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Living in New York, Spanish artist Isidro Blasco is constantly surrounded by architecture – absorbing his surrounds and reconstructing these captured moments into stunning photographic, sculptural forms. In his latest series, 'Sydney Interiors' with Dominik Mersch Gallery, Blasco enters the homes of Sydney creatives, providing a fascinating insight into the lives of some of our most significant artists, musicians, dancers and other personalities.
Your work has been described as 'Photographic Sculpture' – how would you describe your artistic practice and output?
I use photography all the time, but I don't consider myself a photographer, I just use it because it is a great tool. You see, when I take pictures I am just using them to replicate a shape, a volume that interests me. What I really do is make sculptures and reliefs; objects that represent other objects and that tell us how we see the reality around us.
How important is the 'deconstruction' and 'reconstruction' of subject matter to your overall practice? What does this allow you to do?
In the process of looking at and interpreting what I have seen, I tend to overlap several moments. In a way, I try to cover more ground than what you normally see in one shot. The deconstructing comes naturally when I am taking the pictures, since I need to take many pictures to cover just one room or one street view. So right there, in that street corner, is where I am breaking down the space around me into many small fragments of perception. And it is later, when I am rebuilding that moment in the studio that I try to condense all those small moments of perception into a single moment.
In a practical sense, how do you go about creating a body of work?
I first need to see 'the place': to actually be there and feel the space around me. When I get to a new location, I look with my eyes, but also try to perceive other things, especially volume. Anything that comes out of the continuum is important for me; any irregularities on the surfaces, any sharpness on the borders, etc.
Afterwards I start taking pictures, in a panorama-like movement. I try not to miss anything, and quite often I change positions within the space in order to capture more of it. This amazing connection with the space, with the volumes surrounding, does not happen every time. But when it happens I am the happiest person in that space. And I tend to go back to that spot again and again.
You have worked with building facades and cityscapes around the world, including Sydney. This body of work sees you capture interior spaces – how is it different working with interior as opposed to exterior spaces?
I don't make a distinction between being inside or outside. I am always the centre, from where the perception originates. And I am hoping that other people can relate to the way I see things because we share the same culture.
But having said this, there is more detail on the surface of things when you are in an interior of a house; especially in the homes I am visiting here in Sydney. I am surprised how much stuff and treasures people have in their homes.
This series has a distinctly personal element to it with works referring to individuals and their belongings. Can you tell me about this body of work and how you chose the interior spaces?
It was a quite an organic process finding the interiors for this project, mostly by word of mouth, through friends and Dominik Mersch gallery. I was looking for interiors of people that are in some way creative and relevant to the culture of this city. I have people that are very well known like Rob Hirst, or Brett Whiteley, and also artists that are starting their careers. I have found that almost everybody here is very open and laidback, and were very happy to open up their homes and let me take pictures.
Dominik Mersch Gallery
10 August to 7 September, 2013
Zero Gravity House, 2013, c-print, wood, museum board, 50 x 40 x 12cm
Tom's house, 2013, c-print, wood, museum board, 35 x 35 x 10cm
Courtesy the artist and Dominik Mersch Gallery


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subset: commoncrawl


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Liveblog from the first day of workshops at LAK14 – afternoon session. Overview of session, timetable etc and papers.
Computational approaches to connecting levels of analysis in networked learning communities (pm)
Live demos
Ulrich Hoppe: Workbench for chat analysis
Click go to Workbench. Log in using 'guest' and 'guest'.
Standard version, mainly for network analysis. Can get data from a repository, list to select. Fun example of voting in Eurovision. ABBA data, who voted for whom. (!) Can access stored workflows. It's all network-based, pretty much everything is server-side, although some of them are client-side for visualisations. Load, transform into internall preferred, SISOB (EU project) graph format. Then Clique Percolation Method to find groups. Then need something to visualise it – Force Directed Clustering. Then click Execute. Highlights which bit it's working on as it does it. Then click on Result link.
Tried another workflow. Publication network, as Pijek data, nanotechnology data. Publication network – author-publication. Fold it to one mode, have relations between artefacts or between authors. Then author centrality, then clique percolation, then force-directed clustering. Visualisation is client-side. Results are stored, so have a menu for those, can re-use them.
Chrome better than Firefox. They have students using this in the course.
Can export the viz, but only static – usually as a picture. Use D3 for display. Clique percolation gives you overlapping subgroups, can see links between clusters. Not really tool for exploration – that's Gephi. This is to encode standard procedures. Extract the routine patterns, and make them sharable.
It's a nice level to talk about the processes and procedures. Enough detail to talk about, but not beyond grasp.
Now, chats. Tapped In data workflow. Several 'Chat-xxxx' widgets. Extended Contingency Graph builder, then Main Path Analysis (MPA), then PageRank, then viz. Main Path Analysis: a chat log is a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG), has sources and sinks. Start with one source, one sink (placed before and after your dataset), enumerate all the possible graphs, count how often a certain edge is used, if you have the path with highest edge weights, is the most important path (originally in citation networks, but also applicable elsewhere). Then here, have Result Downloader, so can pick up and use elsewhere. Another workflow on same data, gives reports. Can see what proportion of an individual's contributions are on the main path. IMPORTANT: Main path analysis not validated in this context against human judgements. But have checked that number of posts on the main path correlates with PageRank. PageRank here is the weighted in-degree, highly connected, the incoming links are like references, or citations.
General network analysis is much more flexible, can do much more stuff.
Currently working, have – networks, content, action sequences (temporal things). Some networks – e.g. citations networks – have implicit idea of timing.
Bits written in R, or Python and ltk. TupleSpace has client adaptors, agent adaptors, for all sorts – R, or Prolog. Java, C#, whatever. API is for workbench plugins is a bit complex, but for TupleSpace is open and specified. Go to wikipedia Tuple Space, then SQLSpaces is theirs.
Agathe Merceron: Lemo tool for analyzing activities on a learning platform.
Is a web application. Showing us fake data. Mostly the teacher's view. Many diagrams, shows you little view. Click through. Often popular: Activity Time – number of accesses and how many users. (On same scale?) Can magnify sections. Below it shows you all the resources/elements in the course/LMS, shows total number of requests, and number of users who've hit it. Can select the time span you want, begin and end. Or can see what happened with forums, see when they were accesses.
Much concern with privacy in Germany. Also when working with kids. All the data in the system are anonymised. Not a warning system, like e.g. Signals, or Moodle tool that gives you more analysis. Some people say don't want to track students more than what Moodle does already. But with this, only see the trends, the collective view, not more individual analysis.
Multiple diagrams of the same data, see which they prefer. Diagrams are interactive – mouseover, gives you more detail.
Can't yet see e.g. when I post something to the forum, what was the effect. Can see how many posts and accesses there were to a thread – but that's anonymised.
Partner in project, had an encyclopedia, knew people worked with key words. Designed it so can go through a whole chapter, with things introduced stepwise. Wanted to know whether people followed through a whole chapter. So looked at sequences – what do students do one after another. Can see e.g. 40% of students looked at this resource, then that resource, not what route or whether anything in between. Interesting finding – 60% of students followed same sequence of looking at assignment, then forum, then assignment, etc. Two vizes – Frequent Path BIDE, and Frequent Path Viger. Latter is about 'just after', can also look at within a time period. So e.g. Wiki x, chat x, wiki x, wiki x. Can't yet say here's this sequence, does it occur, but that's interesting to explore. For researchers, this is a bit little; for a teacher, you need to keep it simple.
