Mediterranean e-journal of Communication & Media, 2015 Vol.3 No.1
Professor Tara Brabazon
Professor of Education and Head of the School of Teacher Education
Charles Sturt University, Australia and Canada
This article enters the decade-old field of digital storytelling and demonstrates its capacity for teaching and learning, particularly when teaching politically volatile topics and integrated curricula initiatives. My research provides not only a rationale and commentary on the potential of digitization, but demonstrates effective methods to embed digital storytelling process in the classroom. The risks to and for disempowered communities are revealed alongside the value of students claiming their own voice and views.
Digital storytelling, visual literacy, sonic media, sensory history, social media, interface cultures
My father Kevin, at the spritely 87 years of age, has a strategy to manage difficult family conversations about people, politics or religion. Whenever particular topics become too uncomfortable, he responds with a flourish: “let’s talk about something important. Let’s talk about me.” Such a rejoinder is less about ego and more about reducing the disquiet that emerges when confronting emotional issues and disparate views.
Teaching and learning are derived from intricate and difficult personal experiences and reflections but must transcend them. Teachers and students – at their most powerful – welcome differences and disquiet, while respecting what we can learn from them. Demanding knowledge about race, nationalism, colonization, gender and sexuality are integral to learning in and for a multicultural nation. The key question in our Facebook age is how to grasp the textures and filaments of our lives, but also how these threads connect with the wider tapestry of history, geography and knowledge. The pivotal challenge for teachers is finding strategies that motivate students to seek and connect information from the past with their lives in the present. The read write web reveals powerful opportunities for the development of a productive and creative relationship between students and scholarship, ideas and interpretation.
Stories are part of human history. They carry ideas through time. In analogue environments, parents tell stories to their children about rules and responsibilities, offering context and warning. Digitization has transformed how we shape and structure the tragedies and joys of life. Selfies record a special hairstyle, new eye shadow or interesting shoes. Instagram marks the minutiae of life and identity for a (small or large) audience. Snapchat performs the ephemera of digitization, sharing and then dissolving a visual message. Songs, YouTube videos, photographs, tweets, blogs and Facebook posts assemble a version of a lived self. Through social networking sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr and Pinterest – the online pinup board – we not only consume stories, but produce them.
Telling stories and sharing experiences are not new. Hardware and software have changed how these stories are constructed and disseminated. Conversely, Kay Teehan argued that students, rather than software, have changed.
Digital Storytelling is a tool that was created to integrate the newest technology in the classroom. It has proven to be a powerful tool indeed. I believe the reason for its power lies with the type of students we teach each day in our schools. Students today are multi-taskers, creative, and visual learners. They have grown up in a world of multimedia and respond to audio-visual in positive ways (2006, 3).
Teehan wrote these words in 2006. This was the period of the emerging literature about the google generation, digital natives and the changing nature of learning
through the read write web. Rebooting the generation gap and technological determinism is not an excuse to underprepare teachers for complex and conflictual classroom experiences or to make assumptions about a particular cohort of students. Certainly, software and hardware are now more intuitive with simple interfaces for use, and the price of these products has reduced. Domestic technology can create professional outcomes. When academics work – in a careful and considered way – to translate domestic media into a scholarly environment, the effort may be both productive and stimulating. Assumptions about students and student development are minimized. Collaborations are more authentic and democratic.
This article investigates digital storytelling as a strategy to connect life with learning and experience with expertise. The link between these states and terms is narrative, enabled by digitization and the domestication of high quality software and hardware. This article commences with a discussion of visual literacy, which has a long theoretical history, and then sets photographs in motion through digital storytelling.
Visuality and visual literacy
Our senses – touch, taste, smell, hearing and vision – gather information. Yet the gathering is not – in and of itself – valuable. It is through decoding sensory information that knowledge is gleaned from our daily lives. The great challenge being confronted in schools and universities is the disconnection between digital experiences at home and mobile liminal spaces, and the fixed analogue standards taught and examined in schools (Sherian and Rowsell, 2010). Through schools and universities, particular modes of decoding are valued, assessed, examined and rewarded (Hadjioannou and Hutchinson, 2014). The capacity to hold a pen and create the shapes recognized as cursive writing is an assessed skill (Oxbrough and Gordon, 2014). Holding a knife and cutting the crust of bread is not an assessable act. In daily life, it is rare that our senses are isolated, that we only experience sound or vision or smell. The engagement with the world is multimodal. Yet digitization is selective, cutting away smell and taste, thereby reducing the emersion in screen environments.
If there is an Empire of the Senses (Howes, 2005), then visuality is the colonizer, dominating hearing, touch, taste and smell. Through schooling, visual literacy is taught through reading words. Writing is also a form of visual communication. The digital environment has increased the integration of text, images and sound, navigated through the hypertext link (DeSimone and Williams, 2014). Therefore, literacy – and literacy education – is extended beyond the typographic. Visual literacies in analogue and digital environments confirm the distinction between seeing and believing. Our eyes are an ideological organ. We see, select and frame a reality that fits into our lived experience and literally cuts out or blocks what makes us uncomfortable. One mechanism to marginalize uncomfortable visual material is to close our eyes. Clichés such as he or she ‘sees things’ suggests that seeing is not real, but personally self-affirming. As John Berger’s career has shown, seeing is a literacy, a subjective interpretation of the world (1990).
We frame our world in a way that verifies our ideologies and represses dissent and differences. Teachers frame a world – through curriculum – for students. These frames – these borders and boundaries – matter. Photographers capture this significance by choosing particular subjects, perspectives, colours and focus. Yet even when particular lighting and subjects are selected, a plurality of visual interpretations is available. The question is how students through their formal education are encouraged to see differently and move beyond personal expression. Such a process requires not only looking, but doing. One of the great strengths of user generated content and the read-write web is that images can be made, and through that process reveal the arbitrariness of visual literacy. Therefore, through the last decade, emerging definitions of visual literacy include not only reading and writing, but the ability to both understand and produce visual texts. Gunther Kress is a leader in this interdisciplinary field (2010).
Visual literacy is our most advanced media literacy. The printed word – even before the Gutenberg Press – required visual literacy to decode back squiggles, dots and lines into standardized, encoded and decoded words and sentences. Similarly, photography predated the moving image. The history of film spans over 120 years. ‘Talking pictures’ emerged much later in cinematic history (Fleeger, 2014). Digitization, particularly carried through YouTube, increases the number of sites in which the moving image can play. YouTube fragments the audience and blurs the division between the present and the past. Images can move through space and time, being recut and discovering new audiences as they move.
Each visual medium is unique, with its own set of codes, building into its own language. Although television has movement and oral components, photographs are silent sources that soak in surrounding meanings. Every photograph offers multiple and contradictory reading choices, as they detach from their context. Photographs are ambiguous. As John Berger suggested, “One can play a game of inventing meanings” (1982, 86). There is always a gap between the moment recorded by a photograph and the present moment of looking at a photograph. Digitization has minimized that gap. The space between taking a selfie and viewing it may be seconds. Uploading it for an Instagram audience may only take a few subsequent moments. Yet the longer the gap between taking and viewing, the greater the ambiguity.
Digital storytelling collapses this ambiguity through placing isolated images into a narrative (Branigan, 2013) and shaping meaning through editing, sound and a voiceover. Anchorage is provided through personal experience and research. Therefore it is important when introducing digital storytelling to students that teachers ensure that every photograph is given time to resonate, to activate many stories and readings. Every photograph has a story to tell. The primary story is one of survival. A fragment of the past lives in our present. Even the dead continue to live through photographs. There is power in a photograph, but it is loaned to it via a camera. While cameras are now embedded in mobile phones, there is potency through the production of images. The camera transforms social relationships. In the analogue era, the verbs used to explain the actions of a camera – such as ‘loading’ film and ‘shooting’ a photograph – conveyed aggression and power. In some ways, the mobile phone camera is more insidious. It sits in any social experience and can take (a picture) without permission. Such a change adds complexity to Susan Sontag’s maxim that, the photograph “help[s] people to take possession of space in which they are insecure” (1979, 9). Instagram and Snapchat are theorized differently when applying her interpretation (Porter, 2014).
Photographs have two roles: to convey subjectivity and to build and perpetuate ideologies. As photography has been democratized, these two functions have intensified. The subjectivity and ideology of photography must be recognized with consciousness and care. When combined into digital storytelling, these mobile photographs do not present reality or a life, but an argument. Digital storytelling is a genre of activism, building personal stories into a desire for social and political change.
The last decade has witnessed the creation and deployment of an innovative range of hardware and software that have enabled digitally literate men and women to make and disseminate new ideas in innovative ways. Often termed digital storytelling, this phrase is becoming increasingly stable in its definition: narratives developed by amateurs, not professionals, and built through the creation and selection of digital objects such as photographs, stills from video footage and sounds. Digital objects that were not previously connected, aligned or tethered are linked by the selection and shaping of a creator and the capacities of software. These ‘born digital objects’ are shaped into a narrative that presents and resolves an idea, argument or experience. Flexibility is also possible, particularly with regard to length. As with podcasts, the limitations of commercial broadcasting are not considerations within the digital storytelling discourse. Certainly, the techniques of digital storytelling have spread to business: the social activism that was present at the core of its foundation has been diversified if not displaced. Now a mature genre, digital storytelling has leisure, workplace and educational applications. Artists, health agencies and community activists, alongside an array of businesses, can use this genre. Digital storytelling has advantages when capturing the experiences of family and friends, logging important birthdays, weddings and anniversaries. But it is also of great value in education for staff and students. A photographic series can be overlaid by an academic voice-over, making an event, building or idea meaningful for new audiences, including peers, teachers and parents.
Through the last decade, particular characteristics have formed the digital storytelling genre.
- Non-fiction stories about an event, place or person.
- Socially activist.
- Based in personal stories derived from lived experience.
- Composed with still images rather than footage.
- A spoken word voiceover, with music as a secondary accompaniment.
- Short, often under five minutes.
- Expressing content is more important than the calibre of the form.
- Intent more important than abstract determinants of ‘quality’ (Lambert, 2013).
The last point is an important one. Built on thirty years of popular cultural studies, including theorizations from the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and the Manchester Institute for Popular Culture alongside community media theorizations, notions of ‘art’ and ‘quality’ are displaced in digital storytelling, reducing the power and importance of gatekeepers and critics. Small audiences, in a careful and compassionate context, generate new modes of community through storytelling beyond reified, abstract and often arbitrary theorizations of quality. The imperative and focus is relevance, connection, community and communication, rather than a separation of art and interpretation, culture and commentary. It is – from its foundation – a democratic process, product and outcome. There is – perhaps without (postmodern) irony – a desire for authenticity (Grossberg, 1988, 43). It operates against commodification and the reification of mainstream media.
There is an irony resonating through digital storytelling, particularly when positioning it in universities. Higher education has been, through much of its history, an institution of the elite, the fortunate and the rich. With the widening participation agenda and the creation of new universities outside of global or second tier cities, a greater diversity of students now occupy university classrooms. Joe Lambert recognized the significance of this change and how digital storytelling can both capture and channel it for an audience.
As I travel around the world, often to universities or other kinds of places of relative privilege, I am drawn to people who are using story to negotiate these distinctions in rank and opportunity … People who, though perhaps successful as media storytellers themselves, see in every single person a tremendous potential for sharing insight, for wisdom, for teaching us a bit about what it means to be human (2013, 2).
It takes confidence to give power away to others. Schools and universities are integral to the process of creating, validating and credentialing the powerful, the successful and the rich. Yet by rendering the personal more complex, the political outcomes are more ambivalent and provocative. Knowledge is broadened. Truth is tempered. Reclaiming ‘the ordinary’ operates against dominant views of progress, success and achievement.
A fine example of how digital storytelling can assist diverse university students in their movement through our degrees emerged during 2014 in the School of Teacher Education at Charles Sturt University. As part of a programme to assist first year students in their transition from school to university, digital storytelling was used to provide motivation, inspiration and aspiration. The transition coordinator, Dr. Lena Danaia, used the question ‘Why do I want to become a teacher?’ to enable students to reflect on their university experience. The resultant films were remarkable and presented each of the student’s backgrounds and the rationale for their study. During a time of increasing surveillance and regulation of Australian teachers, these stories provide a reminder of the soft yet powerful propulsions that move men and women into the teaching profession.
This single example was evocative, but it is part of a much wider movement. The literature on and for digital storytelling and storytellers is captured through the multiple editions of Joe Lambert’s key book: Digital Storytelling: capturing lives, creating community (2013). First published in 2003 and disseminating the work from the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, history, methodologies and ethical considerations are maturing this genre and field. It began as a way to work with local communities through shifting power relations in theorizing authorship. With the attention on authorship and experience, the fear and threat of cultural appropriation and claiming the voice of others remains a constant threat and concern. Therefore robust ethical considerations must be addressed. Particularly potent and important when considering the use of digital storytelling in formal education, the relationship between production and dissemination is discussed overtly and clearly. The making of the digital story is important. Through this process, content can be shaped, media skills gained and abilities to manage and mobilize evidence verified. Learning outcomes can be demonstrated.
After the production of a digital story, the subsequent question is how the project then moves. Does it require an audience and how is this dissemination regulated and managed? The circulation of digital stories is particularly important. As Lambert realized, “the lived experience of people or peoples who have faced systematic forms of discrimination and oppression must be honored as authoritative perspectives on their own lives” (2013, 117). In other words, consideration and care emerges when moving these private stories into diverse publics. These are intimate and personal stories. The circulation of these stories must be monitored. By embedding these stories into curriculum via focusing on a problem to be solved, personal concerns are framed by scholarship. Movement in thinking is the key. An idea, an experience and problem is resolved, moving an audience into a new way of thinking.
Digital storytelling is not an abstract theory. It is applied knowledge. Rubegni and Sabiescu describe it as “an emerging research and practice area, and focuses on modalities of bridging the gap between research-based innovation and implementation in formal education” (2014, 55). To create the best work in this emerging genre, students work through a series of ten stages.
- Students develop an idea, argument, problem or question to resolve.
- They storyboard their idea, creating a narrative arc to move an idea from beginning to end.
- Students define an audience and explore how this group is best reached through the project.
- Predict, track and map ethical considerations.
- Create, capture and organize varied media, including photographs, films, audio and sound effects.
- Select the most appropriate software and hardware.
- Address all copyright concerns.
- Explore whether or not a voiceover is appropriate for this project.
- Titles are written to create the transitions between the disparate sections of the project.
- Editing and alignment of all media into a narrative and pattern concludes the project.
The goal of this process is to shape and sculpt narratives from the building blocks of digital objects, including sounds, still images, moving images and digitized text. Digital storytelling invests information with meaning, movement and emotion to develop warmth and engagement. It also connects texts with their context. The goal is to find a way to organize knowledge. Problem-based storytelling positions a central challenge or question. This problem gives the propulsion of a narrative. The use of hypertext in digital stories also creates some alternative navigation modes. References and evidence can be presented to verify the data.
The implicit question that emerges from the 10 steps in building digital stories is the relationship between the teacher and learner. In digital storytelling, the teacher’s role is one of advisor or guide. Jason Ohler describes this function as “a skill manager rather than a media specialist … a guide on the side” (2013, xii). Authenticity matters to this process. The technology is important, but it has an assistive role in enabling the creation and dissemination of stories. In this case, a teacher is a database of answers to questions that may emerge. Each student’s story will be different. They will require different assistance with the structuring and shaping of stories, writing, editing, sound production and the creation and alignment of visuals, alongside the use of citations and referencing.
Guide questions can create a tissue of connectivity – a guided relationship – between teachers and students.
What question or problem will I ask and resolve?
What is my point of view?
What is the origin of this perspective?
How will I balance emotion and argument, experience and expertise?
What parts or components will structure the content?
How will I engage an audience and move them through the narrative?
How will I use my voice and a voiceover?
Will music or sound effects be required?
What relationships will I build between sound and vision?
How will I limit content and time?
Is there a coherent alignment between the beginning and ending, problem and resolution?
