text:
Like the words fiction and nonfiction, the word poetry sometimes seems too broad and general to contain all the varied approaches, purposes and styles of poems. And when helping teachers design units on poetry, I usually recommend narrowing the focus down to a few different kinds—which is also a way to ensure we're not teaching the same thing grade after grade.
By kinds, though, I don't mean forms, such as cinquains, limericks or even haiku because, unless they're grounded in the kind of enduring understanding I explored last week, we risk sending the out the message to students that form is more important than content—that it doesn't matter if your poem is nonsensical or hackneyed so long as it adheres to the form.
Whether it's the five prescribed lines of a cinquain or the dictates of the five-paragraph essay, this emphasis on form can lead students to either reduce or inflate whatever it is they might want to say in order to fit the form. Prescribing a pre-determined form also deprives students of engaging in one of the most vital, challenging but necessary aspects of writing: discovering a form that 'informs' your content and supports your meaning. (To see a poet who found a form that helped her express her content in a powerful way, check out Amy VanDerwater's villanelle "V is for Vulture".)
Instead of that, what I mean by 'kinds' are poems that seem to have a similar purpose, intention or way of working, such as poems that are built around a central metaphor, like the ones I shared two weeks ago, or poems that describe an object or phenomena in fresh, surprising language, such as "Dragonfly" by Georgia Heard or almost anything in Valerie Worth's wonderful collection all the small poems and fourteen more.
Over the years, depending on the grade, I've helped teachers gather different kinds of poems to use for either whole class studies or for learning centers or stations. We've gathered poems, for instance, that address social issues, such as "To the Pay Toilet" by Marge Piercy or "Coin Drive" by Janet Wong; and poems that explore identity, such as "Where I'm From" by George Ella Lyon and "I Am What I Am" by Rosario Morales. We've even collected poems about poetry, such as the Billy Collins poem I shared the other week and Naomi Shihab Nye's wonderful "Valentine for Ernest Mann." But perhaps my favorite kind to study with students in grade five and up is what I like to call 'small moment poems.'
Like their cousins, small moment stories, small moment poems zoom into an often autobiographical moment, but without the trajectory of beginning, middle and end or the trappings of problem and solution. They're the kind of poems poet Charles Simic means when he says, "Poems are other people's snapshots in which we see our own lives." And I love sharing and studying them with older students precisely because of this. For in showing us our own lives in someone else's moment, small moment poems invite us into one of the great wonders of literature: the way that the particulars of a story or poem can give way to a more universal expression of the human condition, which is another way of saying a theme.
To show you what I mean, let's look at the poem "Taking Things Apart" from Ralph Fletcher's book Moving Day:
As readers, we may never have moved to Ohio or had a ping pong table, let alone seen it dismantled, yet it's the particulars of the poem that lets us feel the ache of being severed from possessions and places we love. That idea is conveyed through the things themselves—through the legless table and the beds left in pieces. And in this way the poem is both about this particular boy facing this particular move and the way we can all feel unmoored and anxious when our lives are taking such turns—as if our selves can be disassembled as easily as shelves.
By focusing on small moment poems, we can help students engage in thinking about what larger, invisible universal ideas the poet might be exploring and what aspects of the human condition their own small moments might speak to. As readers, students often do this through connections. But because small moment poems compress and distill a single experience in an accessible way, students are often able to zoom into the feelings underneath the poem, rather than get stuck on the literal level (making connections, say, to ping pong tables or cousins who live in Ohio). This also makes small moment poems great tools for helping students see the difference between a meaningful and what I sometimes call a "that's nice, but" connection. The former unlocks the heart of the poem, usually via emotions, while the latter is just something the reader remembers that doesn't necessarily plumb the depths without additional thinking.
Many wonderful small moment poems can be found in the following collections. Take a look and reconnect with yourself in someone else's moment (just choose carefully for classroom use as some of the poems are not appropriate for younger students):
Poetry Anthologies Containing Some Small Moment Poems: Moving Day by Ralph Fletcher, The Place My Words Are Looking For: What Poets Say About and Through Their Work, edited by Paul Janeczko, What Have You Lost?, edited by Naomi Shihab Nye, Time You Let Me In, also edited by Naomi Shihab Nye, Poetry 180, edited by Billy Collins, Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor.


text:
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a
high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse
that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician–
nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents and
school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination"–above
insolence and triviality and can present
for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.
– by Marianne Moore
What do you think of Marianne Moore's defense of poetry? I, personally, like the argument, though I hesitate to call the poem itself a good example of poetry. It reminds me of a tedious professor lecturing in a hall – well informed, and certainly meaningful, but the good stuff is in the quotations, not the narrative.
The poem appears to be almost unstructured, but it is, in fact, a fairly tightly worked example of syllabic structure. For example, each stanza's first line has 19 syllables, and all but one of the stanzas ends with a 13 syllable line. So she paid attention to what she was doing.
But what good does any of that do us? You don't get a rhythm reading this poem – you don't get rocked along with iambic pentameter, kicked by rhythmic feet or treated to clever rhymes. Instead, all you really get is the satisfaction of knowing that the poet was at least paying attention to something, even if it doesn't make any difference to your level of satisfaction. Kind of like having drinking cheap wine from fine crystal, the artistry is superfluous and wasted.
Ultimately, I like the poem. By playing academic syllabic games with poetry, she embodies the tension between great poetry and those who strive to understand it. She knows the way it ought to be – "imaginary gardens with real toads", but she cannot quite get to the point of producing poetry herself. Like her, there are times I dislike poetry, but I remain interested in it.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
WAYLAND, MA – Design professionals continue to invest in training and development, despite being severely hit by the recession, and in many cases are increasing training budgets and supplementing training to prepare for the economic recovery.
The results of an informal survey by The Zweig Letter, ZweigWhite's flagship publication, show that that nearly 58 percent of firms who responded have increased their training budgets in 2010.
Furthermore, 43 percent of respondents said they are taking advantage of the economic slowdown to train staff and prepare for the bounce back.
"We are using the time we have to train, cross train in Microstation and Autocad, standardize, mentor skills in things from drafting to leadership," says Pamela Bain, president Bain Medina Bain Inc., a consulting engineering and surveying firm in San Antonio, Texas. "We are also 'finally' utilizing every module of our financial system, and training all the staff on the use and beauty of the program."
As part of the survey, participants were also asked to describe how their training delivery methods changed as a result of the economy, as well as about their training and development priorities.
Almost 54 percent of respondents said they are using more technology, such as webcasts, to conduct training. A 32 percent group reported that they are conducting training the way they have always done. A minority, 14 percent, said they're now doing training and development mostly in-house.
As for training priorities, here's how the top three stack up: project management training (38 percent), training on technologies such as Building Information Modeling (29 percent); and leadership and business management for future leaders (18 percent).
Lisa Behrendt, HR business leader for training and development with SSOE Group, an architecture and engineering firm in Toledo, Ohio, said that technology has definitely gained a new focus with this recession.
"We have shifted more toward leveraging technology to deliver training," notes Behrendt. "Recorded content, GoToMeeting for in-house sessions, webinars, Red Vector and First Net Learning are all methods we are using. However, we still believe that certain sessions and activities warrant face-to-face development, so we prioritize where and when travel and outside vendor expertise is acceptable."
