on important issues), and he has sponsored very little legislation in Congress, and has refused to meet with constituents or hold town halls, we do know some things about his positions on the issues.
As I discussed in my post Gary Peters Scores a 90% On the Pelsoi Index- A Vote by Vote Analysis of Peters Liberal Record in Congress, Peters has voted in favor of the stimulus bill, cap and tax, Obamacare, bloated budget bills, increased taxes, and raising the debt ceiling. He voted against Stupak's Anti-Abortion Amendment. With this information, we can now begin to look at who is supporting Peters in the 2010 election and think about what sort of policies they might be supporting or what sort of influence over the Congressman they might be buying.
According to OpenSecrets.org, the top industries that have currently donated to Michigan Democratic Congressman Gary Peters to support his re-election bid are (in order): Lawyers/Law Firms, Democratic/Liberal Groups, Industrial Unions, Real Estate Firms, Health Professionals, Building Trade Unions, Insurance Companies, Securities and Investment firms, Retired People, Public Sector Unions, Hospitals/Nursing Homes, Transportation Unions, Finance Companies, Lobbyists, Automotive Companies, Commercial Banks, and Finance/Credit Companies.
You make your own decisions, but my rough take on that is that Peters has consistently voted to support 'too big to fail' in a range of industries, and is getting paid back for that. Peters has voted to support government/industry/union partnerships in banking, healthcare, and automotive industries, throwing billions of dollars at the big politically connected firms to bail them out and protect them from competition from smaller, less connected companies.
That's wrong- Peters has got to go.
How To Develop Our Economies
Basil Enwegbara asks "...Can Africans learn something from today’s Chinese and Indians? Can we learn that a strong market for goods and services is a leading cause of economic growth, and that market is itself a major cause of capital, investment, and technological advancement? Are we now convinced that economic growth is an organic process, involving many interrelated factors? What about understanding that even the banking industry and other financial institutions do not create the conditions for economic growth, since they are only important when an economy is sufficiently sophisticated to make efficient and creative intermediation between savings and business?...Have we now finally realised that a continent that does not educate majority of its young men and women in job-enhancing education (science and engineering) to prepare them as useful citizens is not building its future high-value carrying workforce? Are we still in doubt that Africa having the world’s single largest number of highly educated professionals in the US and yet they could not be made to work closely with their African counterparts—like their Chinese and the Indians counterparts—to help jumpstart continental economy is our collective sin future generations will find difficult to forgive us? Have we now come to pose the question: How come our well-trained scientists and engineers, those that refused to migrate are allowed to roam our streets without being fully mobilised? What about the understanding that the future of our economic development lies in the mobilisation of Africa’s entrepreneurs, especially our highly gifted men and women who have the psyche of economic warriors? Put differently, are we now fully aware that it is this lack of entrepreneurial dynamism that today separates us from the developed economies of the West and recently Asian economies..."
Pandiaspora
"...Pandiaspora encourages Nigerians in the Diaspora to volunteer their skills to work on short term medical mission projects and to consider returning home to contribute to longer term sustainable development...their mission is the principle of direct intervention - helping people and communities to attain better health and well-being and to support better education for vulnerable school-aged children. To achieve our mission, we work in support of existing health and educational infrastructure in Nigeria and mobilise the skills of Nigerian professionals in the Diaspora to bridge the health and educational needs of the people we serve... "
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.
The Meaning of Wealth
Mutumwa Mawere recently addressed the Nigerian diaspora he stated:
...There are countless examples of African entrepreneurs and professionals who have substantial amounts of money in Africa but it is evident that the prosperity has not been democratized to the extent of creating an African ownership class able to take the continent’s majority into a new and dynamically positive direction underpinned by new values of work, combined with saving, investment and an ownership mentality. It is also important to underscore that there is a distinction between being “rich” and being “wealthy”.
Yes, some Africans have made money but because financial literacy and “platinum rights” was not stressed as much as a sense of public justice and civil rights were by our founding fathers and we did not keep it (the money) and we certainly we did not grow it.
Many have made money but no one has really taught us how to keep it in our communities.
Imagine, after 13 years of South Africa’s democratic dispensation, we still do not have a new mutual for blacks? No one taught us about financial literacy and the basic tenets of a free enterprise system that appears universally to capture the imagination of many progressive and successful nations.