Another one: the assignments. Performance tab. All of the assignments – quizes, assignments, SCORM, rescale to 100%. Then show how many students scored at each percentile, can mouse over. Can also see the average of each one too. Wanted to see what is useful. Also boxplots. And student's view – boxplot of how you did on all your assignments – and can see other users' too, next to yours, for comparison.
Another – area-based viz of how much each component was used/accessed.
Another – hitmap – can compare multiple instances of a course. See if the pattern vs time is the same.
The handbook is in German. 'LeMo Handbuch'.
Discussion: Tools for reproducible data analysis
Not just sharing your outcomes, but also your processes; these tools we have seen could support that.
Ugochi Acholonu: initial statement
Ugochi is from DePaul University.
Open source approach to research, open up your work – give dataset, analyses, workflows. Lower barriers to replicating, adapting and building upon the data analyses and visualisation. Key is sharing more than methods, sharing actual analysis scripts and workflows. All the data manipulations, cleanings, etc.
Why? Scientific method perspective – replication is key to verification. Encourage research innovation through collaborations. From LA perspective – collaboration, supports fast turnaround time to support interventions.
Examples from statistics, computational research areas. Supplementary materials – dataset, plot functions, manuscript plots, Java applet – lets you do the whole reanalysis. All through the journal.
New open source tools – R, Python, LaTeX; Network Workbench nwb.cns.iu.edu, Collide/SISOB Workbench workbench.collide.info.
R code often not pretty, not great to share. But workbenches are good.
Why interested? Trying to close participation gap in STEM – big gap in bachelors degrees in Comp Sci and Engineering, despite more women than men in HE. Support from Mayor in Chicago – 'Chicago City of Learning'. http://explorechi.org Through Digital Badges. Workshops/self-paced, game design challenge, missions, a whole range of activities. Diversity of contexts, so logging lots of things.
So want quick turnaround for quality data analysis. Don't get much credit for reproducible research. But for us, interested in how to support great learning, time is important, dealing with lots of kids, parents, organisations. Have to get it out, use it, improve our site to support learning. Expanding to different cities – LA, Philadelphia, Dallas, others.
What standards are needed? Is it even possible? How can we support new models for publications and authorship? Citations are the current metric. Peer review, ownership. Is it even feasible? Privacy, IRB, community support. [My concern: deanonymisation!!] Chose R as the tool because could find books, communities, forum posts where they could get support.
Supported by MacArthur and others.
S1: We need speciality in each part of research. In LA, would be good to have standards for the content. Same for ML, or network analysis. We work with instutitions, universities, hard to get their datasets and put them in public. Could analyse it, but still lots of issues. What kind of dataset can we give to everyone, it's a challenge.
Cindy: NSF in the US is saying we have to find ways to make datasets available. Also really helpful to have some idea, is there a way of organising it so if folks have really nice tools, I may be able to use, what's a good way to set it up, or what's a good sort of format.
Ugochi: We're dealing with kids. People are hypersensitive. We can't release this stuff, chance of revealing identity of students. So when we release it, it's at a very high level.
C: What level can you model the context?
Dan: Issue of levels. Permissions, format, interoperability. But semantics of, inter-rater reliability, communicate in the coding approach. Contextual information too. That's just sharing the data, and sharing the analyses – the process you went through isn't enough, what's the objective, the meanings of the terms.
Ulrich: Privacy issues. We had 2w, 3w ago a seminar in German comp sci, on MOOCs, new research challenges. French group, US groups too. EPFL Pierre Dillenbourg etc. Raw material you need are the user traces, if they're rich enough you can reconstruct a lot. Actor/artefact traces, can reconstruct a lot. One French colleague said why shouldn't we give the traces to the users, you have them on the server, but are encrypted and can only get them with a token that is yours. Have to trust your provider, of course. Given trust, would be very nice. If you want to do aggregated analysis, have to get all the users to agree – given e.g. a certain anonymisation going on.
Ugochi: With kids, U13, parents have to give permission. Don't know if we have the trust. Need more computing in schools. Not trust, like medical. People are hypersensitive. We have opt-in, opt-out, that's all we can do; we might not share it to the world.
Ulrich: All the MOOC data should be made available for research. All whales are only killed for research.
Sean: In many discussions about sharing open online community data. Many issues the same. Privacy issue is one thing. The other issues are, we look a t a lot of soc sci papers, read methods, can't tell what data, how processed, how got to their results. So sparse you can't even abstractly reconstruct it. A lot of soc sci, more than 5y, can't find the data or the scripts for it. The author could likely not reproduce their own results. Possibly true even of our own work. I've used it as a 'data factory'. What is the data we're gathering, how was it structured, and a sense of how to reuse the methods others are developing around tech use. With stats, read textbook, set of inputs that go in to e.g. factor analysis. Similar for network analysis, more or less standardised. But not good at expressing what a node is, or an edge, or the weights. That's a big hole for reproducibility. I have 4-5 papers on being specific about operationalising this data.
Ugochi: Partly responsibility of the journal. Prioritise different things.
Sean: My theory is journal editors are taken by surprise one article at a time. See much they don't know what questions to ask, nor reviewers. Get, looks like good science, don't need to understand the methodological bit in the middle. But some journal boards, nobody understands the bit in the middle, all taking it on trust.
Cindy: Editors try to find at least one with expertise. But limited journal space. In biology, articles on 5pp.
Dan: Electronic supplement of 40-50pp!
Cindy: Make additional data available. An ANOVA, pretty simple, but factor analysis many parameters, lots of decision.
Sean: Some canonical answers around more traditional methods, fewer canonical answers around newer methods. Reviewer can only say so much here.
Dan: Another layer. Incentive, research culture. Experimental psychology, ask a masters student to reproduce a study. Doesn't happen in education. At faculty level hard to get a reproduced study published.
Cindy: Some people who think their stuff can't or shouldn't be replicated.
Dan: Ethnomethodological approaches!
Ugochi: Should we even try?
Dan: Can you get tenure on solving a whole field's problem?!
Ulrich: If your project allows you to spend time on general value work, not clear on benefit to your user community. If you have the degree of freedom, it's worth doing it more. Your question on reproducible, shareable research results. Data analyses. Embedded learning analytics, put in platform?
Ugochi: Yes, it's real time, we want to support them. We have other Cities of Learning, interesting to see how our scripts have to be augmented or changed to look at different contexts.
Sean: If you have, scripts and data, students learn and apply and steal by structuring their data like mine. If you share the structure of your data, creating a system to reproduce your results without disclosing the personal data.
U: Where's the home?
Sean: Github! Open civic data, school district data, etc. It wasn't de-identified. But could build their capacity. Share the structure. All repositories on github. City and school district have repos. In DC, Data One, do data hackathons, open civic stuff
S2: Also Boston.
Sean: Using github. Data is trickier to share. Very much roll your own. Keep structure open. Each district has populations that can be input.
U: Who's the community? Want it to not just be researchers.
Dan: Do people other than hackers know about github?
Sean: For general public, need a separate site. But hackers use github.
Ulrich: With tool we showed you, can publish your workflow without sharing any data. The point is how could you get a community to use these tools, and share them. It's on the web, can share it, have to organise it. It's not so easy. Access to remote labs in STEM project. Similar problem, have workflows, like instruments in experiments, how do you organise around the space. Github is the hacker solution. I would like to go beyond that. I'm not the one who can move an empirical researcher community. We also garnish what we do with empirical research as a proof of concept, but it's not my main concern.
Cindy: Broker these connections, in a shared understanding.
S3: In the LACE project, looking for quality indicators, welcome to give the input, from actual people working in LA. Please go visit our study at bit.ly/LAK14.
Tea break
Dan: Our Productive Multivocality project (will be a book soon), was looking initially for specifying tools for sharing, but found we were too different, so turned in to what is interesting about each other's stuff.