About ZweigWhite
ZweigWhite is one of the nation's leading sources of business management services for architecture, engineering, and environmental consulting firms. The ZweigWhite team consists of experts in strategic business planning, business valuation, ownership transition, human resources management, finance and administration, mergers and acquisitions, market research, marketing, project management and project delivery methods who collectively produce a comprehensive suite of products and services, including newsletters, industry reports, executive training, business conferences, and advisory services covering virtually every aspect of firm management. The firm is headquartered in Wayland, MA, with additional offices in Chicago and Washington, D.C.
View this press release on zweigwhite.com.


text:
After Modern Architecture
De Stijl, 1917-1931: Visions of Utopia
House X
Architecture Today
James Stirling: An Architectural Design Profile
A Tower for Louisville: The Humana Competition
Two words characterize the architectural scene today: dynamic and disquieting. It is not the degree or kind of change that is unsettling, or the heat of the debate between the modernists and the post-modernists; change and controversy are an indication of a vital and lively art. The high ratio between unsolved problems and unfulfilled promise is a mark of a transitional period. Certainly no other art approaches the art of building today in its scale and diversity, its extraordinary impact on lives and places; and no other art faces the enormous and shattering challenges that have followed the liberation of architecture from modernist doctrine, or has invested equivalent energies in redefining that highly debatable doctrine. The one universal conclusion is that something significant is happening.
But exactly what is happening, or how, is not always clear; there are factors peculiar to our time that make judgment difficult. The new architecture is being shaped as much by the speed, effectiveness, and glamour of communications, with all of its distortions and false gods, as by the conventional course of art and technology and controlling market forces. Publishing, that mixed blessing of information and promotion, exacerbates the dilemma. Never have there been so many books on architecture, or such an avalanche of journals, from international magazines to student periodicals, with so many of them distinguished by the high seriousness of their tone, the quality of their historical and critical discussions, and the costly beauty of their design and production. One is torn between gratitude for this outpouring, after years of publishing aridity, and alarm over the bandwagon mentality and the often merely fashionable character of the product.
For every useful study that increases our knowledge of the architecture of this century, there seems to be an equal number of tiresome tirades devoted to the gross misreading of recent architectural history fed by the factual errors and faulty assumptions that have become the accepted mythology of post-modernism. Much of this flow of information and opinion is taking place through exhibitions and their catalogs. Last year's excellent De Stijl show at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, for example, filled in gaps and provided a perspective that only the passage of time and the waning of revolutionary ardor could make possible. The exhibition, under the direction of Milton and Mildred Friedman, and the catalog edited by Mildred Friedman,1 were a model of research and scholarship.
Far more common, however, are such publications as the catalog for an exhibition called "New Architecture, Maine Traditions," prepared at West-brook College in Portland, Maine, a small school that obviously does not have the resources of the Walker Art Center, although this rather ambitious show on regionalism—a popular post-modernist topic—did have the support of the local and national humanities councils. This publication is representative, or perhaps the word is "symptomatic," of much that is appearing today. The introduction, by the gallery's director, Judith Sobol, can stand as a classic of postmodernistthink. One appalling statement follows another in an interpretation…
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text:
Explosives plant cleanup disrupts Louisiana town
Mon., Dec. 3, 2012
DOYLINE, La. (AP) — The cleanup of 3,000 tons of explosives haphazardly stored at a munitions plant has frayed the nerves of residents who evacuated, closed the high school and spawned a criminal investigation of the company that owns the materials.
Authorities said about half the town's 800 residents had heeded requests that they leave during the cleanup that started Saturday, but some appeared to be returning to their homes. Some displaced residents were exasperated by the sheer volume of explosive material, which is more than authorities initially estimated. Adding to the uncertainty was a forecast of thunderstorms Tuesday that could slow efforts to move the propellant used in artillery shells to safer storage sites.
"We got outside the evacuation area when they said there was a million pounds. Now it's six million," said Frank Peetz, 71, who was staying with his wife in a camper at a nearby state park. "Maybe we ought to be up in Arkansas somewhere."
State police say some of the propellant was found spilling out of boxes crammed into buildings, and they have opened a criminal investigation into why the materials were not stored in bunkers at the state-owned site, leased by Explo Systems.
Weather could complicate the transfer of the roughly 6 million pounds of propellant. If lightning is spotted within five miles of the site, authorities will suspend efforts to move it, state police spokeswoman Lt. Julie Lewis said. No lightning was expected Monday, but the National Weather Service said there's a 30 percent chance of Thunderstorms on Tuesday.
Lewis said that as of late Monday, crews had segregated or safely stored 1.2 million pounds of the propellant since the cleanup started. The work has slowed because they are indoors moving the material, sometimes through narrow hallways.
State police said the material is stable and would need an ignition source to explode. Lewis said it would take something significant such as lightning or a brush fire — and not static electricity — to ignite it.
Col. Mike Edmonson, commander of the Louisiana State Police, said police weren't sure how much damage an explosion of the material could cause, even after consulting with Department of Defense officials.
"Nobody can tell you what 6 million pounds of explosives would do if it went up," Edmonson said in a telephone interview. "And I don't want to find out."
Police have checkpoints on roads leading into Doyline, though residents are allowed to come and go. The evacuation was voluntary, and some residents elected not to leave their homes in the town that has been used to film some scenes for the HBO vampire series "True Blood." The evacuation will remain in place at least until Tuesday.
Edmonson said that Explo Systems leases and controls about 400 acres of the 15,000-acre Camp Minden, a former ammunition plant that now is a state-owned industrial site and home to a National Guard training facility. He estimated that the M6 propellant was stored in an area of less than 10 acres.
It was discovered there, stored indoors and outdoors, sometimes in containers that had spilled open, by a trooper following up on an October explosion at the facility.
"It was stuffed in corners. It was stacked all over," Edmonson said.
Just outside the evacuation area, Doyline High School teacher Linda Watson stopped Monday to buy chicken strips at D&H Hardware, which has a small kitchen serving fare that also includes burgers.
Watson said she has not evacuated and has no plans to. Like some others around here, she's accustomed to living near an ammunition plant.
"I've been there the whole time," she said.
Her main concern is the school having to tack on days to the end of the year to make up for classes being out during the evacuation. The school was to remain closed Tuesday.
John Finklea, who was working the register at the store his family owns, said business is down because of the evacuation. He said there's too much being made of the situation.
"I understand people get scared," he said, adding that he considered leaving but ultimately chose not to.
Explo has not publicly commented on the investigation. Neither a company executive nor an attorney who represents the company returned calls Monday. Its website says the company has been in existence for seven years and that its management has been "demilitarizing" and recovering explosives and propellant for 15 years.
Authorities had initially estimated the total of M6 stored at the site at 1 million pounds after the first investigator saw cardboard boxes on long rows of pallets behind a building. Police found more stacked in sheds and warehouses when crews returned Saturday to begin moving the boxes into bunkers about two miles away on the former munitions site.
Lewis said the cause of the Oct. 15 explosion remained under investigation.
The company isn't currently allowed to manufacture any explosives, but can sell what it has. Authorities are hoping such sales could reduce the amount of the material in the area.
Webster Parish Sheriff Gary Sexton said authorities have still not been in touch with the company's owners, though police officials previously said a company manager was working with them. He didn't know how many people were still displaced but said the majority of people in shelters had left them.
Sexton said explosions weren't uncommon in the years that the munitions plant has operated, but he lamented the danger posed by the improper storage of the propellant.
"They not only put their people in jeopardy, they put our people and the people around here in jeopardy," he said.
Evacuees were allowed to stay for free at Lake Bistineau State Park, but ranger Marc Massom said only a few had shown up by midday. Masson, a Doyline resident who lives outside the evacuation zone, said some stayed at their houses because of fears about looting.