Besides teaching staff, librarians also have a key role in digital storytelling (Ballew, 2014). Digital stories hold an evocative outreach role for librarians to explain the role of libraries for students and the community (Fields and Diaz, 2008), and revealing the collections that may not be available on the main shelves or revealed through a google search. But librarians can also show how research can be disseminated sonically and visually through digital storytelling. The collection can be accessed and deployed in new ways. The research process becomes part of the story. Digital storytelling allows libraries and librarians to create new ways to discover, retrieve and use content.
There are key moments in the production of a digital story where this ‘guide to the side’ may be required to intervene. The first and most important teaching task is to configure the guide question. This transforms a shared experience into a problem to be solved. These questions may include:
Why did I decide to become a teacher?
How do I manage privacy in a digital age?
Is my nation multicultural?
Is feminism relevant to contemporary life?
How is climate change effecting my community?
The second decision is how to select and teach the enabling software. An array of online tutorials can be provided so that the students learn in their own time and as required. Thirdly, it is necessary to provide a selection of outstanding digital stories, so that students can observe and understand the genre.
From these three initial stages, a more complex process of research and production can be implemented. Many mitigating stages can break down this process into a finer grain, but these seven steps will create a product, and a reflection on the knowledge created.
Through such a process, not only can diverse disciplines be accessed (history, media studies, cultural studies, law, information studies, internet studies, sociology), but an array of curricula is aligned. Indeed the process can be disruptive to disciplinary knowledge (Cowie and Khoo, 2014). One of the great challenges in a highly regulated school and university environment is how to build relationships between what are often disparate subjects. Digital storytelling can be the method for project based learning. Lambert revealed this process.
Educators from K-12 schools as well as colleges and universities have been an integral part of our practice from the start. The leading proponents of educational technology for project-based learning identified Digital Storytelling as one of the most obvious and effective methods within a broad cross-section of curricular areas. Writing and voice, reflections on civic processes, oral histories, and essays on major subject areas are just some of the ways the work has been integrated into curriculums across grade levels (2013, 133).
Educators have talked up Lambert’s challenge. I have found digital storytelling particularly appropriate to assign for student assessment when exploring emotionally and politically volatile topics such as colonialism, terrorism, war, racism and migration. These abstract and controversial ideas can be rendered real and personal, yet also thoughtful and rigorous. Students translate and migrate other histories and experiences into their context and their lives. For migrant communities, digital storytelling can capture and convey stories outside of national narratives. The invisible is rendered visible. Further, Pamela Sullivan and Natalie Gainer show how pre-service teachers use digital storytelling and blogging to integrate literacy throughout the curriculum (2014).
Academics see the world differently. Our gaze is mediated, shaped and translated into scholarly protocols, footnotes and institutional guidelines and regulations. Cameras are a companion on research journeys, capturing evidence, developing memory texts for later referral, creating book covers or images for online articles. While many disciplines deploy photographs to supplement written text, visual ethnography enables writers and researchers to assemble a method and theory for our visual mediations. Anthropology, history, cultural studies, sociology and media studies all provide disciplinary opportunities for new ways of seeing and new ways of thinking. While cultural studies has focused – too often for my taste – on issues of representation, other topics are also worthy of discussion. Sarah Pink has chartered a path through visual research. She sharpens our scholarly eye and connects what we see with what we write. Her second edition of Doing Visual Ethnography appeared in 2007. While acknowledging how photography and video are part of our practice, Pink has also probed the hypertextual new media environment (2013).
An important new subject of development for Pink and many of us inspired by her work is how the use of cameras and audio recorders either enables or stifles our scholarship. Does the intuitive interface of web 2.0 software oversimplify the configuration of an interpretation? The pervasiveness of images in our non-academic lives often means that visuality is taken for granted, assumed and naturalized. In creating opportunities to prise open spaces for interpretation, a range of theories can be activated. Intense questions emerge about the right to conduct research, switch on a camera and own and use the resultant footage.
The relationship between the digital storytelling genre and community and the PhotoVoice movement is still in negotiation. Both spring from the font of democratic education. PhotoVoice, by definition, hands the cameras, microphones, hardware, software, voice and views to disempowered individuals or groups. Men and women with disabilities, migrant groups, women and children have all used PhotoVoice to craft a distinctive path through society and culture, presenting views that may be unpopular, but are also distinctive and important. It is part of the participatory media movement, with specific resonance in and for public health. Therefore, PhotoVoice is part of Digital Storytelling, but can be a ‘top down’ process, where the (more) powerful claim, sculpt and sell the stories of the disempowered, particularly through the proliferation of the software. However it can also be a process whereby the disempowered tell their own stories, revealed through the software. There is also a fertile middle train, of collaboration, investigating diverse subjectivities and roles. The question of power is an important one, particularly when working with men and women with impairments. Elaine Bliss and Janelle Fisher explore how digital storytelling is used – as a participatory research methodology – to investigate the success of Interactionz, a community development programme based in Hamilton, New Zealand (2014). They see digital storytelling as a way, “to document and analyse the organisational transition of Interactionz from a service driven model to a person driven model; and to facilitate the creation of an empowering community narrative for people with disabilities” (2014, 93). As with all disempowered communities, the question is who has the right to speak, and whose voice is dominant. In a digital storytelling process, there are multiple moments of power, choice and decision making, involving storyboarding, photography, sound recording and speaking. Therefore, there are very delicate ethical considerations to address in such collaborations. Who decides? Who speaks? Who photographs? Who edits? If men and women with impairments are the ‘objects’ of study – images in the narratives of others – then the ambivalence of digital storytelling in terms of power and relationships emerges. Such ethical considerations do emerge in PhotoVoice, but there is a greater imperative to handover the software and hardware to participants.
Negotiations are required. Particular challenges have emerged in the literature. In the case of colonized people, it is important to ensure visual sovereignty and visual self-determination through the digital storytelling process. Such a discussion is important for all communities confronting oppression, discrimination and theft of intellectual property.
One of these disempowered groups is students. As governments regulate, mandate, test, rank and judge literacy and numeracy standards, school quality, teachers and teaching, the voices and views of students are absent, disempowered or lost as politicians, teachers and parents dominate the educational discourse. Consider the consequences of Lambert’s realization.
What struck me is how a third-grader is prepared for her entry into rank, into a sense of either being advanced, or being left behind. I understood how completely dedicated the dominant system is to this premise. The students are racing to college; some will win, some will lose. Those that lose will be nobodies, and conversely, to be somebody you had better win. This creates monsters out of both categories. Selfish investment bankers and raging gangbangers. Educational reform is the endless attempt at making this unpalatable system seem bearable (2013, 3).
These challenges not only exist in primary and secondary education. The issue of ‘under-preparedness’ not only emerges in the transition to university (Arum and Roksa, 2011), but also with the movement from undergraduate to postgraduate education. A study of a South African university has revealed how a research skill ‘gap’ can be addressed through digital storytelling to increase retention and target library intervention programmes. Patient Rambe and Shepherd Mlambo stated that
Since inadequate socialization into postgraduate research and limited supervisor support contribute to the articulation gap and attrition rates at South African universities, digital storytelling (DST) potentially addresses these challenges. DST tends to foreground rigorous research, script writing, collective engagement and public expression of subdued voices to ensure effective participation in higher education (2014, 11).
This strategy not only captures, externalizes and performs the postgraduate journey into higher education, but then provides a record and pathway through this transitional period for other students. Digital modelling and mentoring emerge. Therefore, experiences are shared and even amidst the isolation of postgraduate research, observations can be shared.
Such competition and ruthlessness has only increased since the global financial crisis, with the rise of the precariat, a group of ‘workers’ who will never experience permanence or stability. If Guy Standing is correct in his theorization of the precariat (2013), and there have been critiques of his argument, then the (too simple) progression from education to the workplace corrodes. Digital storytelling is a potent opportunity to hand back the power and create spaces for alternative modes of speaking, thinking and writing. The potential and possibilities of education beyond the workplace can be revealed. But such a decision requires both courage and imagination from teachers. With standards and levels of achievement ‘measured’ by standardized tests, thinking about the curriculum and learning in an expansive and deep way becomes difficult. David Thornburg presented this challenge.
As these words are being written, the United States is adapting to a new set of Common Core standards that apply to the things all learners should be able to do, no matter where they live. Standards have their challenges, and while the Common Core does not mandate the kind of pedagogical shifts some of us would like, neither does it block them. In this environment, storytelling is even more important as a tool to humanize teaching and learning and to make the learning even more relevant to the students (Thornburg in Ohler, 2013, vii).
Learning requires motivation. Extrinsic motivations from politicians, parents and teachers may create fears of failure and unemployment. Intrinsic motivation fuels curiosity, hope, optimism, creativity and imagination. Content can be owned through anchoring it to a relevant context. Information can become knowledge. This desire for communication is a need for connection, a creative and critical engagement with their own lives, and the relationship with others. There is a passion and electricity that emerges in those rare but potent learning moments where students – and their teachers – situate their personal experiences, hopes and expectations into the broader sweep of history and geography.
There has never been an easier time to use digital storytelling in education. There are so many options for hardware and software. PowerPoint is one choice, perhaps the least flexible and customizable. If presentation software is to be used in the sequencing of narrative, and then automated at the conclusion, then Prezi provides a greater array of options and because its construction moves from a macro view of clustered topics through to a focus on individual sequence of ideas. Other options include Apple’s Keynote, iMovie or Window’s Movie Maker. Digital scrapbooks provide other options, developing shards of ideas through the combination of digital elements. Blogs, hanging on the content management systems of either Drupal or WordPress, are useful as they enable the embedding of screen shots, sound files and YouTube videos. But intuitive software with precise interfaces such as Magix’s Digital Storytelling automate many of the functions, such as synchronizing sound and vision, and offer templates to created polished films from beginners. These films can then be uploaded to YouTube for embedding in an array of websites. From YouTube, privacy functions can also be managed so that students can make decisions about the size and identity of their audience, from teachers and peers through to a public presentation. Comments can also be controlled, to avoid trolls, bullying and unwelcome and inflammatory abuse.
With the proliferation of mobile phones, almost every event in our lives can be photographed or filmed. The question is how to render such material fresh and relevant for formal education. The software for editing images includes Adobe Photoshop, iPhoto for Apple and – for video editing – Apple’s iMovie, Windows Movie Maker and Magix PhotoStory. Hosted by YouTube, Google Search Story is a video-creating tool that transforms Google searches into a video presentation. Such a tool has great use for students thinking about and reflecting on their information literacy.
These are simple methods through software to create integrated packages for sound and vision. A possibility, using hardware rather than software, is Fotobox. Looking like a USB stick on steroids, the SD memory card is inserted in one end, with a USB connector on the other. When attached to a computer, the programme runs from FotoBox. Software is resident on the platform. Themed templates are available. Voiceovers may be inserted, pictures edited and background music attached. The resultant videos can be converted into MPEG4 for mobile devices, uploaded to social networking sites or burnt to a DVD. Being based in hardware rather than software, Fotobox moves between computers and is ideal for laptops. There are more professional Photostory options available, but for convenience and mobility, Fotobox is effective. For students in schools and universities who are beginning to create and shape digital material for assignments, this is a fine option.
Photographs can be taken through an array of cameras and phones. Analogue images can be scanned and digitized. Free images without copyright restriction are available from The History Channel, Edutopia, NOVA teachers and the Internet Archive. A diversity of sounds is available from Freeaudioclips.com and the Internet Archive. Examples of already existing digital stories are found at Digitales, the website for the Center for Digital Storytelling, and In the Fray: Online Stories.
While much of the attention in digital storytelling focuses on visuality, sound is also important. While what we see dominates what we hear, listening to the voices and views of others can frame and shape photography and film. The software for editing sound includes the open source Audacity, but there are other options, including Acoustica’s Mixcraft 5 and Apple’s GarageBand, which now has an application for the iPad. It is the voice and the narrative that creates a digital story, rather than an automated slide show. The narrator’s voice creates a connection with the lived experience expressed through the visuals. Therefore, the script requires careful writing and editing, but the voice – and how life is expressed through it – matters.
It is worthwhile to ask what students gain from digital storytelling. Media literacy expertise, built through media practice, can leverage a wider understanding of information literacy. Beyond learning to use software, students gain new skills when thinking about sound. If a voiceover is deployed, then students must create a precise script and focus on the delivery of those words, adding emotion. Therefore it is necessary that students learn about their voice. Students explore how to make sounds attractive and compelling for listeners, while building productive relationships with images.
Through such hardware and software, digital storytelling provides teachers and learners with great gifts. Teachers and students can bring the world into the classroom and the classroom to the world. Digital Storytelling expands communication skills, project development and media production strategies, applying academic ideas in new ways. While ‘new media’ may distract students from core skills in reading, writing and thinking, digital storytelling grants students the ability to learn and apply knowledge. The personal can be made political. The abstract becomes applicable. The goal is to find ways to gather empirical evidence and shape considered interpretations from the media platforms that are available. The creation of digital visual objects is enhanced through a range of hardware and software opportunities. The best and most advanced technology is not always the most appropriate. The question is if and then how this democratized and domestic platform can be deployed in academic environments.
Narratives matter. They are a way to explain and understand new ideas. The propulsion – while often creating reified causalities and linearities – is a powerful scaffolding strategy. But precise editing is key. Indeed, one of the underestimated and unacknowledged skills derived from digital storytelling is meta-awareness about editing. The combination, the order, the configuration are all relevant. Cultural differences can be logged and recognized.
Digital storytelling gives students and teacher great gifts, beyond the management of hardware and software. Thoughtful connections and reflections can be created between students and their environment. Cheap, domestic equipment can expand the world of visual scholarship. Digital storytelling is an evocative way to explain the world through narratives. It is an organization of knowledge through digital objects. The outcomes are clear: storytelling skills, capacities in hardware and software, information literacy, project management, media production, ethics and applying academic ideas for new audiences. Emotion is balanced by research. Life is contextualized through learning.
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Branigan, E. (2013). Narrative comprehension and film. London: Routledge.
Cowie, B. and Khoo, E. (20140. Digital Tools Disrupting Tertiary Students’ Notions of Disciplinary Knowledge: Cases in History and Tourism. Educational Sciences. 4.1: 87-107.
DeSimone, C. and Williams, M. (2014). Transitioning from Traditional Writing to Digital Design. in M. Searson & M. Ochoa (eds.). Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference. Chesapeake: 2014, 2459-2463: http://www.editlib.org/p/131153/
Fields, A. and Diaz, K. (2008). Fostering community through digital storytelling: a guide for academic libraries. Westport. Greenwood Publishing.
Fleeger, J. (2014). Sounding American: Hollywood, Opera and Jazz. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Grossberg, L. (1988). It’s a sin: essays on postmodernism politics and culture. Sydney. Power Publications.
Hadjioannou, X and Hutchinson, M. (2014). Fostering awareness through transmediation: preparing pre-service teachers for critical engagement with multicultural literature. International Journal of Multicultural Education. 16.1: http://ijme-journal.org/ijme/index.php/ijme/article/view/692/pdf.
Howes, D. (2005). Empire of the Senses. London: Bloomsbury.
Kress, G. (201). Multimodality: a social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London: Routledge.
Lambert, J. (2013). Digital storytelling: capturing lives, creating community. New York: Routledge.
Ohler, J. (2013). Digital storytelling in the classroom: new media pathways to literacy, learning, and creativity. Thousand Oaks. SAGE.
Oxbrough, A. and Gordon, S. (2014). Getting it wRITE! Developing handwriting skills. Educating Young Children: Learning and Teaching in the Early Childhood Years. 20.1, 27-28: http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=279895677875288;res=IELHSS
Pink, S. (2013). Doing Visual Ethnography. London. SAGE.
Porter, E. (2014). Taking Images Seriously. Columbia Law Review. University of Washington School of Law Research Paper.
Rambe, P. and Mlambo, S. (2014). Using digital storytelling to externalise personal knowledge of research processes: The case of a Knowledge Audio repository. The Internet and Higher Education. 22: 11-23
Rubegni, E. and Sabiescu, A. (2014). Integrating digital storytelling in formal educational settings: a design framework. International Journal of Arts and Technology. 7.1: http://inderscience.metapress.com/content/EH28130231741678
Sheridan, M and Rowsell, J. (2010). Design literacies: learning and innovation in the digital age. New York: Routledge.
Sontag, S. (1979). On photography. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Standing, G. (2013). The precariat: the new dangerous class. London. Bloomsbury.
Sullivan, P. and Gainer, N. (2014). Preparing preservice teachers to thread literacy across the curriculum with blogging and digital storytelling. D. Loveless, B. Griffith, M. Bérci, E. Ortlieb, P. Sullivan (eds.). Academic Knowledge Construction and Multimodal Curriculum Development. Hersey. IGI: 178-187.d
Teehan, K. (2006). Digital storytelling in and out of the classroom. Raleigh: Lulu
Thornburg, D. (2013). Foreword. Digital storytelling in the classroom: new media pathways to literacy, learning, and creativity. Thousand Oaks. SAGE.