Wanli Xing and Sean Goggins: Automated CSCL Group Assessment: Activity Theory-based Clustering Method
Sean talking. All focused on digital trace data. Here, asynchronous groups. Even github! Specific case is synchronous group on math. Work with Wanli, his student. Person leading project is ethnomethodologist, doesn't really talk about reproducibility. Have operationalised some of what we've done in to things we think can be measured.
What can we infer? Validity, reliability issues. James Howison put together detailed work on analysis of trace data, and common errors. Many about using the tool without understanding – e.g. give social scientist network toolkit and they go out there and … do things with it. Temporal mismatch, data completeness, and so on. Try to think about all of these.
Striving for systematic methodology and ontology. 'Group informatics' – most interesting behaviours happen in subgroups, cliques, communities. And massive network vizes are not any good. Focus on social science questions. Being specific about the words used, about people – not about networks, clusters or computing phenomena. Is it knowledge construction, learning. What am I trying to say something about. Be specific before analysis.
Group informatics ontology – every interaction, is it person-person, or person-artifact. Social connection between two people.
Ulrich: Start from actor-artifact network. Then can get actor-actor networks with links established through mediating artifacts. And vice versa, can get artifact-artifact links.
Discussion forum data, natural interaction is between two people.
U: But in asynch situations, much more, the first-order thing is people-artifacts.
In terms of analysis of the sites I've looked at, forums are communication acts between people on a platform. cf software stuff, where no social interaction between the coders, so the primary connection is between the person and the artifact.
U: The artifact is the utterance. It's not necessarily the tool. The contribution is the artifact.
Cindy: Wouldn't have thought of that, would think artifact are resoruces outside a discussion.
U: Can be. Emerging learning objects. In constructivist learning environment, participants create learning objects, interact around them. Those are artifacts.
C: Shared whiteboard is an artifact. Making it clear – this is a good example.
[much animated discussion, hard to follow!]
U: Actors and events, but events can be artifacts, publications.
Sean: Those are fun conversations. It's the theory we're using. An online learning situation, learning theories are social theories. So I see interactions more between people than between people and artifacts. Can take opposite stance. Neither is right or wrong, just have to be explicit and clear.
You make the choice whether it's a person-person network, or artifact-artifact one.
Contextualising interaction through theory – Activity Theory. Rich, multivalent data from VMTwG (Virtual Math something or other, with Geogebra). Teaches geometry. Book 'Translating Euclid', new ideas about how to teach geometry, interactive experiences, to learn math the hard way, by manipulating objects, goal being deeper learning.
Have a geometer sketchpad, wiki, chat window, view of all interactions so far, and a replayer to scroll back and see what's been done. Teacher has 30 students in 10 different rooms, can't pay attention to all of them or even with watching replays.
So created a model, to push trace data through Activity Theoretic model – Rules, communication, tools, learning tasks (object), division of labour. All operationalised. The workshop paper is a shortened version of my next paper.
Carolyn: Have you tested to see if people can appreciate it?
We're starting that.
Carolyn: I have trouble getting my head around Activity Theory (AT). May just be because I'm a computational linguist. Are teachers going to be able to get their heads around it?
Dan: Do they have to buy AT to use this?
Cindy: It may be less troubling than other stuff.
Dan: They're not contaminated with computational linguistics.
Wanli: They will know which aspect they are incompetent with.
Twelve groups over five modules. Shows you these different things – but with their labels on it, not the Activity Theory ones, that was a big feedback.
Do more advanced things too. Visualisation. The Compass tool is a significant event – when they start talking about it, or using it, they're about to solve the problem. Took high level concepts from ethnomethodological analysis, turned them in to metrics.
Underlying is a clustering algorithm to ID similar groups.
U: Look at velocity of interactions?
We can. Not just clustering around when people interact, how they interact, key words from qualitiative works. Spider diagram showing individual group vs cross-group average. Not prescriptive, with dashboard about performance, but to help decide which ones to spend more time with. More a teaching analytic tool than a larning analytic tool.
Q: How do you know this text belongs to that group?
All contextualised by 'room', the data we get includes who are the students in the room. They don't cross over. This wouldn't work if they did. Partly accessible and functional since designed around that constraint.
U: Example of the Compass tool, it's important where they start to use it. A time issue. In original histograms, you just aggregate over time, so don't see if recent or not. Thought of e.g. heat metaphor to give you recency in the events? The other diagram, if you want to use that as a teacher, it may be too detailed.
Good idea, we haven't used them.
U: Colour as indicator for recency, here you just have overall aggregation.
Shady: Categories like 'try' questions, how do you know the text belongs to the categories?
Dan: Longer version of paper shows you how, based on counting up. I have an issue with your understanding of AT distribution of labour, you think it's better if all participating equally, but it's about role specialisation.
Our colleague has issues with how we interpreted AT as well.
Dan: A contrast. Sean focused on group activity, here it's individuals in the context of a group.
Cindy Hmelo-Silver, Carolyn Rosé, Jeff Levy: Fostering a Learning Community in MOOCs.
Carolyn: Another contrast, in Sean's work (here), the groups were assigned. Here we're trying to form groups. Sean presented work he did. Here it's work we haven't done together.
Cindy: Putting together an NSF proposal. I've done work on supporting collaboration in project-based learning. Carolyn comp linguistics, academically productive talk. Accountable Talk – which is trademarked. Lots of common ground. Call from someone on a startup in MOOCs (Jeff Levy, OfficeHours), work together to create learning communities. Motivations about supporting productive collaboration on a large scale. In CSCL good at a small scale, we have to be able to go beyond that to have impact. From CSCL and PBL research, depending on goals, particular strategies may be more or less useful. What it means to be an individual in a group, and how we form groups. Connecting students together, supporting TAs. That's what OfficeHours is doing, providing TAs for the MOOCs.
Some work Carolyn did, models on how discussions came to successful close. Replies, experts in the group – many indicators that are directly observable, look at latent factors about whether threads came to a successful conclusion. There are five – Friendliness in the thread Fen, Influence of the starter Sin, Expert participation Epr, Content matching Con, Thread popularity Pop.
Carolyn: Supporting people without much social capital to get more.
Another thing irl to that social network, how it affects dropout. It's well known that only a small percentage of students on MOOCs participate, less likely to drop out. But based on the network we see, can see how resilient. Connections – more strong connections are less likely to drop out of the course. When one of their strong relationships drops out, they are more likely to drop out next week. (!) Again highlights importance of community. MOOCs not so good at creating community, supports the idea we need to create more community, maintain it more.
U: For these strong ties, this is usually around you. If community is larger, doesn't have impact on your strong ties. These strong ties are important for resilience. We know, the strength of weak ties, is about if want to do new things, be stimulated, that's how.
Carolyn: These MOOCs last only 7w, they are all weak ties anyway. Not arguing having more of a community will be beneficial to people who have ties, but makes more people tied in.
Cindy: To use different LAs, come up with actionable indicators – social, semantic, sequential patterns, others? Carolyn's work on semantic analysis and language technologies. Work today on sequential patterns. Facilitation to help build communities, make them more relevant to course content. May have patterns that warrant attention by TAs – natural variation that some groups do fine and don't need much, others nothing's happening at all, others where you might be able to do something useful by e.g. connecting to a human supporter or a software agent. JIT support for the TAs, who may have content knowledge but not about pedagogy or collaborative learning.
'Locomotive mentoring model' where TAs train students who may be the next generation of TAs. People who are central in social networks as candidates for mentoring. Helping TAs mentor students who may in turn mentor others, with researchers mentoring TAs at the top.