Lewis, of the state police, said that security was tight throughout the town with help from neighboring agencies, and that crime hadn't been a problem.
Peetz, the retiree staying in the camper with his wife, said there should have been more oversight of the munitions storage.
"I'd like to see more state and federal checks on who is there and what the hell they're making," Peetz said.
McGill reported from New Orleans.
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text:
Baking Soda: Removes dirt, dead skin, and unclogs pores. It also fades acne scars.
Recent Posts
Friday, September 10, 2010
DIY Acne Mask: Honey, Baking Soda & Cinnamon
Baking Soda: Removes dirt, dead skin, and unclogs pores. It also fades acne scars.
20 comments:
- Fifi said...[Reply]
I'm deffo gonna try this ;P
- July 6, 2011 at 4:02 AM
- Ayari/Fifi said...[Reply]
I'm deffo gonna try this ;P
- July 12, 2011 at 11:22 PM
- Anonymous said...[Reply]
Does any ones face tingle when they use it?... I love how soft it leave your skin when you wash it off
- January 27, 2013 at 6:44 PM
- Anonymous said...[Reply]
I love this mask! I only do natural facials now.
- March 9, 2013 at 9:36 PM
- K said...[Reply]
i've been trying different natural facial masks for almost a year now.. and guess what, my face has improved a lot...will try this one for sure..
- March 16, 2013 at 8:30 PM
- lkl said...[Reply]
Tried it, liked it, will be doing again!
- April 22, 2013 at 12:28 PM
- Mzx NiNi said...[Reply]
I'm glad you like it^^
- April 22, 2013 at 11:23 PM
- Mollie said...[Reply]
could I substitute the honey for agave?
- May 11, 2013 at 5:27 PM
- Mzx NiNi said...[Reply]
I'm not sure. I've never tried it before. I heard that agave is similar to honey, so it might work :)
- May 12, 2013 at 12:42 AM
- bethany said...[Reply]
What is the best moisturizer to use?
- May 14, 2013 at 10:17 AM
- Mzx NiNi said...[Reply]
Hi! You should try to find one that goes best with your skin
type. I have sensitive, oily skin that's prone to breakouts, and I'm still looking for my perfect moisturizer. This article might help you^^
- May 18, 2013 at 2:47 AM
- Guest Kona said...[Reply]
Using raw, unrefined honey will increase results as none of the essential minerals have been heated out...such as in regular table honey. You can find the raw versions at Whole Foods or a natural grocer near you. I use a raw honey, sour cream, and ACV mask twice a week but I will be trhing this one too!
- May 30, 2013 at 10:59 PM
- Anna said...[Reply]
Is your face supposed to burn??
- June 3, 2013 at 8:50 PM
- Mzx NiNi said...[Reply]
Thanks for the tip :)
- June 3, 2013 at 10:22 PM
- Mzx NiNi said...[Reply]
No, it shouldn't. Maybe you're having a reaction to the baking soda.
- June 3, 2013 at 10:44 PM
- Ansleigh said...[Reply]
How often do you do this facial
- June 19, 2013 at 6:43 PM
- Mzx NiNi said...[Reply]
Once or twice a week :)
- June 19, 2013 at 7:44 PM
- Crystal Lea said...[Reply]
I just tried the honey lemon baking soda mask and I noticed a difference instantly. I will add some cinnamon because of the added bonus!
- September 22, 2013 at 9:50 AM
- Mzx NiNi said...[Reply]
Great! Hope you like it^^
- September 23, 2013 at 11:46 PM
- shania said...[Reply]
Mine does is it supposed to do that?
- September 26, 2013 at 5:55 PM


text:
Liberty News
'Doing Our Neighbor Good:' New program offers more community service opportunities
|Students help create a mosaic wall in downtown Lynchburg.
A new program is allowing Liberty University students, faculty, and staff to meet the immediate needs of their neighbors.
The Community Care Initiative launched at the beginning of the Fall 2012 semester, and already more than 35 projects have been completed throughout the Lynchburg area. These include housekeeping and yard work for the elderly and disabled, painting at the Blue Ridge Pregnancy Center, a building blitz with Habitat for Humanity, a mosaic wall for the children's museum, cleaning up local parks, and visiting nursing homes. More than 1,200 "hours of care" have been recorded since September.
The initiative's motto is based on James 2:18: "Demonstrating Our Faith by Doing Our Neighbor Good."
"Our focus is to find tangible and lasting ways to demonstrate the love of Christ by serving people through short-term projects," said Will Honeycutt, CCI faculty coordinator. "It has always been part of Liberty's mission to be salt and light in our world, and with such a large base of service-minded people, Liberty is positioned to meet the needs of our community."
|A Liberty student ministers to the elderly.
The program is an optional supplement to the 20 hours per semester that is required of all Liberty students in their sophomore, junior, and senior years through the Christian/Community Service Office. In the 2011-2012 academic year, students contributed 305,384 hours in service to the community. While those required hours are earned mainly at places in need of long-term volunteers, CCI is not required. It was designed as an extra opportunity for students, faculty, and staff to respond to various needs as they arise, simply because they desire to do more to demonstrate their love to their local neighbors.
The CCI office fields the requests from the community and then assigns the "care projects" to project managers, largely coming from Liberty's Office of Student Leadership, who then recruit their teams and go meet the need.
"As Christians, we are called to step outside of the 'Liberty bubble' and to reach out to the many different people that God has placed around us," said Brittannie Hedrick, a project manager. "Lynchburg is an awesome community filled with people who need to be loved and need to see the Gospel lived out in us."
Students say they have enjoyed getting to know the people they serve and they receive a reward for their work — the blessing of witnessing a burden lifted and a life changed.
|Students stain an elderly man's wheelchair ramp.
Project manager Kari Wagner helped stain an elderly man's wheelchair ramp.
"(He) came outside while we were working, and talked to us for a long time. He shared about his difficult journey with his numerous health problems and how grateful he was that we were able to come and stain this wheelchair ramp," she said. "At the end, we prayed as a group for him and it was awesome. I was so honored to be able to be God's hands and feet today as we served this man and his wife while completing such a simple task."
Gracie Erwin has been leading a team that has been visiting a terminally ill woman in need of companionship and help cleaning her home.
On one recent visit, Erwin said she recognized that the woman's condition had worsened since their last visit.
"She was feeling ill and having a difficult time breathing so we spent the afternoon giving her a foot bath, and a manicure and pedicure. She absolutely loved being pampered. It was so good to do something so simple for this woman and get to spend time building our relationship with her. After that we cooked her dinner and had a lovely meal together. (She) always tells us how much we mean to her and what a difference we have made in her life. We haven't done much, but we have been so blessed in what we have done."
Gary DuPriest, an elderly and disabled Lynchburg resident, and his wife, who is also disabled, have had several CCI Care Teams to their home.
"Thanks for having such good Christian kids in the CCI program," he said. "Our city should be proud to have such a fine group of young people helping out the elderly and those others who can't do for themselves."
- Students, faculty and staff interested in signing up for a CCI care project can contact email@example.com. Learn more and see the work in action on CCI's facebook page.


