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In the beginning of February 2012 the art teacher educators of the Department of Art in Aalto University had visitors from the School of the Arts in Singapore. The small but influential delegation consisted of rector, Mrs. Rebecca Chew, vice rector, Mr. Yap Meen Sheng, and head of the faculty of visual arts, Mr. Tan Wee Lit. The encounter in Helsinki was not the first between our institutions: we had already visited Rebecca and her team in Singapore in 2006, when the operations of the new kind of school were being designed and the present school building was still only a scale model – albeit impressive and meticulously constructed – in the centre of the planning office.
The exact miniature of the present school building is now installed in the school library.
Today the School of the Arts, SOTA for short, is no longer just a vision, mission, and a scale model, but an independent, international pre-tertiary school that offers a connected arts and academic curriculum for youths aged 13-18. It was initiated by the Singapore Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA) with an intention to provide a dynamic learning environment to those who have interest and show early talent in the arts, and to identify and groom future generations of artists and creative professionals to be leaders in all fields, particularly in the arts.
In Rebecca's opinion developing the young school and its practices further requires that outsiders view them. In her cheerful and straightforward manner, she welcomed our teachers and students to visit their school any time, to do a teacher exchange or a teaching practice – "Let's keep it simple". She also invited me to take part in their forthcoming Talent Academy (TA), the selection of new students for the next academic year, as a visiting art pedagogue and a researcher, and I gladly accepted. What a great opportunity to observe how the ideas of art based education or interdisciplinarity, long cherished by the Finnish art educators, were put to practice!
After four and half months I finally arrived to Singapore on June 20th, two days delayed. On the night I came to the Helsinki-Vantaa airport and went to check in, an unpleasant surprise was waiting for me: to be allowed to enter Singapore the passport had to be valid for at least six months but mine was only valid until October. It was not possible to obtain a passport from the airport police, because it was already past office hours. My only option was to take the next flight with seats available, and luckily there was one no more than two days later.
Thus, unfortunately, I missed the first day of the Talent Academy to which I had been invited to partake as an external panelist for the faculty of visual arts. However, despite feeling a bit unprepared, jetlagged, enveloped in hot air, and barely acclimatized when walking the few meters from my hotel to the school across the street and up the steps of the impressive main portal leading into the massive building, I was still able to catch up with the selection process that was already well under way.
The main portal leading into SOTA building
After a warm welcome by Rebecca and Wee Lit, who had visited my university in February, I was shortly informed about some practical issues and introduced to some other teachers and members of the faculty of visual arts. Hearing them talk assured me that at least as far as language was concerned getting around and along in this school – and in the whole nation for that matter – would be a doddle, because everybody here, including the students, spoke English, the main official language of Singapore. I was given a visitor's pass that would allow me to enter the school and use the lift which was meant exclusively for the staff – students had to use the escalators and the staircases – to move between the classrooms and studios distributed in the ten storey building. I was appointed a desk in one of the cubicles in the extensive teachers' office space on the 5th floor, where I could leave my belongings until I would get my own little cubicle. After all that it was time to ascend a few floors with Wee Lit to where the interviews of the applicants to his faculty of visual arts were taking place.
TA – The student admission process
Kids of 11-12 years of age are so sweet all over the world! Most of the 10 girls and 4 boys that I met within the two days of my participation in the interviews seemed very genuine and honest about themselves and their feelings, for instance, towards different school subjects. Some had a clear idea of why they wanted to focus on art and what that would help them to become in future, some just "loved art", had "always loved it". One boy actually wanted to become a pilot, but he had heard that studying art would be good for him, because it would develop both sides of his brain equally.
And indeed, he would need all sides of his brain if he were to be among the 80 students who will start their combined visual arts and academic studies in this school next January. In the Talent Academy students are selected according to their artistic giftedness into one of four faculties, which are dance, music, theatre, and visual arts. Once the applicants are chosen to a specific faculty, they will specialize in the respective art for the rest of their studies in SOTA. However, because the students are expected to graduate in six years with an IB (International Baccalaureate) diploma, it is not enough to be good at your art to be selected, there are also some academic requirements that the applicants must fulfill to be accepted. Thus each of the visual arts selection panels as well as the panels of the other art faculties also had to have a member of a science or a humanities faculty. In my first panel team this member was a mother tongue teacher, and in the second panel a mathematics teacher, both women.
There were four parts in the visual arts entrance exams: (1) a group task with a discussion, (2) a drawing task, (3) a short essay, (4) and an interview. The applicants were also expected to bring along their latest school reports and portfolios assembled of their artwork, which they had to present to the panelists as part of the interview. During two days I got to see parts 3 and 4 of the exam as well as look at the portfolios and even the school reports, which I had hard time understanding since they were marked very differently from what I was used to at home.