Please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks beavers are so flippin’ cute?! I seriously melt whenever I see a picture of a beaver online or in a book; I just can’t help myself!
Today, I have an awesome children’s book review and giveaway for “Charlie The Tramp” by Russel Hoban to share with you guys.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Charlie the Beaver wants to be a tramp when he grows up. “Tramps
don’t have to learn how to chop down trees and how to roll logs and how
to build dams. Tramps just tramp around and have a good time. Tramps
carry sticks with little bundles tied to them. They sleep in a field when
the weather is nice, and when it rains they sleep in a barn.” Charlie sets
off with his bundle. But when he hears water trickling, he can’t get to
sleep. Will he be able to resist the urge to make it stop? As Grandfather
Beaver says, “You never know when a tramp will turn out to be a beaver.”
An American classic is back in a special 50th anniversary hardcover
Winner of the Boys Club of America Junior Book Award, 1968.
This book also has the CUTEST illustrations by Lillian Hoban. When I was little I always loved books with pictures, and truth be told, I still do! 😉 These illustrations really help bring the story to life and make you really feel like Charlie is your friend.
This book is targeted for kids ages 3-8, but I feel like it really “breaks the mold” and is great for kids young and old.
All in all, if you’re looking for a children’s book that will bring a smile to you ad your kiddos faces, this is the book for you.
Now for the giveaway!! One lucky reader will win a copy of “Charlie The Tramp” for themselves and their little one(s) to share. This giveaway will run from December 1, 2016 – December 14, 2016. Use the widget below to enter!
This giveaway is part of a giveaway hop hosted by “Planet Weidknecht” and “LeahSay’s Views.”
Powered by Linky Tools
Click here to see the other blogs participating in the Merry Christmas Giveaway Hop!
Hosts and bloggers are not responsible for sponsors who do not fulfill prizes.