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South African Journal of Education
On-line version ISSN 2076-3433
Print version ISSN 0256-0100
S. Afr. j. educ. vol.32 n.4 Pretoria Jan. 2012
The potential for using visual elicitation in understanding preschool teachers' beliefs of appropriate educational practices
Rose Ruto-KorirI; Carien Lubbe-De BeerII
IDepartment of Educational Psychology, School of Education, Moi University, Kenya
IIDepartment of Educational Psychology, University of Pretoria, South Africa carien.lubbe@up .ac.za
We explore the use of video and photo elicitation in a research study undertaken to understand the way in which preschool teachers perceive and construct their provision of children's educational experiences. We explore the value of visually elicited interviews based on video footage and photographs captured during teaching and learning in four classrooms in two preschool settings in Kenya. Through visually elicited interviews, both the teachers and the researcher constructed meaningful conversations (interviews) to explore preschool teachers' practical experiences and their beliefs, understanding and interpretation of developmentally appropriate educational practices. This paper targets the possible value ofand contribution made by visual data generation procedures, as well as their inherent challenges, in order to add to the body of knowledge on visually elicited interviews.
Keywords: belief systems; developmentally appropriate practices; early childhood education; interviews; photo elicitation; photographs; video elicitation; video recordings; visual methodologies
The aim of this paper is to present our exploration of the potential of visual methodologies in early childhood research. In this endeavour, we explored teachers' beliefs about preschool children's educational experiences in both a Montessori (private) school and a public preschool system, in the District Centres for Early Childhood Education (DICECE), in Kenya. In this paper, we share the decisions that had to be made when engaging with visual elicitation methodology in order to add to Mitchell's statement (2008:365) that visual methodologies should be "appreciated within [their] full complexity" as "the lens is a defining technology in the current era" (Schroeder, 2003:81). Moreover, this work is important because visual research is gaining prominence (Aubrey, David, Godfrey & Thomson, 2000).
Prosser (2007:13) identifies visual research as "the production, organization and interpretation of imagery", while Emmison and Smith (2000:4) define visual research as "any object, person, place, event or happening ... observable to the human eye" and not only limited to photography. This research study, however, focused on photographs and video footage as visual data used as visual elicitation tools. Harper (2002:13) traces the term "photo elicitation" to work done by John Collier and his colleagues in the 1950s and defines it as "the simple idea of inserting a photograph into a research interview". We broadened Harper's concept to include video-elicited interviews that use video material to elicit teachers' responses regarding their classroom practices.
The use of visual methods in research has its origins in ethnography, anthropology and sociology (Harper, 2005; 2004; 2002; Pink, 2004; 2003). The visual may be richer than the written word because it captures information about a specific context, process, event or people (Harper, 2005; 2002; Pink, 2004; Prosser & Schwartz, 1998). Therefore, video recording is, increasingly, gaining popularity in research and it is possible to use it without undue interruption (Patton, 2002). To exploit this in educational research, we combined both video- and photograph-elicited interviews as visual elicitation in the research study, which explored preschool teachers' beliefs, their understanding and their interpretation of developmentally appropriate educational practice (DAEP) in Kenya.
In this paper, we present an overview of the methodological choices taken to generate visual data, providing the requisite details of their construction. We also explore some of the complexities of using visual data, as experienced in this research. Further, we demonstrate how the dynamics that occur outside the purview of the camera's lens, "which is limited by the camera frame" (Reifel, 2007:42), can empower the visual researcher and the reader of a visual text, since "photography remains closely tied to identity, memory, and presence" (Schroeder, 2003:82), and, accordingly, explicate culturally relevant meanings for a specific context (Reifel, 2007).
Although, as previously stated, this research explored preschool teachers' beliefs, this paper highlights visual elicitation as a methodological approach used to access teachers' beliefs. Previous studies on teachers' beliefs agree that beliefs are entrenched in a person's repertoire of experience, even though most of these studies have tended to use self-reported approaches (Kowalski, Pretti-Frontczak & Johnson, 2001; McMullen, Elicker, Wang, Erdiller, Lee, Lin & Sun, 2005), which might be limited in capturing the teachers' actual beliefs. Vartuli's (1999:490) warning that "teachers tell you what you want to hear" encouraged our choice of visual elicitation as an alternative to accessing teachers' beliefs, in order to mitigate the limitations inherent in self-reports. In the following section, we sketch a brief background of the research study conducted, in order to situate methodological decisions that are fundamental to creating visual data.
Background to the research study
Research design
This study was guided by a constructivist paradigm in terms of which it is believed that actors in the social world socially construct their experiences (Creswell, 2002). Therefore, the teachers as participants, and the researchers, were deemed capable of using their individual and collective experiences to create an understanding of children's educational experiences and the teachers' beliefs about developmentally appropriate educational practices (DAEPs), as viewed through social and cultural lenses, to explain such experiences. A qualitative multiple case study (Yin, 2003) was used to explore preschool teachers' beliefs about developmentally appropriate educational practices. By using a multiple case study design and with the help of the photos and videos that were made, the teachers' actual practices during their daily interactions with children were explored and, subsequently, their emerging beliefs about their actual practices. The first author was the active fieldworker in the study, and will be referred to hereafter as the researcher.
Selection of participants
A stratified, purposive sample was used to select four female teachers holding a certificate in early childhood education (ECE), and who were responsible for teaching four- and five-year olds. The teachers' experience ranged from two to 12 years. We chose the teachers for actual classroom observations based on their willingness to participate in all stages of the research. In selecting the participants, we were careful to choose a site where consent, access and use of video would not be problematic. Harper (1998:29-30) acknowledges this difficulty when he warns, "the camera makes access more difficult; in some circumstances, it makes it impossible, ...photographing... influences how the fieldworker is received in the field". However, the researcher's prior relationship with some of the teacher participants and the parents made it easier to establish rapport for the purpose of obtaining consent to use and have access to visual data tools.
A note on ethics
The use of visual elicitation has inherent ethical complexities. In gaining permission and informed consent, the researcher assured the various role players that the classroom observations would not "interrupt" the normal schedule of school activities. Retrospectively, at the time we made this promise we had not reflected on the meaning of "interruption". Therefore, although there was no physical interruption, we acknowledge that the presence of the researcher may have interrupted the psychological space of the participants, especially because of the use of the video camera.
Pseudonyms ensured confidentiality for the schools, teachers and children in the study (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007; Christians, 2005). However, the photographs and videos contain unavoidable identifying details. Consequently, the researcher sought independent consent from the teachers and parents (on behalf of the children) to use the visual data. Even so, the researcher was extremely careful to present visual data that limited the revealing of participants' identities. Pink (2004:4) warns that "visual data [sic] should be carefully weighed up alongside the ethical issues they raise . and [yet] visual knowledge cannot be directly or adequately translated into written words".
Although we did not intend or anticipate any harm to the participants, as a precautionary measure we endeavoured to protect all of them from psychological and physical or social harm (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). Consequently, continuous debriefing throughout the research period ensured the teachers' continued interest. Further, the researcher eased into the research site gradually in order to establish rapport and reduce the levels of anxiety generated by her observations. To conclude, we agree with Ruby (as cited in Pink, 2003:188) that "ethical visual research and representation ought to be collaborative, reflexive and represent the 'voices' of informants", all of which we endeavoured to do in this research.
The pilot phase: assessing the potential of visual research
We decided to begin the research by conducting a pilot study to explore the potential of using both a digital camera and an audio tape recorder at the research site, as Pink (2004) recommends increased sensitivity to the meaning of visual tools in research contexts. Other concerns included the appropriateness of the equipment, the privacy of the research participants, and the feasibility of using the equipment. Consequently, apart from testing the instruments, the pilot phase was used by the researcher to recruit teachers on the basis of their willingness to participate, the age of the children they taught and their training.
