What is the view from the top of the Eiffel Tower?

Fancy you asking that.  I have the answer right here.

and if you toddle on over to the Arounder site by clicking here, you can take a 360 degree tour of the view.  One to share with your languages teachers?

The Arounder site has 360 degree tours of art museums, world cities and more.  Here's a glimpse of the Asia/Pacific/elsewhere selection:

If you'd like to take a squizz at the hometown of this blog, Sydney, there are twenty options, not only the (expected) Sydney Opera House.

If you want something more astronomical, how about Mars or the Moon?

So one for LOTE teachers, art teachers, geography teachers, science teachers and more.  Share it!

Cheers

Ruth

Found via Twitter.  @brainpicker consistently comes up with a whole bunch of great links.  Definitely worth following.

App of the Week: Hipstamatic

(oops, I missed a couple of weeks for apps.  But this one's brilliant!)

Shortly after acquiring an iPhone, I was told in no uncertain terms that I MUST buy Hipstamatic.  Essential.  Brilliant.  A mere $2.49AU for the basic app (you can add Hipstapaks for around $1.99 each).

What does it do?

It adds another camera option to your iPhone or iPod Touch.  You get a variety of lenses (I use John S the most) and films (my faves at present are Kodot and Float).  Choose a lens and a film (by clicking through your choices within the app), and take a photo.  As opposed to the plain vanilla of the iPhone's ordinary camera, Hipstamatic adds mood and a different look - vintage, textured, not at all plain vanilla.

iPhone camera image of our library's entrance:

and here's a Hipstamatic version of the same:

I was in Sydney recently, and took this Hipstamatic photo at Circular Quay (it's with a different film to the one above):

Moody, broody, and a different look without fancy photo-editing.  Walked past the head office of the Department of Education (my employer), which is one of the beautiful historic Sydney sandstone offices, and here's how it can look:

So how can you use it for education?

Take photos.  Not just for art, but for all sorts of other things.  One of our English teachers wanted to use the images from a book of fantasy landscapes to inspire his senior students in their creative writing.  Sure, we could have just scanned the images from the book for a photo slideshow; but take them with Hipstamatic, and they acquired another level of mood and inspiration:

Photo from Drawing and painting fantasy landscapes by Rob Alexander and Martin McKenna

But it's not a serious camera, is it?

How about featuring in a Visual Arts major work selected for inclusion in Art Express 2011 (click for more) and currently on display at the Art Gallery of NSW?

Yup.  All those portraits were taken with Hipstamatic.  Find these two images on the Art Express website here.

I've barely scraped the surface of what I might try with Hipstamatic, but it's an app I've been enjoying, for myself and for its educational possibilities.  If you'd like to see more images, there's a Flickr pool with thousands of Hipstamatic photos here.  Would a 'serious' photographer use Hipstamatic in preference to 'serious' camera gear?  New York Times photographer Damon Winter used it to illustrate a story about the Afghanistan war.  Read all about it by clicking here.

Find Hipstamatic in the App Store; the Hipstamatic website is here.

Cheers

Ruth

PS. Disclaimer: Laura Buchanan, who created that artwork, is a relation.  And she was the one who told me to get Hipstamatic.  With the evidence above, why argue?  She's clearly an expert!  We're very proud of her.

Glimpsing possibilities

Sydney is hilly.  The CBD, too.  Sure, some bits are flat, but the edges slope down to the harbour.  I love it when you get off at Wynyard or Martin Place stations - or you're just walking down towards Circular Quay - and you get, through the office blocks and Victorian sandstone, a glimpse of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Yes, it's there.  Right in the middle of the picture, below the overhanging balcony on the right, past the curved building on the left.  (I'm besotted with the Hipstamatic camera app on my iPhone at present, which accounts for the look of this photo).  The Sydney Opera House is nice, but I love the bridge. 

This photo is kinda like some of these holidays.  I'm working on a study skills program for Year 11 in Term 1, to be delivered weekly.  It's a reshaping of content I've already developed, and a reworking of other content, and a complete reprogramming of timetable/delivery.  It's been a long process of thinking, seeing things gradually coming into focus, getting glimpses of the bridges it can build and the habits/mindsets it can help establish with our new senior students.