As part of the Australian Heritage Festival 2021, Marrickville Library is pleased to present iconic photographs of the Greek community in Marrickville, taken by Emmanuel Angelicas. Raised in the suburb, long term resident Emmanuel Angelicas has taken photographs for five decades, chronicling the changing face of Marrickville and its citizens.
These stunning monochromatic images are just a taste of the photographer’s archive and show aspects of the Hellenic influence. By the middle of the twentieth century, Marrickville was a major centre for Greek immigrants, often referred to as ‘Little Athens’. Over time, shops and businesses with a strong Greek identity became accepted as part of the wider Australian community and enriched our municipality. Through these images, older residents will smile with recognition and younger ones can connect with our recent history.
For fifty years, photographer Emmanuel Angelicas has roamed the streets of Marrickville, recording his neighbourhood in startling black and white images. His archive of negatives and digital images is huge and this exhibition showcases just a few of his iconic images of the Greek diaspora and their influence on our suburb. Marrickville’s complex identity owes much to the arrival of Hellenic migrants in the 1950s and 1960s and this is recognised today with the area’s affectionate title of Little Greece. Emmanuel Angelicas’s photographs span the generations with poignant images of those early arrivals and their descendants.
As he grew up in Marrickville, he became serious about the medium. He bought better cameras and graduated from the University of NSW with a degree in Visual Communication and postgraduate diploma in Professional Art Studies with further visual arts qualifications from the University of Sydney. The technology of photography has changed, but Emmanuel continues to record in black and white and is happy to use both film and digital cameras. His attitude to photography has never wavered either. “Every time I shoot in Marrickville, either in my home or on the street – I am still this seven-year-old boy curious with his camera…”