The challenge of understanding the free-enterprise system and making it work for the majority of Africans has to become a core part of any conversation among Africans concerned about wealth creation and creating sustainable wealth addresses for Africans. Most of our wealth addresses are not assignable and transferable let alone from one African generation to the next.
Any successful nation building enterprise must necessarily be sustained by a healthy, robust and growing tax base and not foreign aid. Africa’s post colonial budgets still remain principally funded by bilateral and multilateral sources of finance.
Africa must create its own dominant class of very successful entrepreneurs, at all levels. We should have our own wealth builders and not become a continent specialized in distributing other people’s wealth.
As we approach the 47th birthday of Nigeria, we must focus on converting ourselves from cash economy customers into banking (our own banks), tenants into homeowners, small business dreamers into small, medium and large scale business owners, minimum wage workers into living wage workers, economically illiterate into economically empowered citizens.
Many of us are consumed with directionless conversations that are primarily focused on what governments can do for us and not what we can go for ourselves. We tend to be good at being against something and not for something.
Literacy can be a sustainable instrument for poverty eradication. They often say that when you know better, you tend to do better.
Any when Africans know better, I have no doubt that we can transform ourselves from islands of affluence to oceans of hope and prosperity. We have not invested much in literacy and integrated the literacy challenge in our post colonial agendas.
Any nation is as good as the interests that inform it. The only power we have as Africans in any field on endeavor whether it is in politics or the wealth game is the power to organize ourselves. One hand cannot clap but two hands can surely make a noise.
Why then is it the case that we have not been able to use our collective spent to our advantage? Many of our African governments have benefited from the financial illiteracy of Africa’s intellectuals. Africa has invested in human capital and yet such investment has not been able to provide any leadership on the bread and butter issues.
Surely, it is evident to all of us that any consolidation of our pain and opportunities can create a critical mass that is missing in action. Imagine if all Nigerians resident in South Africa could consolidate their mobile phone expenses into one pool, how much impact would they have in the South African economy.
Equally, if all Zimbabweans resident in South Africa chose to use one bank, how much would that bank be worth? Even the obvious things that Africa needs to do are not so obvious to our leaders.
I think it is self evident that the poor need the rich in as much as the rich need the poor. Can you imagine a nation of only poor people with the same means and possibilities? On the key ideological questions, we have heard many people argue that a free enterprise system is not suited for Africa and many of our governments in Africa have perfected the skill of creating ideological and theoretical entrepreneurs/bureaucrats without asking the question whether in fact if all the rich people were eliminated, Africa would be any better.
The post colonial experience has confused many of us to the extent that we are now looking for intelligent leaders to govern us when leadership may have little to do with intelligence. Even in a family, it would not be normal for all the children to be the same. Those who do well in one generation inspire the next generation to do better.
Is Africa’s future safe with a system where the state thinks for its citizens or where the citizens think for themselves and act in their own self interest? Many believe that governments (created by the same citizens) can and should be expected to lead the anti-poverty crusade and yet human history has not given us any good examples of governments acting in the interests of citizens who are not in government.
We must take ownership of our destinies and we must be the change that we want to see in the continent. No one else is going to do it for us. We must sell ourselves as worthy of investment and we must change our attitudes because in the final analysis, our attitude to wealth determines our altitude.
Anyone can make money in a growing economy than can be stolen in a decaying and dysfunctional system. If we look at Africa’s unmet needs, then we can appreciate the possibilities that exist in the continent and yet we think and act in a fragmented and confused manner. Those who should ordinarily lead appear to be visionless preferring to focus on yesterday (which is gone) and not on actions that create a better Africa.
Before we can think of creating an African pool of wealth, we need to understand the meaning of wealth. Wealth has come to mean an abundance of items of economic vale or the state of controlling or possessing such items and encompasses money, real estate and any personal property.
In many countries wealth is also measured by reference to access to essential services such as health care or the possession of crops or livestock. Accordingly, an individual who has accumulated wealth relative to others is often described as wealthy.
Therefore, wealth refers to some accumulation of resources. In light of the above, Africa is not recognized as a wealthy continent because of the inferior relationship between the majority of us and items of economic value. We are generally challenged in the resource accumulation enterprise...
photo courtesy of ZimDaily
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.
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
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.