I took this photo on a fabulous day in town going to photographic exhibitions.  Annie Leibovitz at the MCA,  Wildlife Photographer of the Year at the Australian Museum and Beach, Bush & Battlers: photographs by Jeff Carter at the State Library of NSW. 

This image (source) is The Drover's Wife by Jeff Carter (it was my favourite).  Here's what the SLNSW says about this exhibition:

The Jeff Carter photographs in Beach, Bush + Battlers have been selected from his remarkable, historically significant archive of over 50,000 works celebrating the lives of everyday Australians in rural, outback, urban and coastal communities dating from the late 1940s through to today.
Curator Sandra Byron, the leading expert on Carter's work, says about the exhibition: 'Carter's iconic images are a testament to his respect for ordinary people and his commitment to the Australian landscape and environment.'

It was a wonderful exhibition.  Worth seeing - it closes 20 Feb.  The other two close in March.  If you can get to Sydney on Australia Day, there are a bunch of other things on in the city too (program here) and one of my favourites is the vintage bus service - a chance to ride through the city on a vintage double-decker bus (for only a gold coin donation).  Just slip slop slap; the weather forecast for Wednesday is for a very hot one.

Why not pass on info about these exhibitions to your Visual Arts/Photography teachers?  And I'm going to be pointing my History and English teachers at the Jeff Carter photos too.  If the Vis Arts people are doing an excursion to Art Express, they could add in one or more of these too.

Cheers

Ruth

Graphic Festival in Sydney

GRAPHIC is a new festival focusing on animation and comic-book culture.  Among the featured 'names' are Kevin Clark and Neil Gaiman: meet the mythmakers of the modern world is one of its taglines. 

Read more about it here - it's on in Sydney at the Sydney Opera House this coming weekend 8-9 August 2010. 

Bookings, info, downloadable program etc. here. (Source of the screenshot image above).

One to get out to the manga/anime/graphic/comicbook/Supernovaisoverforanotheryearandmylifeisadesert crew.

Cheers

Ruth

How a book cover is designed (Blameless, by Gail Carriger)

One of my holiday reading books was Soulless, by Gail Carriger.  In a most useful comment, Tehani Wessely gave a link to this YouTube video, which shows the design process for the third book in the Parasol Protectorate series, Blameless (Soulless, Changeless, Blameless comprise the series so far).  So, in case you don't read the comments on my blog as assiduously as I do...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoDCiTsS7dU .  One to share with Visual Art teachers, English teachers...

Here are the three Parasol Protectorate covers so far.  I do rather like the combination of vintage and modern.

source of images is the author's website, www.gailcarriger.com

Cheers (and many thanks, Tehani!)

Ruth

PS. I do rather like the moment in the video when they go ooops, the Eiffel Tower has to go - and also watching cars being erased.  Fascinating to see the process of graphic design.

PPS.  Blameless isn't out till September. Having really enjoyed the first two, I'll be definitely reading it.  How could one not wish to know more about Alexia Tarabotti?  And parasols, vampires, dirigibles, werewolves and so forth?

PPPS Gail Carriger has one of the best author bio pieces I've read:

Ms. Carriger began writing in order to cope with being raised in obscurity by an expatriate Brit and an incurable curmudgeon. She escaped small town life and inadvertently acquired several degrees in Higher Learning. Ms. Carriger then traveled the historic cities of Europe, subsisting entirely on biscuits secreted in her handbag. She now resides in the Colonies, surrounded by fantastic shoes, where she insists on tea imported directly from London. She is fond of teeny tiny hats and tropical fruit.

Magnum photo archive

Magnum agency photographers are responsible for some of the most iconic photographic images, and their roster has included many renowned photographers.  The New York Times has an article about how the physical prints in their archive have found a new home at a university in Texas, highlighting the historical significance of these photos and "their role in helping to create the collective photo bank of modern culture".

Much of their archive has been scanned and is available to view online here.

There is also a 'photo of the week' blog which you might like to put in your blogreader (eg. Bloglines, Google Reader) to see what appears which might be useful for school.  Find it here.

One to share with your teachers of History, Visual Arts, English... and an alternative to Google Images for kids to know, too.