New Bulk Metamaterial
Jan Machác, Pavel Buchar, Ján Zehentner, Abbas S. Oma
35th European Microwave Conference, Paris, France, Oct.
Volume 2, Oct. 2005
The design, analysis, fabrication and measurement of a new bulk metamaterial is reported in this paper. The structure of the new medium is made up of lefthanded parallel strips. The series capacitors are realized by short circuited parallel strip stubs, and the conducting shunt pins represent parallel inductors. This metamaterial allows the propagation of a left-handed wave in the frequency band from 4.75 to 5.65 GHz, much wider than the frequency band achievable by split-ring resonators. The simple equivalent
circuit of the metamaterial is derived. Additional modification of the media structure is proposed.
Back to References


One of the books i've got is Baking & Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft, which is actually a study book by the Culinary Institute of America (one of the best chefschools). As it sounds, it's much more of a technical book. Another one, again by CIA, is Remarkable Service: A Guide to Winning and Keeping Customers for Servers, Managers and Restaurant Owners. This is again a technical book on restaurant and cafe management, will teach me how to keep all of you coming to my future pastry shop. And the other two are dedicated only to cupcakes, my kitchen will be working hard for the next couple of months.


Is there anything more satisfying than reading by the fire?
If there's one thing I love almost as much as I love a good fire, it's a good book to read while I warm my toes. Many a morning, and many a late night I can be found in my favorite armchair, a hardback biography or paperback novel open on my lap, my stocking feet perched on the ottoman a couple yards from the hearth. The sound of crackling logs brings the words on the page that much more to life.
Of course, being such an avid reader, I'm also a big supporter of the public library. Sure, I buy my share of books at Barnes & Noble and on Amazon, and at least once a month I peruse the secondhand shoppes for out-of-print titles and good deals, but if it weren't for my local library I'd probably go bankrupt. When I hit the shelves I can sometimes pull down fifteen or twenty books in five minutes.
The only problem I've ever had with my library is the library itself -- in other words, the building. Oh, it's nice enough, with high ceilings, plate glass windows all the way up and enough computer stations to run the entire North American division of Google. My problem is that it isn't the kind of place I want to hang around and read after I've raided the shelves. Most of the time, I can't get home fast enough. After all, my armchair is waiting.
It makes you wonder why more libraries don't offer programs like they do in Marblehead, Massachusetts, where once a week the librarians fire up the hearth and invite patrons to sit back and relax, right there among the stacks. There's no picture in the article I found, but considering the town's name, I envision a classic marble fireplace, perhaps retrofitted with state-of-the-art fireplace doors to keep the sparks from jumping out and catching the collections on fire. It's a pretty good idea, don't you think? I mean, I wouldn't automatically trade in my favorite chair, but I can guarantee you I wouldn't be in as much of a hurry to get home.


Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic tale “Ligeia” is a study of the supernatural and of feminine beauty. In exploring Ligeia’s physical beauty, Poe quotes Elizabethan politician and scholar Francis Bacon: “There’s no exquisite beauty,” says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and genera of beauty “without some strangeness in the proportion.”
In James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, we find that Stephen Dedalus’ translated Aquinas model of beauty using the following words: wholeness, balance, and radiance. ‘Balance’ is often translated as ‘proportion’ by others. So, if something is lacking in any of the above three elements, then the beauty observed will be flawed.
In Ligeia, Poe’s neurotic and unreliable narrator is determined to find out that ‘strangeness’ that was so unnerving to him: “I was possessed with a passion to discover.” After examining in great detail Ligeia’s hair, skin, nose, lips, teeth, smile, chin, and eyes, he concludes that her eyes carry the unmistakable light of strangeness: “They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary eyes of our own race. They were fuller than the fullest of the gazelle eyes…” And in the end it is the eyes that convinces him that the revivified corpse is Ligeia and not Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine.
As part of his study of the glittering Russian aristocracy, in Ana Karenina, Leon Tolstoy explored Ana’s physical beauty: face, arms, neck, hair, feet, hands, and even her dress and accessories:
“Some supernatural force drew Kitty’s eyes to Anna’s face. She was fascinating in her simple black dress, fascinating were her round arms with their bracelets, fascinating was her firm neck with its thread of pearls, fascinating the straying curls of her loose hair, fascinating the graceful, light movements of her little feet and hands, fascinating was that lovely face in its eagerness, but there was something terrible and cruel in her fascination.”
But it is not from any particular part that he finds fault in Ana. Nothing is flawed. It is the whole –wholeness of fascination– that gives off the odor of cruelty and strangeness, destroying therefore the balance of her beauty.
Not only did Scott Fitzgerald create a wholesome American beauty in Daisy Buchanan –the belle of The Great Gatsby– but a mentally challenged and morally flawed American beauty. Understanding doesn’t come easy to Daisy, and when she gives an opinion, it is always either a trivial opinion or an inane one that often verges on absurdity. Notice how she deals with one single idea by repeating the same idea three times: “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.” If you count the pronoun “it” you will realize that she has mentioned the longest day of the year five times. And throughout the novel, Daisy keeps stuttering and repeating herself; a problem that Nick Carraway –the narrator– calls “echolalia.”
For the reader of fiction nothing can be more poignant than the fall of a beautiful, intelligent, and honorable character; but when the character is a female and from the upper crust, the situation becomes pathetic. Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth chronicles the demise of an old New York society beauty. Of all the beautiful women portrayed in novels by male and female authors, Lily Bart remains the epitome of exquisiteness and elegance. Beset by financial problems left by her bankrupt husband, Lily’s mother hopes for a brighter future through her daughter:
“Only one thought consoled her, and that was the contemplation of Lily’s beauty. She studied it with a kind of passion, as though it were some weapon she had slowly fashioned for her vengeance. It was the last asset in their fortunes, the nucleus around which their life was to be rebuilt.”
When Lily poses for a tableau vivant, she dazzles the viewers with her beauty. Yet readers gasp and shudder at the anticipation of impending doom. Selden –Lily’s sedated paramour and the most insipid character in the novel– detects the strangeness in Lily’s beauty: she is ogled rather admired; that “she was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.”
Hidden (more often than not) from easy detection are the strange traits of beautiful female characters. Thanks to Edgar Allan Poe, armed with Lord Bacon’s axiom, “There’s no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion,” readers perhaps will seek out the strangeness –lack of balance– that makes a particular character beautiful.


Mar 29, 2021
On today's episode, we discuss a physical connection that happened in travel history: the 1869 completion of the transcontinental railroad in the United States and, specifically, the moment that the East Coast connected with the West coast at Promontory Point, Utah. It was a monumental undertaking that proved to be a pivotal moment for the country. It forever altered where and how Americans lived, and sparked a new era of trade and leisure travel. Unfortunately, it also quickened the pace of environmental degradation and subjugation of the native peoples of North America.
For this episode, we speak to special guest Sean Fraga, PhD, a historian of the North American west and a Mellon postdoctoral fellow at USC. He's currently working on his first book about the transcontinental railroad, Asian trade, and the Puget Sound, which will be published by Yale University press.


Given the gender discrimination women faced during the first half of the 20th century (not to mention before and since), it is somewhat surprising that this golden age of pioneering aviators featured quite so many female trailblazers.
Among them was Beryl Markham who, exactly 80 years ago (September 1936), became the first woman, and only the second pilot, to fly solo east-to-west across the Atlantic. She had hoped to become the first person to fly non-stop from Europe to New York, but 20 hours into the flight her plane, The Messenger, suffered fuel starvation and she crash-landed in a bog in Nova Scotia.
Markham was famished – having taken nothing more than flasks of coffee and chicken sandwiches as sustenance – and exhausted. The impact of the landing had thrown her against the instrument panel, inflicting a nasty cut on her forehead, and she had to trudge for two hours across what she described as “engulfing mire” before two fisherman picked her up.
But she would be greeted in New York by a rapturous crowd of more than 5,000, while Columbia Pictures presented her with a contract to appear in a film portraying her achievement.
As Gavin Mortimer explained for The Telegraph back in 2009, “Markham did not, like her contemporary Amelia Earhart, die a young, heroic death in pursuit of a dream; she lived on to the age of 83, but her story – beset by tragedy and scandal and punctuated by moments of extravagant triumph – reads like something from the pages of an Evelyn Waugh novel.”
Markham was born in England but moved to Kenya as a child. She became a racehorse trainer, married three times but had a string of affairs, and befriended the author Karen Blixen of Out of Africa fame (the film’s character ‘Felicity’ is inspired by Markham).
Mortimer adds: “Her conquests throughout the 1920s were legendary. There was Tom, the son of Lord Delamere, who lost his virginity to Markham in a stable; there was the big-game hunter Denys Finch Hatton; and there was Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, third in line to the throne.
“Markham first met the prince in 1928 when he and his brother, Edward, Prince of Wales, came to Kenya on a safari. It mattered to Markham neither that she was married at the time to Mansfield Markham, nor that she was four months pregnant with his son. In 1929 she gave birth in London to a boy and a few weeks later began visiting the prince at Buckingham Palace.
“Eventually, the Queen found out about the affair and demanded it end. Markham was given an annuity of £15,000 on condition she leave England at once. She handed her son into the care of her parents-in-law and returned to Kenya. Back in Africa, she sought new ways to be entertained, and found it at the controls of an aircraft.”
She initially worked as a bush pilot, spotting animals from the air and signalling their locations to safari groups on the ground, before making her record-breaking flight
Her many adventures were recorded in the 1942 memoir West with the Night, upon which Ernest Hemingway heaped huge praise. Despite this, Markham was reported to be living in poverty until the rediscovery of the book in 1982. The success of a subsequent reissue allowed her to live her final few years in relative comfort.