Carolyn: There's an assignment problem. Research team, set of TAs. They have to pick or be assigned a team. They then have to find their group. Waves of new students coming in, dropping out. How can we manage to get this organised? Use some social recommendation software. Two approaches. Both modelling used for link prediction tasks in the past. Start with a network, for a person, suggest another opportunity they may be interested in that occurs later on. Usually after that time has passed so can check you're right. Can use that to rank algorithms for accuracy of prediction, have a way to predict in real life. We know the ingredients of a successful thread. Only so many people/experts to go around, load balancing issue. Tech to do the matching. Works in terms of individual load, and everyone getting attention. Locomotive mentoring, get buy-in from the front, likely to take suggestions about where to go. Also want to experiment with a more naturalistic version, subtly encourage interaction between people who might interact well. Build a larger sense of community, involve more people in the discussion. Find soft partitions in network, kind of like groups, but maybe we can influence how they form.
Shady: To evaluate predictive link, this happens without showing them the predictions?
Carolyn: With these experiments, it's data already collected, can partition network by time. Predict next time point. Sometimes take whole graph, remove some links, see if possible link is one we removed or not. In the future, when we run it, we'll suggest connections. Can't evaluate it the same way, but will be able to do it on a MOOC by MOOC control – was better in one with it rather than without.
Cindy: Challenge in real context, figuring out, we'll have several things going on at once, trying to pull out effect of one thing. Maybe enough where we can do some experimental stuff.
Carolyn: Some small group experimental stuff. True that when, whole MOOC, hard to isolate the factors, a lot of qualitative impressions.
Modeling – two paradigms. One is Matrix Factorisation. Decompose a network, maybe user/user or user/thread, almost like a topic analysis, find reduced representation, by decomposing matrix (Users/threads) in to submatrices, map them on to K factors. Can match users to threads, can match users to each other. Probabilitistic graphical models – Latent Dirichlet Allocation. Those K factors we come to with matrix factorisation are kind of like topic distributions out of an LDA model. Applied to chunks of text, have documents, with words in them, each word is 'generated' by a topic. General distribution of topics, average across documents, but individual document has its own distribution. And the general distribution comes from a prior one. Through inference algorithm, we learn the topics. For every topic, have distribution reflected by the words in that topic. Many flavours of LDA. More detail in ML workshop tomorrow! Start with same prior. Have people interacting in threads, have some connection with each other. Conversational role as much as a word distribution, role reflected through how they talk. Not just learn from text, but topics influenced by connections, who talks to whom, and what is a document – which is everything one person said on one thread. Intention is to ID topics that represent the roles that come in sets on a thread.
Interestingly, looks very different to matrix factorisation. But people have an average across these topics, the roles they take, which is like the K factors from matrix factorisation. Can average to get across the thread. What's different here, because it's probabilistic model, can build intuition in to the structure of the model, idea that roles come from the discussion and orienting to the roles other people take. If build that in to the model, will find the roles people tend to take on. The roles come in pairs, I'm interacting with each person. Same sort of information, but build more intuition in. What is it we want in the matches? We could change this model if we have a different idea about what's important about each conversation. Find a representation that works. Idea of different levels of representation: community average, person average, person-in-a-thread.
Dan: Thread a setting, or a group?
Good question. Here, it's one context. Not sure that's good. Threads persist over time, may not read the whole thread each time you come. This is simplistic, but also standard. Took threads as a basic unit. Could decide to do it differently. Think about what makes sense.
Ulrich: Do not want more detailed explanation of your approach. Matrix factorisation is like block modelling in social networks. Clearly gives you roles – positional analysis. LDA, I see the topics. I want answer on higher aggregation level, I cannot follow your point that the roles arnd the topics fall together. For me, you get roles, and then you get topics. What makes you think they fall together?
Good question. We're tying two kinds of models – LDA model, and a soft graph model – mixed [gah, missed the name]
U: On a pedagogical level. Group formation. Have finished a proposal on group formation in MOOCs. Had workshop, it's in the air currently. Boils down to application, you want to assign roles, to have a certain ability of the people to assume certain roles, and to distribute the knowledge in a certain way.
The roles are reflected in what people say.
U: That's the two level. The knowledge, and the social interaction patterns.
Not sure I believe if you just do a plain LDA you just get plain content without role. They're intertwined.
U: I agree.
Bounce back and forth, putting pressure on organisation, not just co-occurrence, themes, but because same people use same things in same contexts. It's just an adjustment. People play different roles, mentioning different things, the organisation will look different. Might not be trivial to interpret it. We're still struggling with this model. There are matrix factorisation approaches that let you bring them together that's more like that. MOOC is not really that massive to support the complexity of this model. Maybe if you ran 20 MOOCs.
Sean: Looked at emergent groups, on github lately. Not used this approach specifically, like it. ID the emergent groups. Most group analysis, the groups are a priori. In software engineering, they're emergent. I'm excited about what you're headed towards.
Carolyn: Next year's workshop! Code for this is already nearly shareable. I'd be happy to work with you on github, see if it's the same. I'd understand my model better if I see other people's.
Sean: That'd be fun.
Cindy: Another thing interesting for both of us, Carolyn focused on tech details, I'm on what the TAs can do with it. Sean's work is trying, how do we get this in a form that's actionable, helps people make sense of a display that they can use in real time, rather than long after. Most of my analysis is long after the course is done.
Dan: After the NSF report is in you do the really interesting work!
Cindy: As a social scientist, important to do studies of how teachers or TAs understand these displays. I imagine it won't be the way we do.
Sean: Has to be a design-based research iteration of all these.
Ulrich: General discussion. Clusters of topics, that I've tried to extract from the submissions we had – without LDA! First something for Sean. You said you're interested in the social relations, actor-actor. Here's a picture I used in a presentation at the last LAK – relations around epistemic artefacts. We have actors, and artefacts – a learning object, a knowledge artefact, something created by the actors, and the knowledge artefacts may have direct connections e.g. hyperlinks. We also have inferred links, that come through the folding – e.g. these three people are co-authors, see they form a triangle of the authors. To say one or other is more important, but this is the data that we have, in its complexity. Doesn't make sense to focus on one part when we do our observation. To mask the data we have given the target, doesn't make sense to me. This is at least the complexity we have to deal with.
Sean: Not arguing that. The data is just as messy as you show it to be. In async discussion, pedagogy is to develop fb to each other, the relations, there's a choice you can make, the theories of learning you use direct you towards human communication, where there isn't a clear knowledge artefact, but knowledge emerges from the conversation. Can be thought of as a social network, the messiness isn't really there in the discussion-based forums, or Facebook, or Twitter, they are human communications.
U: Reification of ideas in to knowledge artefacts, this exists, we can study it.
Sean: Agree absolutely.
U: The themes from today. LA and CSCL. Tools and methods in large online courses, MOOCs etc. Reuse of analysis workflows. Embedded LAs. What would we say, where would you bet on to be the next hotspots from your point of view? Here's the point of the special issue papers. Where would you like to see future work? What would you suggest?
Wanli: Do we have publicly available MOOC data?
Maybe in the Fall.
Sean: Scaling, theory. A lot of privileged access to data. Some people have access to MOOC data, most don't. Some have Facebook data, most don't.
Carolyn: At Stanford, guy in charge of their MOOC data, working to a deal to make their data more open. Berkeley is saying if they do, they might too. Then idea is MIT and Harvard will cave. Stanford working hard to overcome the issues. Huge discussion. Feel they're close to coming to some agreement. Also course me and Dan and Dragan and George working on, will provide some data.
What platform?
Carolyn: Maybe EdX.
