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Adrienne Michetti

Digital Web Magazine - The Principles of Design - 11 views

  • concepts that can that make any project stronger without interfering in the more technical considerations later on
  • one of many disciplines within the larger field of design
  • a discipline within the field of art
  • ...37 more annotations...
  • the basic tenets of design into two categories: principles and elements
  • the principles of design are the overarching truths of the profession
  • the elements of design are the components of design themselves, the objects to be arranged.
  • principles
  • Balance Rhythm Proportion Dominance Unity
  • Balance is an equilibrium
  • visual weight within a composition
  • Symmetrical balance
  • When symmetry occurs with similar, but not identical, forms it is called approximate symmetry
  • Symmetrical balance is also known as formal balance.
  • ntral axis.
  • Asymmetrical balance
  • tend to have a greater sense of visual tension. Asymmetrical balance is also known as informal balance.
  • Rhythm is the repetition or alternation of elements
  • Regular
  • Flowing
  • Progressive
  • three stages of dominance
  • Proportion is the comparison of dimensions or distribution of forms.
  • Dominance relates to varying degrees of emphasis in design
  • visual weight
  • relationship in scale between one element and another,
  • Dominant
  • Sub-dominant
  • Subordinate
  • unity describes the relationship between the individual parts and the whole of a composition
  • Gestalt theories of visual perception and psychology, specifically those dealing with how the human brain organizes visual information into categories, or groups
  • Closure is the idea that the brain tends to fill in missing information when it perceives an object is missing some of its pieces.
  • Continuance is the idea that once you begin looking in one direction, you will continue to do so until something more significant catches your attention
  • Items of similar size, shape and color tend to be grouped together by the brain, and a semantic relationship between the items is formed.
  • In addition, items in close proximity to or aligned with one another tend to be grouped in a similar way.
  • Contrast addresses the notion of dynamic tensionÔthe degree of conflict that exists within a given design between the visual elements in the composition.
  • The objects in the environment represent the positive space, and the environment itself is the negative space.
  • The rule of thirds is a compositional tool that makes use of the notion that the most interesting compositions are those in which the primary element is off center.
  • The visual center of any page is just slightly above and to the right of the actual (mathematical) center.
  • sometimes referred to as museum height.
  • The principles of design are the guiding truths of our profession, the basic concepts of balance, rhythm, proportion, dominance and unity. Successful use of these core ideas insures a solid foundation upon which any design can thrive.
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    These principles of design can be applied to almost anything, I believe.
Adrienne Michetti