Cheers

Ruth

The happy life of teacher librarians: spaghetti and meatball cupcakes

A while ago I told one of my Visual Arts colleagues, a cupcake enthusiast, about the blog Not Quite Nigella.  Apart from pretty/elegant cupcake recipes (yup, they're all edible), the blog also includes Halloween ideas (Blood Clot and Brain Cupcakes, anyone?). (Yup, there are links at the end of this blog entry).

For morning tea today, my colleague brought in Spaghetti and Meatball Cupcakes.

What's not to like?  Apart from the fact that your mind and eyes are trying to co-ordinate the apparently impossible/odd....

They tasted great.  In case you wonder, the meatballs are chocolate/coconut confections, the sauce is based on berry jam and the spaghetti is a kind of candy 'string' you can find at Ikea (and it now comes in red/strawberry as well as brown/caramel).  The base cupcakes are vanilla.

And in case you think this is all foolish diversion, it also has relevance to Visual Arts and Home Ec, in relation to perception.  But in the happy life of teacher librarians, it was also rather good fun!

Cheers

Ruth

I've blogged about NQN's fine work before, especially her Halloween cupcakes.

Not Quite Nigella home page
Spaghetti and Meatball Cupcakes
Blood Clot and Brain Cupcakes
NQN also has a bunch of other cupcake recipes, recipes for a wondrous variety of other things, restaurant/cafe reviews and more.

GIFSL* 44: : Duchamp seating for the masses...

Did you know that the artist Marcel Duchamp spent some of his working life as a librarian?  And that his 'readymade' work of art, Fountain, has (as more than one art teacher commented) a counterpart (homage? echo?) in my office?

No, not an exact replica.  Sheesh.  But this:

...is part of my office furniture that gets regular use.  I own these - bought them over time from op shops, junk shops, garage sales, wherever.  While I have a chair in my office for visitors, I quickly learned that you only need three or five kids telling you things and wanting to talk about cabbages and kings, or schoolwork, or the outrage of Disney buying Marvel, or whatever, to know that standard size chairs aren't the answer.  With these, my small office can seat five extra kids - and when they're not in use, the stools are Duchamped from the overhead beam.  Practical Art! (I'm happy to acknowledge that it was one of my school assistants who had the inspiration of hanging these up).

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I know not every teacher librarian has an office - but I do know that my glass box at the library entrance has become part of how I teach and work.  Can't count the number of times every day, every week, throughout the year, that I have conversations here, hunt things on the computer here, think through projects, advise, listen, offer tissues, dispense advice, dispense discipline, solve problems, encourage, mentor.... door open, door closed (sometimes it's so valuable to be able to close the door).  

I have a few oddities hung on the wall, too, personalising the space and providing conversation starters with kids and staff.  Sadly, I'm given to lying about them (yup, that old photo is Great Aunt Grace...).  Maybe one day I'll tell you about the photo that's part of the biggest lie - I've had a LOT of fun with that (and so have the kids who've worked it out and then participated in its perpetuation...!!)

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It's part of our work, though, isn't it?  The daily meeting and greeting and listening and engaging in lots of small ways, sometimes educational, sometimes welfare, often both.  Those mismatched stools earn their keep.

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = Good Ideas for School Libraries

The Louvre: now in English

Now you can explore the online database of the Louvre, and more, in English.



Click here to explore.

Cheers

Ruth

Culture Now: a social magazine about art, design and media

What is this?  It's a Playpump.  The Playpump is a great way to make clean water available to people in third world countries. The pump is essentially a merry go round which is powered by kids or adults and serves to retrieve water from deep below the earth. With most schools in deprived regions not being able to afford playgrounds for children, the Playpump addresses more than one problem simultaneously.

I found this, and a cornucopia of other items on modern culture, art, design, media, at Culture Now.

The Playpump is an example of its offerings in the Objects section (read more, and see a diagram of how it works here).  The Objects section has a bunch of fascinating subsections:

• 
  
  Art
• 
  
  Exterior
• 
  
  Extraordinary
• 
  
  Gadgets
• 
  
  Graphics
• 
  
  Interior
• 
  
  Personal
• 
  
  Utilitarian
• 
  
  Vehicles

The Interior one, for example, has great examples of current modern design featuring designers such as Kareem Rashid.  Useful for Design and Technology and other subjects too.  Explore.  Tell your colleagues and let them explore too.

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