U: John Mitchell from Stanford. Many MOOCs, once you hand them over the Coursera, forget your adaptive analysis of data. These platforms will not give us means to directly interfere.
Carolyn: True of Coursera, though some colleagues say they would like to do more, are a bit overwhelmed, in principle willing. Don't have things set up to give you data in real time. Don't get it until after the data is done. Can scrape the discussions as they go. It's scrapeable, but that doesn't give you the click data. In open EdX, can do what you like, get data in real time, we'll have way more control. Platform at Stanford, NovoEd, more affordances for synchronous collab, worth looking at.
Shady: We set up MOOCs, we would be happy to have collaboration on that.
U: All the workshops have been asked to nominate ideas for special issue. For full-day, we can nominate 3. Have to use the papers that are there. Can't nominate things we haven't written yet. We've done link prediction between authors and topics, but the accuracy is low.
[Not clear on the plan]
Dan: I am interested in whether or how people want to see this continue. What to focus on for future workshops.
Ugochi: Trying to form the right question. Not a theme, but the tension points, thinking about in all the different presentations. Theory-based analysis of data, Sean's work, how do you talk about what's an artefact and what's not. Also about sharing data, e.g. with these workbenches, how do you form a community. Or ubiquitous learning, relates to e.g. MOOCs. There's particular people who do MOOCs, mostly researchers and people with higher educational levels. So people are building community, but could be translated to other places. Those questions are key, versus thematic – shareable, privacy, and so on.
Ulrich: This is where the synergy is.
Agathe: How you encourage people to participate is interesting.
Ulrich: I like to ask everyone, one point for next year.
- Opening up the data, how to compare different analyses. Some standard data, maybe not completely fake, but where we can compare our different analysis methods, see if they can be integrated and combined to make more sense.
- How can we share data and also our analyses. On one hand, read papers and want to understand, can't follow analysis method because it's too short, don't see enough of the data to see if the method is applicable really. So idea of standard dataset as a benchmark is a good idea. On the other hand, ways to make analysis more explicit and shareable.
- Relationship between LA and psychological issues. My project tried to predict self-regulatory learning skills by analysing the learning log. Generating a plan, vs dropping out. Try to predict learning style/role, but difficulty to predict it without psychological issues like self-regulation, motivation and so on.
- Would like to see how MOOC research is going to evolve, working with Dragan, we have some data. For interaction types, we should analyse actor-actor interaction, but there are users who benefit from emergent objects, so maybe active and passive.
- SNA and pedagogical practice.
- Liked all the talks, really inspiring. Want to see evaluation, tell that they really work. Assumptions made. Don't know if we change the dataset it will still work.
- MOOCs, and the transferability. Models we are using can transfer? (Carolyn: Look at MIT work on MOOC TV.)
- Standardised datasets. We all struggle with getting access to data, even within one context. So we can validate what we're doing. Emergent groups, detecting them as they form.
- Me: Want more data sharing, replicability in this field. Like real science (should be). I think the privacy issue around data sharing is really, really hard. Deanonymisation is scarily easy. Fundamentally, I'm interested in using all this to make an actual difference to actual learners. And getting better evidence than we have done that! It's hard but if we can't do it, no researchers in education can.
Dan: Would like to see some progress made! So not same workshop again. Combine methods to look at new things. And do what Doug wants!
Ulrich: This has been different. If you want the sharing, you have to fix either the dataset, or you have to fix the tool. If you leave both open, the empirical researchers always in love with their own datasets. Comp scientists always in love with their tools. So it doesn't work well. Don't have to fix both, but just one.
Cindy: Maybe a place in the middle. Compromise in both sides. Synergy coming up with something better. It's the collaboration among both. I agree it's can we do anything to improve teaching and learning.
This work by Doug Clow is copyright but licenced under a Creative Commons BY Licence.
No further permission needed to reuse or remix (with attribution), but it's nice to be notified if you do use it.


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PJ Masks Die Cast Playset
$19.99 $9.97
Great toy to add to your gift closet!!
- Gear up for action packed racing adventure with the PJ masks die-cast track set! this dynamic track set comes with one sleek die-cast cat-car and features tons of kid-powered features! launch the cat-car through the building and crash into Romeo's robot! pull the flag and adjust the track to send the cat-car soaring through the school's windows to stop the ninjalinos! place the cat-car on the side track to flip the car into action. So many ways to play!
- Set includes: one track set and one die-cast cat-car.
- Pull flag to increase height of launching ramp.
- Press down on launch button to send cars flying!
- Crash into the robot!
- Soar through building windows!
- Compatible with all PJ masks die-cast cars (sold separately).
- Ages 3+
- Go HERE to purchase.
Check out all my favorites from Amazon HERE.
Please note above item price can change at any time. In addition, item can go out of stock at any time. I suggest adding item to your cart so you can keep an eye on it OR if deal is no longer available you can click "Available from these sellers" for similar deal.
- Go HERE to see past Amazon Deals posted.
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- Sign up for Amazon Prime 30-day Free Trial which includes FREE Shipping on items shipped by Amazon. Amazon Prime is a membership program that offers premium benefits for just $119 per year including FREE Shipping. Go HERE to start your Amazon Prime Membership.


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Holiday Gift List: 'Emilio Cavallini Magnificent Obsession' Book
Emilio Cavallini: Magnificent Obsession edited by Benedetta Barzini
Every year, the thought of gift giving can become quite the daunting task. The most frequently asked question: Will they like this? Rest assured, we've found several gift-giving ideas that will leave you as the discerning connoisseur & your loved ones happy. On our fashion + class & jet lag gift list: Emilio Cavallini Magnificent Obsession edited by Benedetta Barzini.
For anyone who has comprehensive knowledge of the fashion industry or an appreciation for art & class, Emilio Cavallini: Magnificent Obsession is one of the best additions to any library collection. The book reflects on the career, passion & creativity of revered Italian hosiery designer Emilio Cavallini.
Jeffrey Felner, Reviewer for Fashion & Style- New York Journal of Books, stated about the volume, "The book is an unbelievable paean to this fashion accessory that was raised to the level of an art form via Mr. Cavallini's talents and manufacturing abilities and facilities. He took it upon himself to elevate the manufacture and design of hosiery and raise it to so much more than a weaving or knitting process." Buy it at Emilio Cavallini. | Giuseppe


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Happy Saturday and hope all is well!!! Today is the 9th of October.....and y'all know what that means.......Where Creativity Meets C9 challenge!!!!
This months challenge is to use Shades of Concord & 9th:
Here is mine......CHECK IT!!!!!
I also played along in the CAS(E) This Sketch challenge:
I played along in the Tic Tac Toe challenge(Bakers Twine, Masking and Die Cut):
I also played along in the Addicted to Stamps and More challenge:
Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!!!!
Card Recipe for Happy Birthday Card
Stamps: Concord & 9th
Paper: Michaels, Canson Watercolor Paper
Inks: IMAGINE Crafts, Ranger Distress Markers
Embellishments: Sequins, Washi(Scotch/3M), Sticker Stitches(SRM), Twine(The Twinery)
Tools: Dies(Concord & 9th), Heating Tool(Marvy Uchida), Big Shot(Ellison)
Other: White Embossing Powder(IMAGINE Crafts)
Techniques: Heat Embossing, Watercoloring, Splatter, Die Cutting


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Springfree 8' x 11' Medium Oval
$1,499 $1,699
See Price Breakdown
Regular Price: $1,699 $1,699
Your Price: $1,499
Springfree 8' x 13' Large Oval
$1,799 $1,999
See Price Breakdown
Regular Price: $1,999 $1,999
Your Price: $1,799
SUPERIOR PLAY SYSTEMS: Your Trampoline Retailer
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Outdoor Trampoline Accessories
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Trampoline Shapes
Choosing the right shape is not just about how trampolines make your yard look. Shapes affect performance. Here's how:
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Trampolines: Fun and Safety
A trampoline is a smart investment in your health and the well-being of your family. Trampolines provide a full-body workout that helps you work on balance and coordination, as well as cardio and core strength.