Why Women Still Can't Have It All - www.theatlantic.com - Readability - 7 views

  • Just about all of the women in that room planned to combine careers and family in some way. But almost all assumed and accepted that they would have to make compromises that the men in their lives were far less likely to have to make.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      and this is what bothers me. SO MUCH.
  • when many members of the younger generation have stopped listening, on the grounds that glibly repeating “you can have it all” is simply airbrushing reality, it is time to talk.
  • I still strongly believe that women can “have it all” (and that men can too). I believe that we can “have it all at the same time.” But not today, not with the way America’s economy and society are currently structured. My experiences over the past three years have forced me to confront a number of uncomfortable facts that need to be widely acknowledged—and quickly changed.
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  • I had the ability to set my own schedule most of the time. I could be with my kids when I needed to be, and still get the work done.
  • the minute I found myself in a job that is typical for the vast majority of working women (and men), working long hours on someone else’s schedule, I could no longer be both the parent and the professional I wanted to be
  • having it all, at least for me, depended almost entirely on what type of job I had.
  • having it all was not possible in many types of jobs, including high government office—at least not for very long.
  • “Having control over your schedule is the only way that women who want to have a career and a family can make it work.”
  • Yet the decision to step down from a position of power—to value family over professional advancement, even for a time—is directly at odds with the prevailing social pressures on career professionals in the United States.
  • “leaving to spend time with your family” is a euphemism for being fired.
  • Think about what this “standard Washington excuse” implies: it is so unthinkable that an official would actually step down to spend time with his or her family that this must be a cover for something else.
  • it cannot change unless top women speak out.
  • Both were very clear that they did not want that life, but could not figure out how to combine professional success and satisfaction with a real commitment to family.
  • many of us are also reinforcing a falsehood: that “having it all” is, more than anything, a function of personal determination.
  • there has been very little honest discussion among women of our age about the real barriers and flaws that still exist in the system despite the opportunities we inherited.
  • But we have choices about the type and tempo of the work we do. We are the women who could be leading, and who should be equally represented in the leadership ranks.
  • women are less happy today than their predecessors were in 1972, both in absolute terms and relative to men.
  • The best hope for improving the lot of all women, and for closing what Wolfers and Stevenson call a “new gender gap”—measured by well-being rather than wages—is to close the leadership gap:
  • Only when women wield power in sufficient numbers will we create a society that genuinely works for all women. That will be a society that works for everyone.
  • We must clear them out of the way to make room for a more honest and productive discussion about real solutions to the problems faced by professional women.
  • These women cannot possibly be the standard against which even very talented professional women should measure themselves. Such a standard sets up most women for a sense of failure
  • A simple measure is how many women in top positions have children compared with their male colleagues.
  • Every male Supreme Court justice has a family. Two of the three female justices are single with no children.
  • women hold fewer than 30 percent of the senior foreign-policy positions in each of these institutions.
  • “You know what would help the vast majority of women with work/family balance? MAKE SCHOOL SCHEDULES MATCH WORK SCHEDULES.” The present system, she noted, is based on a society that no longer exists—one in which farming was a major occupation and stay-at-home moms were the norm. Yet the system hasn’t changed.
  • “Inflexible schedules, unrelenting travel, and constant pressure to be in the office are common features of these jobs.”
  • I would hope to see commencement speeches that finger America’s social and business policies, rather than women’s level of ambition, in explaining the dearth of women at the top. But changing these policies requires much more than speeches. It means fighting the mundane battles—every day, every year—in individual workplaces, in legislatures, and in the media.
  • assumes that most women will feel as comfortable as men do about being away from their children, as long as their partner is home with them. In my experience, that is simply not the case.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      This is fascinating. Really. 
  • I do not believe fathers love their children any less than mothers do, but men do seem more likely to choose their job at a cost to their family, while women seem more likely to choose their family at a cost to their job.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      This. This is SO TRUE. I think this is the same.
  • To many men, however, the choice to spend more time with their children, instead of working long hours on issues that affect many lives, seems selfish.
  • It is not clear to me that this ethical framework makes sense for society. Why should we want leaders who fall short on personal responsibilities?
  • Regardless, it is clear which set of choices society values more today. Workers who put their careers first are typically rewarded; workers who choose their families are overlooked, disbelieved, or accused of unprofessionalism.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      This disconnect has ALWAYS bothered me. SO MUCH.
  • having a supportive mate may well be a necessary condition if women are to have it all, but it is not sufficient
  • Ultimately, it is society that must change, coming to value choices to put family ahead of work just as much as those to put work ahead of family. If we really valued those choices, we would value the people who make them; if we valued the people who make them, we would do everything possible to hire and retain them; if we did everything possible to allow them to combine work and family equally over time, then the choices would get a lot easier.
  • Given the way our work culture is oriented today, I recommend establishing yourself in your career first but still trying to have kids before you are 35—or else freeze your eggs, whether you are married or not.