- Can you buy a copy of Mein Kampf?
- What is Hitler’s signature worth?
- What is the most banned book in America?
- Does Mein Kampf remain a dangerous book?
- How many pages is Mein Kampf?
- Who owns the royalties to Mein Kampf?
- What countries is Mein Kampf banned in?
- What is the best translation of Mein Kampf?
- Is Mein Kampf banned in America?
- What was Hitler’s net worth?
- Is Mein Kampf boring?
- Is Mein Kampf banned in Germany?
- What is Kampf in English?
- Can you sell Mein Kampf on eBay?
- Does Barnes and Noble sell Mein Kampf?
- How much is an original copy of Mein Kampf worth?
- Is there an English version of Mein Kampf?
- What is the most banned book?
Can you buy a copy of Mein Kampf?
In March 2020 Amazon banned sales of new and second-hand copies of Mein Kampf, and several other Nazi publications, on its platform.
The book remains available on Barnes and Noble’s website.
It is also available in various languages, including German, at the Internet Archive..
What is Hitler’s signature worth?
Greeting cards with Hitler’s signature, written or stamped, have been offered for sale on the Internet for a few thousand dollars to up to about $20,000. An autographed copy of Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf” made headlines in 2014 when it sold at auction for $64,850.
What is the most banned book in America?
Of the 483 books challenged or banned in 2018, the Top 11 Most Challenged Books are:Skippyjon Jones series written and illustrated by Judy Schachner. … The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. … This Day in June by Gayle E. … Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan.More items…
Does Mein Kampf remain a dangerous book?
According to the producer of Publish or Burn, which was first broadcast in January 2015, it remains a dangerous text.
How many pages is Mein Kampf?
720Mein Kampf/Page count
Who owns the royalties to Mein Kampf?
Houghton MifflinIn America, royalties to Mein Kampf are collected by Houghton Mifflin, who bought the rights to the book from Hitler’s publisher in 1933.
What countries is Mein Kampf banned in?
Where has Mein Kampf been banned? Mein Kampf has mostly been banned in Germany and other countries that were involved in the Axis alliance during World War II. Right now, the current publication and rights of the book belong in Bavaria until 2015.
What is the best translation of Mein Kampf?
The official (NS) translation is “My Struggle” however… Michael Ford and James Murphy are the most popular translations at the time of writing. However, as long as the writing is not cut/edited, but is understandable in English, it is a good translation.
Is Mein Kampf banned in America?
In the United States, Mein Kampf has never been prohibited, though some Jewish organizations opposed the sale of the book in 1933, at a time when populist demagogues were spreading their vitriolic anti-Semitism. Mein Kampf was not even banned when the United States went to war against Nazi Germany.
What was Hitler’s net worth?
Adolf Hitler net worth: Adolf Hitler was a German politician who had a net worth equal to $150 million at the peak of his power (adjusting for inflation).
Is Mein Kampf boring?
In addition to being filled with a lot of appalling racist claptrap, Mein Kampf is an awful book-turgid, tedious, badly organized, and mostly boring.
Is Mein Kampf banned in Germany?
Printing and public distribution of Hitler’s book Mein Kampf was not allowed by the copyright holder, the state of Bavaria, which acquired the copyright after Hitler’s death in 1945 since it was the location of his official residence. The copyright expired at the end of 2015.
What is Kampf in English?
Etymology. From Middle High German kampf, from Old High German kampf, from Latin campus. The word originally means “field”, but early on developed the sense “fight” in High German. This is a denotation of the event by the location where it takes place. Cognate to Old English camp.
Can you sell Mein Kampf on eBay?
The same email from eBay said that the only editions of Mein Kampf that are allowed are critically annotated, which turned out being what I was selling. … I called eBay and they said no editions are allowed and you’re still banned. The email explicitly said annotated versions are allowed.
Does Barnes and Noble sell Mein Kampf?
Mein Kampf: The Original, Accurate, and Complete English translation by Adolf Hitler, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®
How much is an original copy of Mein Kampf worth?
Gottleib predicted that this rare copy could exceed $100,000. But when the hammer fell in November 2014, the book sold for $28,400 with no buyer’s premium. Signed copies of Mein Kampf with authenticated autographs have sold for $65,000–70,000 in the past, but those were not personally owned by Hitler like this one was.
Is there an English version of Mein Kampf?
By the time he had completed his first year as the chancellor of the Germany Mein Kampf had became an essential component of German social life….Bibliographic information.TitleMein Kampf Translated: English VersionPublisherCreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016ISBN1535574135, 97815355741365 more rows
What is the most banned book?
Scary Stores to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz and its two sequels are far and away the most banned books in history, with complaints from hundreds of school districts since the series premiered in 1981, its critics citing violence, inappropriate content, and Satansim.


Meer Kurdi (Amir Fehri) visited the headquarter of the Barzani Charity Foundation (BCF) and met the head of the BCF, Musa Ahmad, discussed opening a European school in Domiz camp.
Amir Fehri is a 15-year-old genius writer. He has published 4 books which have earned, in 2 years, 25 international literary awards. Currently, Amir is preparing himself, as the youngest student, to study in medical faculty in France.
Meer was born in the city of Sousse in Tunis, in a Kurdish mother and a Tunisian father, this young 15-year-old prodigy, with multiple cultures, after a tortuous piece of a childhood spent in Tunisia where he has amassed many painful experiences of school change, because of his advanced cognitive skills. His family decided to go to France and start a new life. Later, Meer published a book in French entitled “Stories of Meer”, the French President Manuel Macron, sent him a letter of appreciation and encouraged him to continue writing.
Three of his books have been published by the French publishers, the recent one entitled ”Harassment”. This moving novel tells the story of Alex, a precocious boy who was a victim, during his schooling in Tunisia, of harassment by his classmates who misunderstood the kid’s talent.
Meer participated in various activities regarding desperate children, refugees, and victims of violence. He helped children across the world by conducting various projects through international communities.
Meer discussed many issues with the BCF to help the refugees living in the Kurdistan Region. In addition, the head of BCF awarded Ameer for this humanitarian works.


Dr. Patricia Quinn is a developmental pediatrician in
Washington, D.C.. A graduate of the Georgetown University
Medical School, she specializes in child development and psychopharmacology.
Dr. Quinn has worked for over 40 years in the areas of ADHD and learning disabilities. She gives workshops nationwide
and has appeared on Lifetime TV's New Attitudes, the
PBS show, To the Contrary, and recently on Good
Morning America discussing the issue of girls and women
with ADD. Dr. Quinn appeared in the video aired on PBS titled,
OUTSIDE IN: A Look at Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder.
She also produced and appears in another well-received video,
ADD: Transition to College - Passport to Success for
the National Attention Deficit Disorder Association. In 2000, Dr. Quinn received the CHADD Hall of Fame Award for her outstanding service to the field of ADHD.
Dr. Quinn is the author of several books on ADHD.
These include the best-selling book, Putting on the Brakes:
A Young People's Guide to Understanding Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder for children in the 8 to 12 year
old group, the companion workbook, The "Putting on
the Brakes" Activity Book for Young People with ADD,
and The Best of Brakes Activity Book. She is also author
of ADD and the College Student: THe Ultimate Guide to Your Most Urgent Questions.
For the last several decades, Dr. Quinn has devoted her attention professionally to the issues confronting girls and women with ADHD. In 1997, she co-founded and is was the director of the Center for Girls and Women with ADHD in Washington, D.C. and since that time has written several books on this topic. Her 1999 book, Understanding Girls with ADHD, was groundbreaking in its presentation of this population and the second edition (updated and revised version) of this book has just been released in 2015. Her other book, on this topic, Attention Girls! A Guide to Learn All about Your ADHD, is the only book for girls aged 8 to 12 years who have ADHD and has won two awards, Honors Award from The National Parenting Publications of America (NAPPA) and a Gold Medal in the Children’s Moonbeam Awards from the Independent Publishers Association. Her other books in this field include, Understanding Women with ADHD and Gender Issues and ADHD: Research, Diagnosis and Treatment, co-authored with Dr. Kathleen Nadeau are now out of print..
Dr. Quinn lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband. She has four children and nine grandchildren.
She may be contacted
by email at email@example.com.
All of her books may be
ordered on this website www.addvance.com.
Copyright 2015 by ADDvance.com. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Useful Web Links
The NHD web site (http://www.nationalhistoryday.org) contains a wealth of information for students, teachers, and parents about the program, conducting research, creating entries, and competing successfully. A few pages that you will find very useful are listed below.
- NHD Contest Rule Book
Download a free copy of the Rule Book.
- Spanish-language version of Rule Book
- "Taking a Stand in History" Theme Book
Download a free copy of the Theme Book.
- Examples of student projects
- Getting started
- Creating an entry
- Steps of historical research
- Frequently asked questions about creating an entry
- Tips for conducting research
- Website category information
- The Classroom Connection
- Educational supplies available from NHD