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A trampoline in your yard is also inclusive, as your friends and family of all ages can use it. Use it for a workout, a quiet spot to read or convert it into a camping or clubhouse spot for kids. With trampolines, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination.
Choosing the Best Trampoline for Your Needs
To find the right trampoline fit, consider:
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- Ideas for use. Will you want to use the trampoline as a treehouse for your kids or for basketball? Each trampoline brand has different accessories for you to try.
- Size. Think about how much space you have for your trampoline. A smaller square trampoline has a smaller footprint for limited spaces. A larger round trampoline may offer more bounce space if you have the room.
- Intensity. If you have multiple users, consider JumpSport trampolines. They feature technology that allows half the springs to engage at one time, with the rest engaging a second later. This helps keep multiple users safer.
Where to Buy Trampolines in PA, NJ, GA and NC?
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- North Carolina: Charlotte
Buy Products Online
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Once our professional installers arrive, we take care of all the details. All you need to do is sit back while we create an amazing play space for the whole family. Buy the perfect trampoline today or contact us for more information.


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One Angel Court
This £125m redesign of the landmark office tower in the City of London is undergoing a complete overhaul of its 25-storeys to provide Grade A office space with an increase from 18,000 to 28,000m2.
Mitsui Fudosan UK
Fletcher Priest
Angel Court, designed by Fletcher Priest Architects, is a 1970's tower that has been through a major redevelopment, replacing all but its core, transforming it into a landmark 300,000 ft2 prime office building in the heart of London's financial district next to the Bank of England.
Waterman was appointed as the multidiscipline engineer to provide structures, MEP, fire,
civil and environmental consultancy services. Our team worked closely with Mitsui Fudosan UK and development partner Stanhope Plc to deliver the scheme. The sustainable and innovative design solutions have made this an exemplary project, one of the first London City commercial offices to secure a BREEAM 2014 Excellent Design Stage Assessment as well as an EPC A rating. The construction carbon footprint was significantly reduced through innovative design solutions that enabled retention of the original core and re-use of original foundations and basement structure.
Herbal House is a 120,000 ft2 mixed-use redevelopment delivered in partnership with owner, Aerium and developer, Allied London.
Fen Court, (formerly 10 Fenchurch Avenue) is the 15-storey mixed-use office scheme, situated within the heart of London's insurance district.
Waterman was appointed by Stanhope/Mitsubishi Estate to provide structural consultancy services on 8 Finsbury Circus, a new 17,000m2 commercial property of remarkable architectural design situated in London's Finsbury Circus.
One New Street Square is a superb Grade A office development designed by Robin Partington & Partners.
The exceptional 223,000 ft2 Grade A office building at Barts Square has been nominated in the 52nd SSDA.
23-storey mixed-use hotel and commercial scheme near Old Street Station gets the planning green light.
Planning approved for the largest addition to the International Finance Centre's world class business hub in Jersey.
The stunning new HQ, Royal College of Pathologists, and the premium office development 4 Cannon Street, are shortlisted.
60 Park Street
South Melbourne
3205 Australia
t: +61 3 9685 9900
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20 Bridge Street
Sydney NSW 2000
t: +61 2 9411 9900
© 2020 Copyright Waterman Group. All rights reserved.
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Along with our usual steamed broccoli as a side dish, I made Marinated Cauliflower and Edamame Salad from the Fatfree Vegan Recipes index. I did substitute sundried tomatoes for the fresh tomatoes, so it's not as pretty, but it was quick and easy to make and this dish was good!
I wanted to use my farmers market Meyer lemons to make dessert, so I made Susan V's Calamondin (or Lemon) Pie. I just made the filling and put it in a store bought graham cracker crust. Chase loves that crust and they come with those nifty lids so it's easy for him to take home. Anyway, I don't know what I did wrong, but I made glue. The instructions for the filling say to cook and stir for 3 minutes after it comes to a boil. Well, after just 30 seconds it was unstirrable. I went ahead and put it in the crust and it was tearing up the crust, and it was so sticky I couldn't get the top smooth. I remember thinking a 1/2 cup of cornstarch seemed like a lot, but I put it in the fridge to set (as if....)
It sliced easily and of course it held together. We spent some time taking a nice picture. Then Chase took a bite and didn't say anything. I looked over at him and he said "It's like jello." And it was. It wasn't creamy at all. It was rubbery and so not what I had in mind. The lemon flavor was great, the texture was bad. Maybe my pan was too hot????
Here's what I will throw away, along with uneaten slices :(
I have a bird update. Two weeks ago 63 dead birds were found within a 3 block area of downtown. Two vet reports have come in and they both conclude that this particular flock of birds was infected with parasites. The birds had not eaten in approximately 2 days, and that, coupled with the drop in temperature overnight, caused their deaths. There was no bird flu or poison or fermented mistle toe - that was one of the rumors going around. The vets said the only thing unusual about this incident was that the birds ended up in the middle of downtown.
The bird incident was 2 Mondays ago, and I couldn't go to work until 2:00. Last Monday I went to work, then got sent home because our roof had collapsed in 2 spots. I'm wondering what I will walk into tomorrow.


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The new EMS on Broadway and Spring is now officially open for business, and we wonder if Paragon is already shaking in its ankle-supporting hiking boots. The store is three times the size of the old location on Mercer and surprisingly industrial-looking for a place that sells camping gear. While much of the 18,097 square feet inside is taken up with supplies for snowshowing, kayaking, and other activities that can't be done in Manhattan, there's also a big bike shop carrying commuter bicycles by Jamis and Masi—a nice nod to outdoorsy city living.
Copyright RACKN


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The demographics in China made something like this inevitable where men outnumber women by about 33 million. That means there are 33 million very horny Chinese men. The first thing that comes to my attention is that the sex doll is white and blond, and then look at the doll's facial expression. Like "she" is scared. That is just creepy. This babe comes in at US$4,040 and you can select the color hair you like, the length, the eye color, the skin tone and even the kind of vagina you like. Well, Chinese men, what a babe to come home to after a hard day in the factory or out in the rice fields.
Apparently because of the breast size, this doll is a big hit with Chinese men. The doll was much anticipated before its release. Some firms in China rather than handing out bonuses, have been known to give to their male employees sex dolls to keep their libidos in check. One of the biggest reasons for Chinese men buying these sex dolls, is because as they say, "having one of these sex dolls keeps them from cheating on their wives when they are away from home for long periods of time working in the cities". I guess if it's an expensive doll like this US$4,040 silicone babe, it is sort of complimentary of your wife? The down side of those 33 million surplus Chinese men might mean a good war is in order to dwindle their demographic size a bit. Thanks to Maurice Strong & Co. for that bit of one child historical perversion. What a species hey?


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School Information – Harding House
We are part of the Vale Federation of Special Schools. Harding House is the Post-16 Provision of Stocklake Park School and is in the centre of Aylesbury. Harding House is within walking distance of many local community facilities, close to other local secondary schools and with good local transport links.
Harding House caters for students aged 16—19 with a wide range of needs. Students come into the Post-16 Provision from local, and out of county, SLD, MLD, specialist and mainstream schools.