Pilot work proved useful in four ways: firstly, the pilot phase became an opportunity to establish rapport with the teachers and the children, and to habituate them to her presence, before the data generation proper (Creswell, 2002). Secondly, technical challenges became apparent in that the Montessori preschool had electricity, while the DICECE preschool did not, which necessitated the provision of sufficient back-up batteries for the video camera to support continuous data generation. Thirdly, obtaining the informed consent from parents took longer than envisaged because each parent gave consent individually. Although the researcher could have sought the parents' consent as a group, individual consent was nevertheless sought in order to avoid what we perceived to be group "psychological level coercion" (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007:49). Fourthly, the pilot data were subjected to initial data analysis in order to appraise the whole experience of using a visual approach.
Data generation
Phase 1: The generation of visual data through observations
Two concurrent phases to generate visual data took place: In phase 1, the researcher made video clips and took photographs of the children's educational experiences in each teacher's class and these became the bases for the video- and photo-elicited interviews in phase 2, which stimulated reflection (Aubrey et al., 2000).
The researcher spent an average of six days of between three to four hours a day observing educational practices on an intermittent basis. In each of the classes, of the average eighteen hours of observation, six hours were video recorded, and these recordings were supplemented with notes on the observation, concurrent with visually elicited interviews (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007; Creswell, 2007; Harper, 2002). Throughout the research, we remained sensitive to possible weaknesses of observations, such as participant reactivity, researcher fatigue, expectancy effects that predispose the researcher to anticipate events based on hypothesis, unsupported inferences, and biased interpretations (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2007).
Phase 2: Visually elicited interviews of teachers' beliefs
During the second phase, the photographs taken and videos made of assorted classroom activities became "issues-based" representations intended to obtain interviewees' responses, rather than as use to script an outline of questions (Rapley, 2004:18). In addition, the researcher fully informed the participants on the nature of the interview and its duration, as well as the protocol surrounding the video recordings and photographs of their classroom practices (Cohen et al., 2007). None of the teachers refused to be photographed or videoed. Accordingly, the researcher arranged follow-up interviews with each teacher (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007) at a time that suited them. In the interviews the teachers were asked open-ended questions about individual activities in their classrooms in line with the requirements of case-study interviewing (Yin, 2003). As mentioned, despite having been given prior consent, the researcher debriefed each teacher before each interview to gauge whether they were still willing to participate (Cohen et al., 2007; Creswell, 2007).
Prior to each interview, in anticipation of power outages, the researcher printed several photographs representing divergent structured activities and presented them for photo elicitation. Although the researcher's prior selection of photos might have limited the participant's choice, the structured nature of activities partially mitigated this weakness as, in each interview, there had to be a mathematics, reading or story-telling session, inherently limiting the researcher in the choice of visuals to discuss. In addition, each participant viewed their own visual data prior to the visually elicited interviews and chose which visual segment to focus on, in what can be termed a "power-sharing strategy" (Gubrium & Holstein, 2003), effectively avoiding "symbolic violence" (Barbour & Schostak, 2005:43). Therefore, these visual interviews became "social constructions" (Rapley, 2004:16); the premise being that teachers are then more knowledgeable and more empowered to discuss their activities because "the power of the photo is its ability to unlock the subjectivity of those who see the image differently than the researcher" (Harper, 2004:236). In the following section, we present some of the photographs and an excerpt from an interview in order to showcase the value of photo and video elicitation.
Exemplar of visual data
The images in Figures 1-3 capture some of the learning material that is available in the classrooms, as well as examples of written work done by 5-year-olds in both preschools.
The selection of images (Figures 4-6) from the video clip shows the teacher selecting two children to demonstrate how to thread beads. When they have done so, the teacher asks the rest of the children what the demonstration is all about (the activity of threading beads), as well as possible outcomes or functions of the activity (e.g. making a necklace). This activity is done rather hurriedly before children disperse to engage with a typical writing activity, as shown in Figures 3 and 5.
Nuanced interpretation (field notes): The teacher is in a hurry to complete all the structured activities for the day because she is under pressure from the parents to prepare children for the "mainstream" learning curriculum.
Excerpt from interview (see photographs 4 and 5): The interview transcript has only been slightly edited in order to capture the words of the participant (whilst acknowledging that spoken and written language do differ), as Poland (2002) notes that verbal interactions are based on a kind of logic that differs from the logic of prose, because verbal interactions are supported by all kinds of supporting circumstances that are absent in pure stylistic prose. A transcription of a quite coherent conversation may therefore look remarkably disjointed and even incoherent when the words of such a conversation are committed to the printed page.
1. S: These two children were threading beads. This threading beads are the materials in class, whereby children can work on their own. When the teacher has introduced the activity.
2. S: Whereby the one who is threading beads knows more than the other one who is just observing ...
3. This activity:
4. R: Why didn't you give all the children that opportunity to talk about it?
5. S: About the threading beads...? Ee, I can give them anyway, but since also time cannot allow.
6. R: Tell me more, what do you mean by "time cannot allow?"
7. S: Because we cannot continue threading the beads aallllll the day [stressing all] because we have other activities to do...we have to do class work like writing[pause] ...
8. R: Okay
9. S: Okay, it is must to do class work.., you know with Montessori, they value a lot on activities, but you can continue to say I am a Montessori directress let me deal with Montessori... it depends also on the environment [later clarified as transition system] ...if I go on sitting with all types if materials of Montessori, maybe at the end of the day, a parent will come.., and wants to know is my child writing, can I see her books or his books? So, we cannot concentrate only on those activities. We have to give limit so that we can have time to do class work.
10. R: Teacher S, you have just told me about the environment.
11. S: Yes
12. R: What about the environment?
13. S: Okay, right now we are dealing with a Montessori system ... and these children will end up in a public school... whereby they will not know about Montessori. They like the child to work like the other in public schools, so we have to be careful with that class work also, so we have to give time . because with Montessori, if we say now we are going to do the real Montessori, maybe all the time will be consumed by these materials because they are so many. You will not have time to teach this child to know numbers 1 to 20, how to calculate mathematics, how to read, ee.
14. R: Isn't that supposed to come out naturally when the child interacts with the materials?
15. S: Yeaaa, it comes, but you see, time (stress) does not allow you to follow each and everything.
16. R:mmmh
17. S: So you have to use the material that you see very quick, not to waste a lot of time.
18. R: So you don't use all the materials?
19. S: No we don't. Let me be sincere anyway
20. R & S: laughter...
21. R: Tell me more about that?
22. S: Okay, how we were trained in college, we were trained actually as a Montessori teacher, you know we have these international schools in Nairobi whereby they can follow the Montessori system.
23. S: We have to be careful, we know we have to give them also our Montessori as well as giving them what they are going to do, because if we I want to be a real Montessori...at the end of the day, maybe I will consume a lot of time, in activity work, than in doing the writing.... Okay, we anticipate a lot ofproblems because asfar as we may deal with these materials, may one material has a lot of stages, one two three, four, even to six...so if you deal with the same materials maybe one to six, maybe the whole term will finished.
Clearly, contextual background beyond the visual data is important for fully comprehending the classroom practices and inherent beliefs discussed. In our research, as the teachers constructed their experiences, it became apparent that they are under pressure to focus on academic tasks and accommodate standardised tests in the children's educational experiences, as Figures 1 to 6 illustrate.