Anyone who knows me well knows I love to read. Though I normally opt for more of the teen drama (it’s really a guilty pleasure. I mean, HELLO Sarah Dessen!), this is a fashion blog, so I now present to you four books about fashion you shouldn’t skip.
1. How to Walk in High Heels by Camilla Morton
(My copy’s a little tattered, it’s just so useful!)
Not completely about fashion, but I had to include this. Any girl that wants to learn how to do anything the girliest and most stylish way should read this book. How to walk in high heels? Check. How to climb the career ladder? Check. How to Buy a house? Check. Literally anything you have a question about, this book could probably answer. Like how else do you think I learned how to dress to meet the Queen of England? (Still waiting for my invite to a garden party at Buckingham Palace btw)
2. The One Hundred by Nina Garcia (yes, that Nina Garcia, from Project Runway)
With cute little illustrations, explanations on how to wear/use, and organized alphabetically so any OCD person could be happy, Nina Garcia describes the 100 things every girl should have in her wardrobe. She talks about everything from the A-Line dress to Zippered hoodies. Currently have 55/100, though I will never have all 100 because you will never see me buy cowboy boots. Sorry.
3. A Matter of Style by Paola Saltari
The explanation under the title reads, “intimate portraits of 10 women who changed fashion.” And that’s really all you need to know. Photos and brief quotes/captions of Coco Chanel, Katharine Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Jacqueline Kennedy, Brigitte Bardot, Mary Quant, Twiggy, and Lady Diana. If you want to be a fashion icon, you have to know who came before you.
4. Queen of Babble by Meg Cabot
(Photo via google images, I read this on my kindle so I couldn’t take a picture of the cover)
The only book on this list that is actually fiction, and it is one that shouldn’t be missed. It’s the story of Lizzie, a recent college graduate who goes to London to visit her boyfriend. Drama ensues when she finds out he is not the man she thought he was, and she takes off for France to visit her friend and ultimately figure out what she wants to do with her life. So why is this book on the list? Lizzie is a History of Fashion major, and certainly has a lot to say about what everyone is wearing, including herself, throughout the story. Between each chapter is a snippet of her senior thesis where she explores and explains fashion history going back to cavemen, and there’s always a punch line or two. Lizzie loves refurbishing vintage clothing, and certainly has her own style, which is why we should all aspire to be a little more like her.
There are so many more books about fashion, and this is barely scraping the surface of all of the literature available for fashion lovers like myself, and I encourage you to read these books as well as other books you may find on the subject. Reading opens your mind to new ideas, and could allow you to become the fashion icon you were meant to be, and that is why reading is a girl’s best friend.


In mid 2011, Google launched a service allowing users to upload their music library to the cloud which they could then stream from anywhere on any device that supported Google Music. The process of uploading one’s files to the cloud was an arduous one, especially considering Google allowed users to upload up to 20,000 songs.
Google is now offering the same service, but rather than users uploading their entire libraries to the cloud, their libraries will be scanned and almost instantly matched song for song online. If a library contains any songs that are not within Google’s library, users are still given the option to upload the missing content.
The only problem this may present is if some users have songs with particularly high frame rates. It is difficult to say at this point whether or not Google will match that or not, all signs however point to no. Amazon and Apple both offer similar services but for $25 a year with up to 250,000 and 25,000 songs respectively. Will Google’s new strategy be enough to pull users from Amazon and Apple’s streaming services, and might it also be enough to hedge against other streaming services like Rdio and Spotify?


Retired Fire Chief Charlie Maurais gifts his historic collection to the town
Even as a kid, retired Fire Chief Charlie Maurais was a collector of firefighter memorabilia and one of his main objectives has been to bring Marblehead history home. During a recent Board of Selectmen meeting Maurais did just that when he donated much of his collection, three containers and several scrapbooks, to the town.
“I didn’t want to keep it,” Maurais said. “The town has been very good to me. This belongs to the town.”
Over the years Maurais has amassed a collection that includes a large framed resolution of Nathaniel High, chief engineer for the Marblehead Fire Department in 1909, as well as belts and helmets, one dating back 150 years.
“This used to be in my office,” he said, hefting the picture of High.
Maurais said he haunted auctions and flea markets and in later years the Internet looking specifically for items connected to the Marblehead Fire Department. Maurais said as people traveling the same circuits got to know him, they would call if they found something they thought would interest him.
Showing off the collection to board members as well as more than a dozen firefighters who attended the meeting to support the former chief, Maurais handed around firefighter belts that bore the names of firefighters long gone, helmets and even a bucket.
“The buckets were for fighting fires by hand … every one had two of these in the house,” he said.
Maurais admitted he kept some items that were personal to him and his kids chose some they liked, but what he turned over to the town includes:
Framed resolution of Nathaniel High, chief engineer for the Marblehead Fire Department, 1909
Two Marblehead Fire Department buckets (Woodfin)
Miscellaneous papers that include assorted association tickets, invitations and programs of various Marblehead Fire Association events; photos of the fire stations and men in uniforms, parades, apparatus and delivery photos and a box of old Marblehead photos, 13 negatives, two Marblehead Messenger newspapers circa 1877, nine Marblehead Messengers circa 1883, one each from 1885 and 1929 and one Marblehead Mirror newspaper circa 1863.
“There is a lot of history here,” said Selectman Moses Grader.
“It’s a treasure trove,” agreed his colleague Jackie Belf-Becker.
Historical Commission Chairman Chris Johnston was on hand to accept the items on behalf of the town.
“This is a great gift to the town,” he said.
Johnston said current Fire Chief Jason Gilliland told him he had some items but he had no idea the depth of the donation.
Selectman Harry Christensen said Maurais has been a firefighter his whole life, from the day he could pedal his toy fire engine to being a Spark, a volunteer firefighter, while in high school.
“He’s always been a firefighter and what he brought to the town today is a gift and a treasure,” Christensen said. “Thank you Charlie so much, from me personally and from the board.”


Generating the Swagger Documentation can be performed in multiple ways.
Depending on your workflow the method you choose may vary. Generally you’ll want to generate the documentation on-the-fly in development and generate static json files in production.
The CLI will create json files for each resource discovered in your project. To make them accessable to swagger-ui they must be placed onto an webserver.
php swagger.phar /projects/my_project -o /var/html/swagger-docs
Check the help for additional options.
php swagger.phar --help
The following example will generate and output the documentation of the “/pet” resource.
<?php use Swagger\Swagger; $swagger = new Swagger('/projects/my_project'); header('Content-Type: application/json'); echo $swagger->getResource('/pet', array('output' => 'json'));


Scrolling through the list of books I want to read is comparable to taking a 24 hour trip around the world. The titles, summaries, all become a blur. Especially with days upon unending days of socially distancing from the myriad of people and activities I love. Staying apart has also changed my story, since the making of stories is now focused on the details, a close reading and living concentration. I stopped scrolling and contemplated, “What do I want to read, that I’ve wanted to read but haven’t had the opportunity to delve into, uninterrupted?” James Joyce’s, Ulysses surfaced. I’ve been intimidated by this book, and after reading reviews my trepidation was confirmed. The adventurous spirit that has been quarantined for several months spoke up, “What better time to explore this literary giant than now?” I downloaded the book and began the journey.
Since I had searched for and about the book on the internet I received articles about Ulysses. I’m not sure yet if the articles are helpful. How much of the story, symbolism and messages am I missing? Do I need a support group to read this famous masterpiece? As a recovering Catholic I was able to pick up on some of the references to ritual and guilt. Page after page I struggled to stay focused, to comprehend this ongoing work. Each time I read I fought with the decision to continue or stop. The question shifted, and I asked myself “What do I need to be able to read this book?” Yes, I had already explored Why I wanted to read this book. Irish heritage, literary passion, historical perspective, all encouraged me to continue reading. I decided a companion book would be helpful. I would read Ulysses a little at a time, since after about 10 pages I found myself wanting to do anything, including reading the numbers, and the debate about the numbers of Covid-19 cases, test results and deaths, rather than read another stream of consciousness. To feed my literary attention I scrolled through my list of books and stopped at Untamed, by Glennon Doyle. I don’t plan on comparing the two literary styles or subject matter. I simply hope they balance out my desire to read a difficult yet notable book with one that promises to feed my soul. Most likely, I will learn more than I ever thought I would want to know about Ulysses. I’ve already read more about Ulysses than I’ve actually read of the book.
Committing to this literary work I am uncertain if learning about or studying the references woven into the book are helpful or distracting. Is it possible to read anything without some background knowledge to recognize the key elements? Knowing the book was banned definitely makes it more appealing for me. I admit to being a research nerd, and Ulysses is definitely offering a strong reason to gather enough information for a dissertation. The research topic “Dissertations relating to James Joyce’s Ulysses” came up with 802,000 results. As more information is gathered, the one question I cannot research, only experience, is “Am I enjoying reading Ulysses?” It’s possible I’ll find insight while exploring:
“The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.” James Joyce, Ulysses