The staff team currently includes Head, Teachers, Learning Support Assistants, Administrator and lunch-time supervisors. There is also an input from other professionals to support students when appropriate – Connexions, Physiotherapists, Speech and Language Therapists, Social Services (Children's and Adult Disability Teams), residential providers and employers. Some services are based at the Stocklake Park site.
Teaching groups allow for enhanced learning opportunities and may subdivide depending on the activity. Teaching staff will attend Annual Reviews, transition meetings, interviews, etc. and be the primary contact for home-school communication.
Our new student intake usually commences in September, but mid year applications will be considered. After initial transition, students usually begin their Post-16 programme in the Gladstone Group and undertake an induction programme. The Walton and Harding Groups cater for Year 13 and 14 students, with increased emphasis on vocational skills, functional key skills and transition to post school provision.
There is also alternative 14-19 provision based at Stocklake Park School main site, catering for students who have more complex difficulties and may need a more sensory curriculum, access to therapies and a higher level of physical support and care. Please contact Sophie Robinson at Stocklake Park School for more information – 01296 423507 or email mailto:firstname.lastname@example.com
Our Vision and Values
Our vision as a Federation is to provide a supportive but challenging multi-professional approach to the education of all the young people in our care, enabling them to achieve the greatest possible level of independence and inclusion.
Essential to this is:
- The aspiration to be a centre of excellence working with others to support all young people with special educational needs to reach their potential
- The dedication and commitment of staff to their own development, encouraging and supporting them through challenging training, enabling them to be an example of best practice
- The support and motivation of every pupil to gain knowledge, skills and attitudes required for their future, whether this be another school setting, college or into the adult world
- The provision of a stimulating and challenging range of exciting learning opportunities and environments
- Our partnership with families and our community
The Foundation Learning Curriculum at Harding House is specifically designed for young adults with a range of learning difficulties, as they prepare to leave school and enter the adult community. Teaching programmes engage students in structured learning and are personalised with identified progression routes. At Harding House we focus on delivering functional literacy and numeracy to support independence in the community.
Students continue to work on core skills – Communication, Number, I.C.T and Personal Skills, but there is an increasing emphasis on the skills and knowledge and understanding that students will need for successful transition into their adult life and local communities. This Foundation Learning Curriculum will include Functional Skills, Personal and Social Development and Work Related Learning.
The curriculum at Harding House is rich and diverse. We recognise that learning can take place in many non-classroom based environments. Partnership working with other agencies is a real strength at Harding House. Personalised learning promotes the recognition of individual aspirations, talents and needs.
Step-Up: 19-25
Students have the opportunity to enrol on Step Up, our 19–25 course based at Harding House. The course is personalised to meet individual needs and aspirations, and to complement students' College and/or community provision. Students may, for example, spend two or three days at college, and then follow a range of modules as part of the Step Up provision at Harding House.
The learning focus is on applying understanding and skills in real contexts in the community, with an emphasis on vocational, employment and functional skills. Functional Skills underpin all learning programmes and learners develop and extend appropriate Communication, Numeracy, ICT, Personal and Learning Skills in all units.
Referrals can be made by learners themselves, their families, local Colleges, Connexions, and Social Services.
Student Council
Our Harding House Student Council is made up of six students. We hold regular Harding House School Council Meetings where the views, or requests, of all students are put forward. These are then discussed and explored. Representatives are responsible for sharing the information with their peers.
Members have also contributed to recruitment interviews and Federation wide questionnaires. Activities have included a decorating project, planning social events and fundraising activities.
This work supports our Citizenship and Personal Development Skills curriculum.
Ofsted Report
The school was last inspected by Ofsted in February 2019 and was found to be Good.
Use the link to view details of the Ofsted report.
Compare School Performance
The Government hold information and performance data on the school.
To view the information, please click the link below.
Pupil Premium
The pupil premium is additional funding for publicly funded schools in England to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils of all abilities and to close the gaps between them and their peers.
Work Experience
All Harding House students have the opportunity to take part in work experience placements. Work experience is usually arranged through the Bucks Education Business Partnership and Connexions Service. Work experience enriches our curriculum and offers students the opportunity to extend and develop their work related learning and functional skills in real life contexts.
Placements vary according to students' and employers' requirements – two or three week blocks, one day a week, work shadowing, etc. Students work independently or with staff support, as appropriate.
We have built up an excellent partnership with local employers and have a wide range of potential placements. We also work in partnership with the National Trust at Waddesdon Manor, where students volunteer in all areas – restaurants, the Plant Centre, cafes, shop and the house itself. We also participate in volunteering projects with Aylesbury Youth Action and Impact Bucks.
Students also have the opportunity to work at the other sites within the Federation – Booker Park and Stocklake Park. Work options can include the office, school kitchen, classroom and caretaking activities.
Work Experience is also accredited by O.C.R. in Practical Work Skills and Vocational Skills modules. Entry Level units in the Life and Living Skills qualification may also be used to validate students' achievements on work experience. Students are also entered for the Bucks Silver/Gold Work Experience Award.


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Mommy & daughter books are easy to find. Daddy & daughter books? Not so much. Daddy books in general seem to be a diamond in the rough amongst the many little girl books that line the shelf at the local bookstore.
So, we've compiled a list of some of our favorites. As always, feel free to share you thoughts and your favorite daddy daughter books too!
TITLE: Daddy's Girl
AUTHOR: Garrison Keillor
AGE: 1+ years
DESCRIPTION: From the familiar pleasures of baby's favorite food to the joy of dancing together, this collection of three songs celebrates the special relationship between a daddy and his little girl.
TITLE: Daddy Hugs
AUTHOR: Karen Katz
AGE: 1+ years
DESCRIPTION: How many daddy hugs does it take to say I love you? Cuddle and count with this hug & read book!
*OUR TAKE: A really cute board book. Not necessarily a "daddy daughter" book, but the child in the book is pretty much gender neutral. Also, your daughter will have a great time "finding the kitty" on the different pages!
TITLE: Daddy Kisses
AUTHOR: Anne Gutman & Georg Hallensleben
AGE: 1+ years
DESCRIPTION: What could be sweeter than adorable baby animals snuggling with their daddies? This simple board book with warm illustrations feature a variety of animals and celebrate the affection between fathers and children. Cuddles and kisses will surely abound when reading this aloud!
TITLE: My Dad Loves Me!
AUTHOR: Marianne Richmond
AGE: 2+ years
DESCRIPTION: Now children can relive fun times with their Dad every day. Children enjoy playing with Dad, swimming and napping with Dad – this charming book depicts all of these beloved activities being done by cuddly animals!
TITLE: Because I am Your Daddy
AUTHOR: Sherry North
AGE: 1+ years
DESCRIPTION: How much do fathers love their children? Enough to fly them to school in a plane? Enough to dig for the biggest dinosaur the world has ever known? From exploring dark caves to leading a marching band to even being a space alien, a father's love is unconditional, and he will do anything to make sure all of his child's dreams come true.
TITLE: Because Your Daddy Loves You
AUTHOR: Andrew Clements
AGE: 4 – 8 years
DESCRIPTION: A day spent with a young child at the beach is filled with many minor dramas—a lost shoe, a ball that floats too far out into the water, a drippy ice-cream cone. These can be frustrating events for both child and parent, but the daddy in this book finds a way to fix each problem, lovingly and patiently. Why? Because he loves his little girl, of course! This spot-on pairing of words and images is a warm, reassuring, and humorous tribute to dads everywhere.