  • But the truth is, neither sequence is optimal, and both involve trade-offs that men do not have to make.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      exactly this -- men do not have to make this choice. Thus, it will always be unequal.
  • You should be able to have a family if you want one—however and whenever your life circumstances allow—and still have the career you desire.
  • If more women could strike this balance, more women would reach leadership positions. And if more women were in leadership positions, they could make it easier for more women to stay in the workforce. The rest of this essay details how.
  • I have to admit that my assumption that I would stay late made me much less efficient over the course of the day than I might have been, and certainly less so than some of my colleagues, who managed to get the same amount of work done and go home at a decent hour.
  • Still, armed with e-mail, instant messaging, phones, and videoconferencing technology, we should be able to move to a culture where the office is a base of operations more than the required locus of work.
  • Being able to work from home—in the evening after children are put to bed, or during their sick days or snow days, and at least some of the time on weekends—can be the key, for mothers, to carrying your full load versus letting a team down at crucial moments.
  • Changes in default office rules should not advantage parents over other workers; indeed, done right, they can improve relations among co-workers by raising their awareness of each other’s circumstances and instilling a sense of fairness.
  • The policy was shaped by the belief that giving women “special treatment” can “backfire if the broader norms shaping the behavior of all employees do not change.”
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      This is so progressive.
  • Our assumptions are just that: things we believe that are not necessarily so. Yet what we assume has an enormous impact on our perceptions and responses. Fortunately, changing our assumptions is up to us.
  • One of the best ways to move social norms in this direction is to choose and celebrate different role models.
  • If we didn’t start to learn how to integrate our personal, social, and professional lives, we were about five years away from morphing into the angry woman on the other side of a mahogany desk who questions her staff’s work ethic after standard 12-hour workdays, before heading home to eat moo shoo pork in her lonely apartment.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      UGH.
  • Women have contributed to the fetish of the one-dimensional life, albeit by necessity. The pioneer generation of feminists walled off their personal lives from their professional personas to ensure that they could never be discriminated against for a lack of commitment to their work.
  • It seems odd to me to list degrees, awards, positions, and interests and not include the dimension of my life that is most important to me—and takes an enormous amount of my time.
  • when my entire purpose is to make family references routine and normal in professional life.
  • This does not mean that you should insist that your colleagues spend time cooing over pictures of your baby or listening to the prodigious accomplishments of your kindergartner. It does mean that if you are late coming in one week, because it is your turn to drive the kids to school, that you be honest about what you are doing.
  • Seeking out a more balanced life is not a women’s issue; balance would be better for us all.
  • Indeed, the most frequent reaction I get in putting forth these ideas is that when the choice is whether to hire a man who will work whenever and wherever needed, or a woman who needs more flexibility, choosing the man will add more value to the company.
  • In 2011, a study on flexibility in the workplace by Ellen Galinsky, Kelly Sakai, and Tyler Wigton of the Families and Work Institute showed that increased flexibility correlates positively with job engagement, job satisfaction, employee retention, and employee health.
  • Other scholars have concluded that good family policies attract better talent, which in turn raises productivity, but that the policies themselves have no impact on productivity.
  • What is evident, however, is that many firms that recruit and train well-educated professional women are aware that when a woman leaves because of bad work-family balance, they are losing the money and time they invested in her.
  • The answer—already being deployed in different corners of the industry—is a combination of alternative fee structures, virtual firms, women-owned firms, and the outsourcing of discrete legal jobs to other jurisdictions.
  • Women, and Generation X and Y lawyers more generally, are pushing for these changes on the supply side; clients determined to reduce legal fees and increase flexible service are pulling on the demand side. Slowly, change is happening.
  • In trying to address these issues, some firms are finding out that women’s ways of working may just be better ways of working, for employees and clients alike.
  • “We believe that connecting play and imagination may be the single most important step in unleashing the new culture of learning.”
  • “Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will.” Google apparently has taken note.
  • the more often people with different perspectives come together, the more likely creative ideas are to emerge. Giving workers the ability to integrate their non-work lives with their work—whether they spend that time mothering or marathoning—will open the door to a much wider range of influences and ideas.
  • Men have, of course, become much more involved parents over the past couple of decades, and that, too, suggests broad support for big changes in the way we balance work and family.
  • women would do well to frame work-family balance in terms of the broader social and economic issues that affect both women and men.
  • These women are extraordinary role models.
  • Yet I also want a world in which, in Lisa Jackson’s words, “to be a strong woman, you don’t have to give up on the things that define you as a woman.”
  • “Empowering yourself,” Jackson said in her speech at Princeton, “doesn’t have to mean rejecting motherhood, or eliminating the nurturing or feminine aspects of who you are.”
  • But now is the time to revisit the assumption that women must rush to adapt to the “man’s world” that our mothers and mentors warned us about.
  • If women are ever to achieve real equality as leaders, then we have to stop accepting male behavior and male choices as the default and the ideal.
  • We must insist on changing social policies and bending career tracks to accommodate our choices, too. We have the power to do it if we decide to, and we have many men standing beside us.
  • But when we do, we will stop talking about whether women can have it all.
Dave Truss