As we tried to understand the positioning of the participants in their cultural context, it became apparent that all teachers varied their teaching approaches to accommodate the contextual dynamics which require children to transition to primary school using standardised tests. Therefore, teachers helped to construct the experience as meaning in context (Reifel, 2007). During the visual capturing process, our nuanced interpretation became that the materials in the preschools remained silent, even in the Montessori classes, whose philosophy recommends the use of materials. Teachers gave preference to work such as that captured by Figures 3, 5 and 6 in preparation for the class one (transition class) interview. A nuanced perspective captured in most of the visualised contexts was that all the teachers gave children more academically orientated tasks, which kept them away from free play that might be disruptive and disorderly and that would therefore need supervision and take up more class time.
The visual observations showed that children finished each structured activity and then began another. Consequently, as suggested by Patton (2002), the photographs gave us visual data containing contextual detail and an opportunity to understand the context of behaviour in order to discover things that may have been taken for granted. More significantly, we learnt things that people would be unwilling to talk about (cf. excerpt line 19: no we don't [use Montessori materials] let me be sincere anyway). Clearly, if visuals of the array of activities captured had not been available, it might have been difficult for the teachers to acknowledge this limitation in their teaching.
Emmison and Smith (2000) suggest that the framing and interpretation of visual data should be theory driven. Influenced by the theoretical fundamentals of DAPs, we entered the field with the expectation that one of the basic principles of a child-centred approach is to engage the children using learning materials. Although this is an internationally accepted principle (hence our preconceived notion), a cultural dispensation is called for when it comes to ECE education. Therefore, one of our initial conclusions was that the research contexts were not developmentally appropriate. This was, however, before we realised that the "content [of a photo] often overwhelms context" (Schroeder, 2003:83). As we engaged reflexively on this pre-emptive conclusion, it became apparent that we had ignored the cultural dispensation, as we "use technology to slow down and repeat observations and encourage deeper reflection on perception and meaning" (McDermott & Mehan, in Prosser, 2007:13) of our conclusion. We needed to understand the teachers' approach as being embedded in the sociocultural context. In retrospect, this implies that their approach was culturally and contextually relevant, even if it might appear to be developmentally inappropriate. More reflexively, only a few children (such as those in Figure 3) missed the concepts that might conventionally appear to be beyond the scope of five-year olds. The visual elicitation process also resulted in the teachers being active collaborators rather than passive objects of the study and, as Stanczak (2004) argues, this helped to cross the researcher/subject divide. In sum, the visual elicitation process became a means for both the researcher and the participant to deconstruct their positioning on the research process, allowing for a divergent interpretation of the visual data.
Challenges inherent in the use of visual methodology
In line with other researchers who suggest that a number of challenges are inherent in visual studies, our study exhibits the following challenges: a) analytical limitations; b) methodological challenges; and c) technical limitations. We explore each in turn.
a) Analytical limitations: difficulties related to visual analysis
Visual research is relatively new in educational research and its analytical tools remain limited. In the current study, it was challenging to process the visual data. Some of the decisions that had to be made in this regard included the need to transcribe the video voice material so that more information was obtained on the activities in the clips. An attempt to use video software, Transana (see www.transana.org), to analyse the data proved to be highly technical and cumbersome, especially because the data were generated before the software was acquired. It should be noted that researchers are encouraged to assess various analysis tools prior to data generation and, then, to generate data that can be supported by the software.
b) Methodologically related challenges and prospects
Logistics of coverage
Visual researchers working in early childhood settings face an additional complexity related to stability of focus, especially because a preschool setting is dynamic. For example, at the initial stages of the research, the video seemed to distract some children who sought the attention of the researcher, especially when the camera faced them. However, the researcher overcame this by tactfully monitoring the activity using the external LCD screen, thus maintaining eye contact with the target child, but tactfully avoiding the distracting child. Further, the researcher remained as discreet as possible during the observation by positioning herself at the back of the classroom (Cohen et al., 2007; Creswell, 2002; Yin, 2003). However, since the classrooms were 'ready-made' sites, in some classrooms this was not always possible, especially where the camera light was directly opposite a window. In such instances, the researcher took photographs from a strategic position for clarity before retreating to the background to continue with video footage. Further, to reduce the effects of the observer presence, multiple observations took place. Another limitation related to observation, even when a sampling approach is used, is selective or erratic attention. However, in this research, there was a self-correcting solution to this challenge, as the group approach to children's educational experiences used by the teachers solved this problem.
The meaning of video use in context
Trust is problematic in video research. However, in this research, it became a means of establishing rapport with the teachers (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007), as the researcher gained their confidence through debriefing and by reviewing the video with them. In fact, one teacher, who the researcher had not included in the research, pleaded to participate as reflected in the following excerpt from the fieldnotes:
Today is the third week after schools openedfor the school year. I arrive at the school as scheduled as I am welcomed by the Head Teacher before she leaves me in her office to attend the general assembly with the children and other teachers I begin to write my today's journal ... after the assembly, teacher Alice who happens to be teaching three-year-olds comes to request me to enjoin her class in the study. Although she pleads with me, I gently apologize and explain to her that my study would focus on mainly four year-olds and five-year olds.
Overall, as is shown by this excerpt, it would appear that the participants were at ease and willing to participate. Besides, the use of a video camcorder as a tool for data generation assumes a prestigious role in these contexts. As is evident from the personal experiences, in many other Kenyan contexts the 'intrusion of privacy' cliché has not pervaded the research context. It should be noted that, on several occasions, even the non-participating teachers requested a photo session with the researcher.
c) Technological challenges
An imported hand-size digital camcorder, which served the dual function of capturing both videos and photographs, reduced the clumsiness that can occur when handling cameras and video recorders. Although this duality of function offered some convenience in that fewer research tools had to be carried around, the switching mechanism by means of which the video could be stopped in order to take a photo might have resulted in important moments being missed on video. In addition, the manipulation of cameras and video cameras, as well as the sheer enormity of the data, is likely to lead to fatigue. To counteract this, field notes were triangulated with visual data to reduce the possibility of observer bias resulting from fatigue. Roberts (2007:70) advises that "today the noting of field activities and reflections can be aided by the (digital) tape recorder, the video camera, mobile phone (using video, image and text), photographs and even direct to a hand-held computer". At times, the researcher also recorded her own spoken reflections using the video camera, thus reducing the need for handwritten notes.
As the research used an imported digital camera, a number of additional challenges were experienced. For example, camera accessories included mini DVDs and extra batteries, which were not readily available in the research context. In addition, the cost of the mini DVDs at the time was high, retailing at ten times the price of the normal DVDs readily available on the market. This cost was avoided by transferring the data to the cheaper standard DVDs. However, this data transfer proved cumbersome and delicate, but probably enhanced the processing and management of data.
Another technological limitation was the inconvenience caused by comparing the DVD processing software that came pre-installed with the research laptop with competing software that the researcher was familiar with. In hindsight, this consumed valuable time could have been used to expedite data generation.
Concluding remarks
In our paper, we highlighted the various decisions made during visual data generation as we tried to connect inherent teachers' beliefs to the visual interviews. With the support of visual data, this research located teachers' beliefs within their own experiences. The visual data preempted our theoretically preconceived conclusions as we subjected it to more reflexivity. For us, as researchers, capturing the implicitness embedded in teachers' beliefs would not have been possible without the use of photos and video recordings. In many instances, the rational explanation of what teachers would argue are their beliefs about teaching and education did not correlate with the framework of DAP. However, we, as novice visual researchers, conclude that photos and videos played a valuable role in enhancing collaboration, building rapport and trust between the researcher and participants, and supporting the richness of the data captured by this study.
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They're mostly in their 20s, college grads who majored in theater or related studies. If they weren't friends before deciding to collaborate, they're friends now. They're enthusiastic multitaskers. None of them will get rich soon.