TITLE: Daddy Loves His Little Girl
AUTHOR: John Carter Cash
AGE: 4+ years
DESCRIPTION: John Carter Cash flies readers to magical castles by the sea as one little girl shares an adventure with her daddy by her side. The special bond between father and daughter protect them from pirates and alligators and guide them on the backs of eagles on which they return to their own home where Daddy tucks his little girl safely in her bed. Daddy reminds his little girl that however far they might roam and however high they fly, his love for his little girl will always keep them safe and strong.
TITLE: I Love My Daddy
AUTHOR: Sebastian Braun
AGE: 4 – 8 years
DESCRIPTION: Sometimes daddies are loud and playful. Other times they are quiet and compassionate. And they are always loving. Sebastien Braun's appealing text and charming illustrations follow a day in the life of a bear and his bear cub in this celebration of the bond between father and child.
TITLE: It's The Best Day Ever, Dad!
AUTHOR: Brooke Shields AGE: 4+ years
DESCRIPTION: Wake up, Dad! We've got a big day ahead! Frankie and her little sister, Violet, are excited to be out and about with Dad! From pancakes to puppies to a super-duper surprise, the order of the day is F-U-N. The gifted actress, author, and mother Brooke Shields pairs with the delightful Cori Doerrfeld for this joyful book about dads and daughters and the love they share.
TITLE: Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me
AUTHOR: Eric Carle
DESCRIPTION: In this unique and delightful picture book, the story literally unfolds as pages open dramatically, extending both outward and upward. Monica wants the moon to play with, so her Papa sets out to get it for her. It isn't easy to climb all the way up to the moon, but he finally succeeds — only to find that the moon is too big to carry home! The way in which this problem is solved is a joyful surprise.
*OUR TAKE: Such a sweet story about the lengths a father will go to make his little girl happy! With gorgeous illustrations by Eric Carle, and amazing pop out pages, this will become a staple in your little girl's library.
TITLE: Daddy, Will You Dance With Me?
AUTHOR: Sandra Schoger Foster
AGE: 8 – 12 years
DESCRIPTION: Nothing in life compares to the bond of love between father and daughter. Daddy, Will You Dance with Me? celebrates traditions and momentous occasions throughout a daughter's life during times when a father's love is extraordinarily impressionable. Relationships will be strengthened and renewed by this heartwarming, timeless, and endearing message.
**TITLE: The Napping House
AUTHOR: Audrey Wood
AGE: 2+ years
DESCRIPTION: Delightful cumulative rhyme leads up to the consequences of piling too many sleepy people and animals in a cozy bed. In this cumulative tale, a wakeful flea atop a number of sleeping creatures causes a commotion, with just one bite.
*OUR TAKE: Ok, so this is not a "daddy daughter book," BUT Todd's daughter Grace loves it so much we just had to include it. This was one of my favorites growing up too! The illustrations are beautiful, the story is adorable, and your little girl will be reading along with you in no time. Grace calls it the "Child Book," and the bedtime routine just isn't complete with out a trip through "the napping house, where everyone is sleeping."


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be firing on all cylinders(redirected from are firing on all cylinders)
be firing on all cylinders
To be functioning or operating at the most desirable or greatest possible level of efficiency, speed, or productivity. The automated messaging process is firing on all cylinders now that we've solved the bouncing issue. I'll be firing on all cylinders after I've had my coffee.
firing on all cylindersand hitting on all cylinders
1. Lit.[of an internal combustion engine] having all its cylinders working and thus providing the maximum amount of power. The old car is firing on all cylinders despite its age. This thing's not hitting on all cylinders.
2. Fig. working at full strength; making every possible effort. The team is firing on all cylinders under the new coach. The factory is hitting on all cylinders to finish the orders on time.
be firing on all cylinders
COMMON If someone is firing on all cylinders, they are doing a task with great enthusiasm and energy. I saw her a few weeks ago and she was firing on all cylinders. When Wales are firing on all cylinders, they can beat any country in the world. Note: If someone is not doing a task as well as they should be, you can say that they are not firing on all cylinders or are only firing on two cylinders. We were only firing on two cylinders in the first half of the game. Note: This expression refers to the cylinders in an engine. There are usually four of them.
firing on all (four) cylindersworking or functioning at a peak level.
This expression is a metaphor from an internal-combustion engine: a cylinder is said to be firing when the fuel inside it is ignited.
1998 Entertainment Weekly Even when his imagination isn't firing on all cylinders, Amis is still worth picking up, if only to enjoy the jazzy rhythm of his prose.


text:
You Are Here: Foodservice Supplies› Chemicals› Degreaser
Spray cleaner and degreaser.
Price: $44.43
Item#: SSS-13018
Speed Clean RTU Cleaner/Degreaser. 1 Quart. 12/Cs
Unit Size: 12/Cs
Item#: SSS-13018
Spray cleaner and degreaser.
It can be used on many hard surfaces and quickly penetrates and dissolves dirt, oil, grease and more.
Butyl based cleaner.
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Ever since I started taking classes again, the amount of reading I did outside of school dropped significantly. I can hardly make myself read the necessary words required to earn a passing grade, let alone something that is for no other reason than inspiration and passion and concepts that challenged you.
I've made the resolution about 7 times over the last two years that I would pick up a book more often. And not one that coordinated with my lessons for the week.
And here we are, January 2016, and I'm failing at this goal yet again.
Until last night, that is. Okay, maybe it was this past weekend when I finally decided to turn off Netflix and open a book before bed instead of hitting "play next" again. I was already about halfway through one book, but in the interest of transparency, I was really just trying to finish it so I could start the book that has been sitting beside my bed for the last month-and-a-half.
So finally, last night I was able to pick up this long awaited book for the first time. It was just going to be a few chapters before I put it down and called it an early night.
But here's the thing, I couldn't stop. I didn't want to stop. I didn't even want to make myself try to stop.
I just kept reading and reading – soaking in every word and sentence and chapter after chapter.
I read three-quarters of the book last night. And I felt more alive and inspired and in awe than I had in months. Maybe more.
The book is not filled with complex concepts that take a mathematical formula to pick apart, but it is filled with truth and love and words that would resonate with anyone who took time to crack the front cover.
The chapters are short and the message is simple: we need love – we need people – we need each other.
I haven't been able to get this book out of my head for the last 24 hours. There's something among those pages that stirred something inside of me.
Stories. We all have stories. Our lives are filled with stories as we write one of our own. This book is filled with stories and lessons and experiences that simply say, "We're all human. We all struggle. We all need each other. Let's share our stories and do just that."
The book is If You Feel Too Much by Jamie Tworkowski, founder of To Write Love on Her Arms.
As I turned the last page, unable to fully believe that the book was over – with a few tears rolling down my cheeks, I longed for more. I wanted to hear more stories, more hope, more struggle, more redemption – more love.
It seems silly that such a simple concept could make such an impact. But I think that's just the point.
It's simple.
"We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home."
– Jamie Tworkowski
We are made to pour ourselves out again and again. There will be hurt and there will be pain, because, as C. S. Lewis said, "To love at all is to be vulnerable". We are automatically opening ourselves up to the hurt that this world throws at us day after day. But we can still make the choice to love – to boldly step out, to admit that we're wrong and that we're broken, but that we all walk this same road together.
Oh, how I wish I could meet Jamie at a coffee shop somewhere drenched with the smell of salt water. I want to hear more of his stories. More about the things that led him to where he is today – that allowed him to simply say yes when an experience turned into a story turned into TWLOHA. Because we are all just humans, trying to give our best yes in the most broken of places.
"You'll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people, and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living breaking screaming invitation to believe better things.
We're saying the story doesn't end here, that the air in your longs is there for a reason. Perhaps we're all in the business of better endings, you as much as us, the business of redemption."
– Jamie Tworkowski