Weblogg-ed » No, Actually, You're Out of Balance - 14 views

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    But here is the thing: the reality is that most of those folks who are concerned about kids needing balance are out of balance themselves, just in the opposite way. They're not online enough, not reading, writing, participating, connecting and creating in these spaces as much as they need to be to fully understand the implications of these technologies for their own learning and for the kids in their classrooms.
Martin Burrett

Nine ideas that senior school staff can do to truly make a difference to the work life ... - 3 views

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    "what strategies and plans can senior staff follow to ensure that they are truly making a difference to the work-life balance of teaching colleagues? Following a recent #UKEdChat session (click here to view), our community came up with a collection of ideas which you can adapt yourself, or share with the senior leaders in your school to set into motion to help improve the work-life balance of all staff."
C CC

Make 2016 the year you get the 'balance' right….by @FloraBarton - UKEdChat.com - 4 views

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    So, I have been asked by a few people to provide a further update to the 'worklife balance' issue.  As many of you will now know, when I started my first headship (the one I'm currently in) just over two years ago, I started my first Inset day by te…
Martin Burrett

Pareto Knew How To Balance It All by @ArtyTeach79 - 0 views

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    "In an ever demanding world the need to balance school and home life has never been greater. Recently I explored and shared with staff the 80/20 principle."
Martin Burrett

Promise yourself more 'me' time in 3 simple steps - UKEdChat.com - 1 views

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    "Teaching and leading within an educational setting can demand a copious amount of time, and many educators struggle to maintain a healthy work/life balance. In fact, previous research has shown that striving for a positive work/life balance is an unobtainable myth, and with constant mobile notifications, e-mails, along with the never-ending pile of marking and planning that needs doing, how can you stop working when you're off the clock?"
Vicki Davis

Elementary Science Olympiad 2000: ESO in the Classroom - 6 views

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    You can go to this website and find some cool ideas for science competitions. "The Elementary Science Olympiad offers over 80 challenging and motivational events which are balanced among the various science disciplines of life science, earth science, and physical science. These individual and team events also offer a balance among events requiring knowledge of science facts, concepts, processes, skills, and applications. While a number of the events are in the form of a general quiz, the majority provide an element of "hands-on" participation allowing the "active" study of science. The emphasis is on learning, participation, interaction, and having fun."
Vicki Davis

Financial Literary Crisis Threatens the Globe - ABC News - 3 views

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    If you want to help tomorrow be better than today, put financial literacy into your school's program. In fact, I would venture to say that your community will reap the benefits in the years to come as students learn how to manage their money and balance their checkbook. I teach accounting and wish that every student knew how to balance a checkbook. They also need to know the difference between secured and unsecured debt. Spend less than you make, period. "You may not realize it, but these three events are part-and an excellent illustration-of the global financial literacy crisis, one of the overriding problems of the modern financial world."
Vicki Davis

Whither censorship? « What Counts! - 0 views

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    EXcellent reading on digital citizenship and why some parents want to block use at school.
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    Very interesting ponderings from an elementary teacher in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada about the balance and issues that have caused some parents to want to block all "social" tools in school. I think she has very balanced ponderings on this and it is excellent reading.
anonymous

The Schools We Need Presentation - Chris Lehmann - 0 views

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    The Schools We Need Presentation I'm in St. Louis, post presentation, and I'm pretty pleased with how it went. It's not easy for me to figure out how to talk to audiences that aren't made up of educators, because the question is always what is the balance between the universal ideas and the deep entry into pedagogy. Judging from the reaction, folks seemed to think that I struck a good balance today. I had a lot of people come up and tell me that I really challenged them to re-think their ideas about school design, and that's thrilling to me. A few folks asked me about strategies to get educators and facilities folks talking more, which is also really exciting.
Vicki Davis

Email blackout: Victory for workers or last gasp for trade unions? | ExtremeTech - 0 views

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    Volkskwagen agrees to turn of blackberries after hours as part of a union agreement. While I don't know a lot of teachers connected via blackberries,I do personally know the complexities of global collaboration in schools. We must learn to balance work and home and know when to disconnect but then again, a work environment can become so fast paced that everyone seems to expect the others that they should work 24/7. Yet another reason to advocate checking email 2-3 times a day - let everyone know when you will be available and stick to the schedule.
Vicki Davis