Meet the participants in Baltimore's ensemble theater scene, which is making its presence felt in much same way as the city's underground music and art scenes, with a steady output of new, eclectic, provocative fare.
"There is a critical mass of young artists all in one area at one time looking to get work done," said Mike Vandercook, co-founder of the Generous Company, which recently relocated from New York and has a monthlong festival scheduled for January. "It's an exciting time to be around Baltimore. That's why we're here."
Where there were maybe two ensemble theater groups five years ago, there are at least eight now. Most have shoestring budgets, but they all appear to be settling in for the long haul, determined to increase their financial and artistic horizons.
"It seems like it's catching fire," said Nathan Cooper, Single Carrot Theater's artistic director. His colleague, Jessica Garrett, director of public relations for the company, went one step further: "I feel we're on the cusp of something huge in Baltimore," she said.
Definitions can get a little blurred, but some common attributes help identify ensemble theaters. They are artist-run, from top to bottom. The artists decide on an overriding mission and aesthetic voice for the company, and collectively settle on works to be produced. Those works are mostly contemporary.
There may be occasional open auditions, but most casting is done primarily from among company members. The artists also do pretty much everything that needs to be done to get a show onstage. They may act in a production, run the box office or lighting for the next, direct or even write the one after that.
The troupes, which typically have six to 10 core members, may have a home theater, or they might move around the city. Whatever the location, ticket prices are invariably low. And a lot of the communicating with the public will be done via social media.
"An ensemble company makes a commitment to its members, who have a desire to be masters of their own artistic destiny," said Steve Satta, artistic director of Iron Crow Theatre. "We find projects that interest us, and we make it happen. We create our own opportunities. You don't wait for someone to put on a play that has a part for you."
The blossoming ensemble theater movement got a boost in 2007 with the arrival of Single Carrot, founded by a group of friends from the University of Colorado in Boulder who were eager to work together after graduating.
"It's a real good city to be an entrepreneur," said J. Buck Jabaily, a founding member of Single Carrot and current director of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance. "Baltimore is a place where you can apply your imagination."
In short order, Single Carrot took root in a storefront theater on North Avenue and started generating considerable buzz.
"It is such an awesome sensation to be welcomed here and feel this is our home, and to see more companies popping up," said Elliott Rauh, managing director of Single Carrot. "It inspires us."
When Single Carrot sprouted, Run of the Mill Theater was just about the only other ensemble-style enterprise in town. Run of the Mill folded last summer, but other groups that emerged in the past few years remain in the picture.
The Generous Company focuses on developing and producing new work; the festival in January, held at the Theatre Project, will showcase 16 pieces in various states of development.
Among those participating in that festival will be another of Baltimore's ensemble troupes, the Annex Theatre, which recently wrapped up a production of the Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht classic "The Threepenny Opera."
Iron Crow Theatre, founded to produce the work of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender artists, has quickly built a record for imaginative stagings of edgy plays. Same for the Strand Theater Company, which showcases new work created, performed, designed or directed by women; this week will see the world premiere of Alison Luterman's "Glitter and Spew."
The local ensemble scene also includes Glass Mind Theatre, Baltimore Rock Opera Society and the newly formed StillPointe Theatre Initiative. More may be out there, or will be soon.
There's an informal association, the Baltimore Network of Ensemble Theaters, based on the Network of Ensemble Theaters, which was over 150 members across the country.
"BNET is an opportunity for organizations to come together and address topics that concern all of us," Cooper said. "We can walk away with action plans and goals. We're here to support each other."
Why do ensemble theaters seem to be growing? For one thing, they provide an appealing alternative to what can be a nomadic existence, heading from company to company, even city to city, for theater work.
And why Baltimore? "It's manageable for new companies financially," said Satta, a faculty member at Towson University's theater department. "You can afford to live here."
Sarah Ford Gorman, associate artistic director of Glass Mind Theatre, is originally from this area and returned after getting her undergraduate degree at Syracuse University.
"I didn't want to go to New York," Gorman said, "stand in line with 600 people for an audition, get rejected, go to a horrible job and back home to an apartment I couldn't afford."
Glass Mind was founded in 2009 by a group that included graduates of Towson University and University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Gorman describes Glass Mind as "a family, a commune." That sort of description can be heard in other ensemble companies.
"It seems so cliched, but at Single Carrot I get to work with my best friends," Garrett said. "I spend part of my day answering box-office phone calls, then get to perform onstage together with my friends that evening, then end up afterward with Natty Bohs at someone's house. It's nice work if you can get it."
That environment differs from the conventional setup for a nonprofit performing-arts organization, which includes separate administrative and artistic staffs, as in Baltimore's professional houses, Everyman Theatre and Center Stage.
Ensemble theaters reflect "the values of Generation Y," said Everyman's artistic director, Vincent Lancisi. "It may be tied to a need for more democracy in our art, a frustration with the traditional theater structure of artistic decision-making, where it's all trickling down from the artistic director. The DIY movement is to be applauded."
At community theaters, a volunteer model richly represented in Baltimore, there still tends to be an artistic and administrative distinction. The actors are not likely to call the shots.
In an ensemble theater, "everybody is invested on both sides, embedded in everything," Jabaily said. And although people in an ensemble theater group may start out not getting paid, the goal is to offer substantial stipends as soon as possible.
Single Carrot is already on such a path. The company has increased its annual budget from $4,000 to $250,000 since 2007 — enough to fund one full-time position and several part-time.
The company's strategic plan calls for a fully salaried staff starting in fiscal year 2016. That does not necessarily mean that the artists would then join Actors' Equity, the national union that confers the official imprimatur of professional status.
"I don't believe you have to have an Equity card to be a professional," Rauh said.
Most Baltimore ensemble company members earn their living outside the theater. Occupations include teacher, musician, restaurant server, bartender, graphic designer, mural artist, museum docent and volleyball coach.
This week, Glass Mind gives the premiere of "And Underneath the Moon," written by Gorman (her day job is nanny). A couple months ago, the playwright was onstage, starring in Glass Mind's vibrant production of "Den of Thieves," a volatile work by hotshot New York playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis.
And last week, Gorman helped out with Glass Mind's open-mike night held at a pub. The open-mike idea was related to the company's overall objective. "The goal is to explore the definition of the term 'theater,'" Gorman said.
Expanding the possibilities of what it means to experience theater is a common theme among the ensemble companies.
"With every show, we want to be unearthing something new, with an audience as a witness," said Moritz, whose day job is on the Everyman Theatre production staff as a carpenter and electrician. "Baltimore is very hospitable for new work. People will come out and engage with you in a positive way. But they'll also get up and walk out. It's a quick-responding crowd."
Audiences have quite an array of options to respond to — the Equity houses, such community theater stalwarts as the Vagabond Players, the training/production hybrid Performance Workshop Theatre, etc. So far, the ensemble companies are holding their own in this market.
"Baltimore is just a great place to make more theater," Rauh said.
Ensemble theater groups are coexisting peacefully; they regularly promote each other's work. They also enjoy cordial relations with community theaters.
"We have an offer from Vagabond Players to raid their costume shop whenever we need to," Satta said. "They get that we're not what they are. We are not competing with each other. There are lots of different flavors in the theater community here."
Added Cooper: "There is enough audience to go around, but we can all work together to create more. And if one theater is thriving, there is as much chance for another to thrive."
A sampling of Baltimore's ensembler theater companies
•Annex Theater, search "Annex Theater" on Facebook
•Baltimore Rock Opera Society, baltimorerockopera.org
•Generous Company, generouscompany.org.