View source for History of the Dictionary ← History of the Dictionary You need to login or register to edit this page. The action you have requested is limited to users in the group: Users. You can view and copy the source of this page: <big>'''Beginnings'''</big> Rather than “documenting” the Balinese language at a particular point in time, BASAbali (a collaboration of Bali's Udayana University, the Balinese Governor's Language Board, the Indonesian Language Agency for the Province of Bali (Balai Bahasa), the ARMA Museum, and scholars and individuals from around the world who have an interest in the Balinese language and culture) launched this wiki dictionary in 2014 to actively involve the public in developing an online accessible resource of how the Balinese language has been and is actually used today using multimedia to provide audiovisual cues and contextualization. We started the wiki dictionary with a donation of Fred Eiseman's Balinese-English and English-Balinese dictionaries. We thank I Wayan Suarnaya ("Linud") for this donation along with Fred Eiseman's estate. Hard copies of Fred's dictionary are available at Ganesha Bookstore in Bali and from inter-library loan through Cornell University in the U.S. [http://basabali.org/projects/balinese-indonesian-english-wiki-reference-dictionary/editors-for-the-english-language-sections-of-the-wiki-reference-dictionary/ Lexicographers, linguists, and Bali lovers] from all over the world heard our call and [http://basabali.org/about/advisors/ advised], edited, and helped structure the wiki. A Kickstarter campaign brought many more to [http://basabali.org/donations-to-and-from/donations/ support] and enhance the wiki. Andru Vallence of Tiny Mighty, who lives in a remote part of Spain, designed the wiki structure and got us thinking systematically about how to create a multimedia wiki dictionary that is both a Balinese-Balinese reference dictionary (able to accommodate several of the complex registers of Balinese) and a Balinese-English-Indonesian translation dictionary (with multiple interfaces). Yaron Koren of WikiWorks is taking us to the next level by modifying the wiki to include photographs, encyclopedic descriptions, and more nuanced register searches and entry. As the public adds words, examples, and videos to the wiki, [http://basabali.org/about/our-team-2/ a team of Balinese linguists] ensures [http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/10/06/basabali-launches-digital-dictionary-save-balinese-language.html its integrity]. In February of 2015, the wiki was designated as Semantic MediaWiki’s [https://www.semanticmediawiki.org/wiki/Wiki_of_the_Month wiki of the month]. The public has contributed over 1,200 videos and thousands of sample sentences. Over 160,000 users have visited the wiki from all over the world. We can't possibly thank everyone who has contributed to the wiki but you will see their names when you search for words. Today, the wiki relies on public contributions. We also have support from Cornell University's Southeast Asian Program, the Kamanya Foundation, the Indonesian Embassy in Washington, DC and others. The wiki is managed by a fabulous group of [http://basabali.org/main/wp-admin/post.php?post=2601&action=edit&lang=en Balinese scholars and editors.] <big>'''Medicinal plant focus'''</big> With seed funding from Cornell University, the Educational and Cultural Attache of the Indonesian Embassy in Washington DC, and the Kamanya Foundation, we started an initiative to focus on Balinese medicinal plants. In this initiative, Balinese and international linguists, ethnobotanists, videographers, and photographers are helping to bring the knowledge of Balinese medicinal plants to life by drawing on traditional texts and modern resources including engaging the local community’s knowledge of how these plants are being used today. Here is [[Kayu_manis|an example]]. The wiki can be expanded to other subject areas, combining both a grassroots and an international orientation. In addition to the [http://basabali.org/about/our-team-2/ regular wiki team], this group of wonderful [http://basabali.org/about/our-team-2/medicinal-plant-team/ language ambassadors] is working on the medicinal plant initiative. We are especially grateful to contributions of plant photos from [http://www.denieksukarya.com/ Deniek G. Sukarya], from his and Karin Sukarya's "[https://www.tokopedia.com/sukarya 3.500 Plant Species of the Botanic Gardens of Indonesia]" and from their work with the Eka Karya Bali Botanic Gardens. Return to History of the Dictionary. Retrieved from "http://dictionary.basabali.org/History_of_the_Dictionary"


A free basic education of fifteen years is guaranteed by the constitution.
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Based on the setting, the pharmacy is classified as a community or institutional pharmacy. Providing direct patient care in the community of institutional pharmacies are considered clinical pharmacy.


Craft Emergency Relief Fund
CERF provides immediate support to professional crafts-people suffering career-threatening emergencies, enriching the cultural and economic vitality of communities in the United States.
Studio Protector – Artist Guide for Emergencies
The Studio Protector Online Guide is the source for emergency preparedness and recovery information for artists. Which can make a huge difference in reducing loss and in the time it takes to rebound from a setback.
Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts
Established in 1969, New York City-based Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts works to help the arts community understand and deal with its legal problems. The VLANY Web site provides information on the group’s educational and advocacy work.
Resources for Legal and Professional Advice
This website by Harriete Estel Berman is a collection “of information that list of the best books, audio and online resources currently available for artists and craft persons”.


Teaching Manual for Celebrations of a Nation
Designed for ease of use, the Teaching Manual provides teachers a simple plan for daily course work, study aids, and tools to help guide students toward their own research, which can be so much fun with history. The PDF includes extensive Online Resource Links. By studying our first holidays, students will find they have wonderful stories to share with family and friends.
Chapter–by–Chapter Questions and Answers cover U.S. History Early Colonial Period through the Civil War. The Q&A sections provide daily plans and tests designed to encourage students, with some being easy and some challenging for more advanced students. All will help develop an admiration and respect for those who dared to dream of a nation based on equality and freedom, and who sacrificed so much to create and secure the United States of America.
With the engaging storytelling of Celebrations of a Nation, the poignant quotes from primary sources and the reproductions of paintings of events, students will feel as if they are there — braving the Atlantic on the Mayflower and in Independence Hall during the debates on writing our Constitution. With the aid of this step-by-step teachers guide, the Historical Maps, Chronology of Events, List of Presidents, Q&As, and additional tools to explore these popular National holidays we all enjoy, our Christian heritage will come alive.


Colleges and employers continue to grapple with the fact that students in the United States are not prepared for the demands of higher education and the workforce. Students scramble to figure out where to go to school, how to get in, what to study, and how to pay for their education, one of the most important investments of their life. Education is a complex but highly valued system. It’s a pathway to opportunities in life and a cornerstone of economic prosperity, but far too many students get lost along the way. What can students do to make sure they get the most out of their education? That’s the question I seek to answer in my book, 10 Things I Wish I Knew in High School.
Here are a couple of reviews on the book:
This was a fantastic book! It gave an incredible amount of information for students to think about without being over-whelming, condescending, or boring. This book contained ten different chapters on things that young adults should really take into account when trying to decide what they want for their future. The author, Sarah Galimore, not only tells her readers what to consider, but highly encourages them to be their own best advocate. While school everywhere strive to graduate highly successful young adults, that doesn’t always happen. This is why it is so important for a young person to take responsibility for the choices that are made. I would highly encourage parents to purchase this book for their children, especially those in middle school and high school. It really does give great insight into what’s really important with regard to a person’s success in our world. I can’t wait to share it with my teenage daughter!
This is a book that every kid going into high school or even college should read. It is full of personal insight and sourced statistics about just about everything you can possibly think of when it comes to your education. There is insight from the friends you make in school to the way you approach learning to whether or not college is right for you. These topics are all so important for a young student to think about in order for them to take better hold of their life. It is also written in a down-to-earth and easily accessible way that draws you in, especially with the personal stories which I think young people can really appreciate. If you know a kid about to embark into high school I definitely recommend getting this book for them; it could help to better shape their future.
So as noted above, in my unfiltered, non-academic, and straight to the point personal essay, students are challenged to ask tough questions about their education and personal goals. They are provided insights based on the experiences of a young professional, yours truly!, who has been where they are, and has a few thoughts on how to get them where they want to be. The feedback received thus far is encouraging and if I can positively impact even just a few students, it was worth the effort to self-publish the book. 😉