Literature and Nonfiction: Common-Core Advocates Strike Back - Curriculum Matters - Edu... - 5 views

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    Nice article at edweek about the informational texts versus great works of literature debate and what Common Core will do to lit. The one important, practical issue that all parties to this discussion MUST recognize - the classroom time is FINITE. Teachers would love to cover EVERYTHING but it just isn't practical. So, if one thing is emphasized over another, it may push something out. Unintended consequences are happening as people "align" their curriculum to common core standards. As all of the pundits and advocates argue this, it would be telling to sit down with an actual aligned curriculum to SEE what happens where the standards meet the lesson plans and what is actually pushed out - until then - it is all, rhetoric. Give us practical application, we're teachers, after all. From the edweek article: "Until recently, the closest we'd come to a major speech on the nonfiction-versus-fiction question was a piece in the Huffington Post by the English/language arts standards' co-authors, David Coleman and Sue Pimentel, insisting that literature "is not being left by the wayside." The message to rally the troops must have gone out, however. Because since the Coleman/Pimentel piece appeared, the common core's defenders have stepped up to counterbalance the literature-pushout crowd. The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation's Kathleen Porter-Magee, for instance, posted a piece arguing that it's a misinterpretation of the standards to say that teachers will have to teach less literature. In a recent email blast, the Foundation for Excellence in Education-led by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, one of the common core's biggest backers-declaimed the "misinformation flying around" about what will happen to literature under the common standards. "Contrary to reports," it said, "classic literature will not be lost with the implementation of the new standards." A glance at the standards' own suggested text lists, it noted, "reveals that the common core recognizes the importance of b
Dave Truss

Finding a Mindful Balance with Technology | The Mindful Classroom - 12 views

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    To argue that technology has a place in mindfulness education may seem ironic, as the two often seem like opposing forces. With that said, technology can also play a very positive role in a child's education and in the development of a more mindful child. Below are just some of the "mindful" uses of technology in the classroom.
Vicki Davis

Income, Parental Education Linked To Pre-School Learning Gaps - 3 views

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    This Huffington Post article summarizing findings from a recent Brookings Institute study showing that parental income and education are more highly linked to a child's preschool success than anything else. It also presents the naysayers making for a balanced overview of this report that has lots of people talking.
Vicki Davis

Bullying is not on the rise and it does not lead to suicide | Poynter. - 10 views

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    Guidance counselors and principals should read this article - not to share and tout as a defense of bullying for there is no defending meanness ever - not among adults and definitely not among children. However, it is time to de-escalate the frantic misreporting and hysteria that some are causing on the topic of bullying and suicide. Suicide is horrible and often the person who commits suicide is bullied -- here's a quote from the article that I thought was telling. This would be worth discussing with those who can maturely see the balance that is called for here and again, not to use it to excuse atrocious behavior. "Reporters are often reacting to other misinformed authorities.  For example, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd explained to reporters that he arrested two girls (one 12, the other 14) in Sedwick's death, after seeing a callous social media post from one of the girls, "We can't leave her out there, who else is she going to torment? Who else is she going to harass? Who is the next person she verbally and mentally abuses and attacks?" While it's a great quote, it implies that this girl has the ability, through random meanness, to inspire others to commit suicide. "Everything we know about unsafe reporting is being done here - describing the method(s), the simplistic explanation (bullying = suicide), the narrative that bullies are the villains and the girl that died, the victim," Wylie Tene, the public relations manager for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, wrote in an email to me. "She (the victim) is almost portrayed as a hero. Her smiling pictures are now juxtaposed with the two girls' mug shots. Her parents are portrayed as doing everything right, and the other girls parents did everything wrong and are part of the problem. This may be all true, and it also may be more complicated.""
Vicki Davis

Campus Weblines: Organizing a Student Newspaper Staff - 5 views

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    The New York Times has a handy guide for organizing a student newspaper staff including the roles and how to balance print and online "voices". I also like the section in the guide "Using the Paper to Enhance the Curriculum."
Felix Gryffeth

Op-Ed Columnist - Race to Sanity - NYTimes.com - 7 views

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    The Obama administration's education policy is a model of balanced governance.
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