•Glass Mind Theatre, glassmindtheatre.com
•Iron Crow Theatre, ironcrowtheatre.com.
•Single Carrot, singlecarrot.com
•StillPointe Theatre Initiative, stillpointeti.tumblr.com.
•Strand Theater Company, strand-theater.org.


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Bolt(redirected from Boult)
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Used for listed equity securities. Block trading version of COLT.
A computerized order-entry system that sends buy or sell orders for block, over-the-counter trades. It is used to automatically execute orders, and allow users to monitor their positions. It operates much like the continuous on-line trading system, but only for block trades.


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Joel Eden is a User Experience Consultant at Infragistics. He can be contacted at [email protected].
User experience (UX) principles can help you to effectively create software for multi-touch, multi-user, and gestural devices such as the Microsoft Surface. These new platforms bring new challenges, some that can be partially solved using current software design paradigms, but many that will require applying new ideas from the cutting edge of Interaction Design (IxD) and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Challenges related to these newer "co-present" (that is, users who share the same physical space) situations differ from the challenges software designers have long dealt with when needing to support physically distributed users.
Designing a good gesture or multi-touch based system is first and foremost about designing a good system that happens to be gesture or multi-touch based. Following a general overview of gesture, multi-touch, and multi-user systems, I explain in this article how you can leverage traditional UX designing for these new types of systems. Using four well-known user experience principles as a starting point -- affordances, engagement, feedback, and not making people think -- I explore how they can be applied to these new types of systems.
Gestures, Multi-touch, and Multi-user Systems
We've all grown up on mouse- and keyboard-based computers that one person uses at a time, but times are changing and so are computers. Gesture-based computers replace mouseclicks with finger taps. Going even further, multi-touch systems recognize multiple fingers and objects at once; for example, Microsoft Surface can currently recognize and track 52 fingers, objects, or tag identifiers at one time. The possibility of tracking so many fingers at once opens up the system for multiple concurrent users all standing around the computer touching (using) it at once, which is what we call "multi-user."
With all of these new input capabilities come new design challenges. Imagine the complexity of keeping track of even just two users standing over a Microsoft Surface, facing each other. One of them places a camera down on the Surface that, through the magic of barcode-like tags, is recognized by one of the five cameras in the Surface. Each of the two users are standing at different orientations to the screen, and even if the tag on the camera identifies who it belongs to, how can the system know how to orient the pictures from the camera on the screen? And while touching or tapping a picture might be intuitive, how are you as the designer supposed to let these novice users know that they can actually use multiple fingers to shrink or grow the size of the pictures? And this is just about the simplest case you'll find in this brave new world of gesture, multi-touch, and multi-user systems.
The good news is you don't need to actually design every aspect of these types of interactions. By looking at and leveraging the way that we already interact with physical artifacts and how we interact in social settings, these design challenges become more tractable. The real world is already multi-touch and multi-user, and we use gestures all of the time; if done right, these systems should be as easy to interact with as picking up a pencil, drawing a picture, and showing it to someone. Innovation should not make things more complicated for the user; your goal in designing these new types of systems should be no different than the usual goal of user experience design; try to make complicated things seems simpler, and by all means do not make simple things feel more complex. So at first it would seem that creating usable software for multiple concurrent users would in general be more difficult than what we already deal with in trying to make software usable for individual users. If we look at some of the key principles of usability, and user experience in general there are actually aspects of having multiple users and inputs that you can use to your advantage.


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FRITZ!Box 7590 Serwis - Baza wiedzy
AVM Content
FRITZ!Box reports "Non-supported printer has been attached"
A USB printer cannot be used with the FRITZ!Box. The message "Non-supported printer has been attached" is displayed in the event log of the FRITZ!Box.
1 The FRITZ!Box does not support the printer
In order to use a printer as a network printer, it must be able to receive data in RAW format (unidirectional RAW over TCP). USB printers that require encapsulated or bidirectional data transmission cannot be used as network printers. This is the case with some GDI printers ("Windows printers"), LIDIL printers ("Lightweight Imaging Device Interface Language") as well as DOT4 printers (IEEE 1284 standard).
The FRITZ!Box USB remote connection software enables you to use USB printers with the FRITZ!Box, even if they cannot be used as network printers with the FRITZ!Box:
- Use the FRITZ!Box USB remote connection to connect your printer to your computer.
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Fortnum's Alphabet Notecards, X
Catalogue code: 2215071
Product description
Elevate your stationery with this beautifully die-stamped gold foil box of 8 folded A6 cards with envelopes. These notecards feature a blind embossed outline with an X initial engraved using the same font as our Alphabet Mugs, so you can expand your initial collection. These notecards come presented in a beautifully smart Fortnum's Eau de Nil gift box and are made in England.


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Hugo – short for huge letdown
Posted by metaphorical on 30 January 2012
Hugo's ratings at Rotten Tomato—94% for the critics, but only 83% for audiences—is the first clue that all is not well inside this giant clockwork of a movie.
Look inside, and you'll see a lots of gears that need oil—David Edelstein's review for New York Magazine, for example, is counted as favorable, but to read it is to find more green splattered on the page than red. He concludes it by noting that Hugo tells his young friend Isabelle that
machines have no extra, unneeded parts, and if he were a piece of a machine he'd have a reason for being. We know, of course, that he is a piece of a machine: Scorsese's Colossal Stupendous 3-D Thrill Generator. It's not clear if the irony is intentional.
That hints at what Joe Morgenstern says directly, over at The Wall Street Journal:
thematic potency and cinematic virtuosity—the production was designed by Dante Ferretti and photographed by Robert Richardson—can't conceal a deadly inertness at the film's core.
That's it exactly. The movie's dialogue is so entirely on the nose, from beginning to end—as if it isn't enough have Hugo explicitly say that people are machines and need to have a function, and he says it several times—with Isabelle finally replying, gee, maybe that's what's wrong with my dad. Doh! Marty, we got the point an hour ago when you made an automaton a central character in the movie.
Even the 3-D didn't work for me. As it was supposed to, the effect heightened the distance between them when one person was closer to the audience than another, but the people themselves, especially the front person, looked like a cardboard cutout—two dimensional, in other words. And throughout, the 3-D was just plain distracting.
Then there's the matter of the movie's tutorials on the history of cinema. I can think of no one I would rather hear lecture on the subject than Martin Scorsese—and if he would deign to teach us, a thousand at a time in a big lecture hall at NYU for twelve bucks a night, sign me up for all of them. But I didn't take the subway in the other direction to a theatre in the middle of Queens to watch Marty at his most didactic, channeled through the character of Rene Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg). You know that public service commercial that Scorsese does for film preservation? That's most of the third-act plot in Hugo.
Finally, speaking of film school—Screenwriting 101 isn't too early to learn a handy little rule of thumb: The protagonist has to resolve the biggest conflict—the crisis—by his own actions. James Bond can't just sit there enchained by Blofield until Felix Leiter comes to rescue him, he has to escape by his own devices. But Hugo's final salvation—I'm not really giving anything away, because it's inconceivable that this movie not have a happy ending—comes as he stands hopelessly in the middle of the train station until Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley) saves him.
I have no doubt that Hugo will enter the pantheon of great films, as The Departed did. If only the Academy had given Gangs of New York the Best Director title it arguably deserved, we wouldn't have to keep rewarding Scorsese for the disappointing movies that have followed.
IMDb / Box Office Mojo / Rotten Tomatoes (94%/83%)
Shortlink: http://wp.me/p2947-eH