This still life made by a girl, depicting a pile of chairs, is an example of the drawing task that kids had to do in the Talent Academy.
The topics of the 300-500 word essays that kids had to write in order to give an idea of their writing skills could be chosen from 3 alternatives. One of them was about where they would like to live, another about the importance of art, and the third was about watching television. Most TV essays stressed the harmfulness of too much telly watching but on the other hand underlined its educational potential. The art essays mainly praised art as being the thing in the world that makes life beautiful and worth living. Writing about "where I'd like to live" was clearly most challenging, because the solutions were quite different, such as a tree house, or a place where there were "intelligent people with leadership abilities".
The portfolios showed a lot of both qualitative and quantitative variation, including gender differences in the more spontaneous work, also evident in the two images shown below. With four boys out of fourteen applicants the gender ratio of children wanting to study visual arts looked slightly better than that in Finland. But apparently even fewer boys applied to dance art, a situation which, in SOTA, was seen more problematic than having less boys than girls in visual arts. One of my (male) fellow panelists told me about a boy from some previous Talent Academy who had been recommended to study dance which would have suited him better than visual arts to which he applied, but as his parents would not allow him to study it, he carried on with visual arts. I got the impression that in Singapore parents may be generally quite conservative in terms of what is allowed for boys and girls, and even the boys in the visual arts audition seemed to underline their masculinity by stressing how they liked depicting certain subjects more than others. One of the four boys had mainly drawn cartoon characters in his sketch book, another boy's favorite subject was weapons, and a third boy showed works where he had gradually turned animals into some kind of robots or transformers and was strictly of the opinion that animals, for instance, are more of a girls' subject.
A spontaneous drawing from a girl's sketchbook
A spontaneous drawing from a boy's portfolio
Some of the children seemed to have had more art instruction or spent more time painting, drawing and working with more varied mediums than others. Some might have had a proficient adult helping them to assemble the array of artwork and coaching them for the interview, others possibly not. But I could not also help noticing that certain themes and types of work recurred in many portfolios. How come they had ended up in so many kids' repertoire? Did these children come from the same primary school? Or were there some particular, well-known tasks that all primary students were supposed to do in visual art, like the one about analyzing or reinterpreting a work of some European impressionist artist such as Van Gogh or Degas?
A painting by a girl exemplifying a reinterpretation of canonic work in western art tradition.
Another re-interpretation of canonic Western art by a girl.
Following my little but curiosity awakening observation, some other questions also came to my mind, such as, who can teach art in primary school? Is art obligatory in all schools? What are the art lessons like in SOTA? After the entrance examinations were finished, Talent Academy posters were cleared, classrooms were organised to make way to business as usual, and the students returned from their four-week holidays, I had a chance to make some more observations and look for information.
MOE, NIE, GEO – The national context
Asking around and searching through the Internet about the teacher qualifications I learnt that there is a teacher-training unit in the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Singapore where primary school teachers and secondary school teachers of sciences or humanities can get their teacher qualifications through undergraduate or postgraduate programs. For instance in SOTA some of the teachers of the 2nd year Integrated arts and most of the teachers who taught art on the levels 1-3 had gone through some line of that education. But I was even more curious to know if pedagogical studies or qualifications are required of the art teachers in the secondary or higher levels in schools – after all, in Finland secondary school art teachers need a master's degree in art education or equivalent. From discussions with the visual art teachers I got the impression that at least in SOTA they were not strictly required – it was enough to be an established artist and have earlier teaching experience – although, on the other hand, SOTA expects all its teachers to take part in various pedagogical courses. The justification for the higher levels not having pedagogically qualified teachers seemed to be that the students are more adult-like and do not need the same kind of strict control as the younger ones. In effect, the concept of pedagogy seemed to be somehow associated with discipline or 'classroom management' as somebody put it.
An Internet search more or less verified what I had been told. According to the very informative Ministry of Education (MOE) Internet pages a Singaporean person needs to have at least a general university degree in education (GEO – General Education Officer) to become a teacher at primary level. But at secondary level you can be enrolled to teach visual arts if
a) you have a degree in Art – which in Singapore usually refers to BA degree –, or
b) you had a Minimum Grade of "C" in Art at 'A' Level, or
c) you have a Professional Art Diploma from LaSalle or NAFA (Nanyan Academy of Fine Arts), the two major high level art institutions in Singapore.
However, after the enrollment teachers may be sent for training at National Institute of Education during which they will be paid a monthly salary.
It is worth noting that there was no compulsory education in Singapore until 2003, when it was implemented. In effect the first Singaporean resident citizens who by law had to enter the national primary school at the age of six and finish it – or else their parents could be fined or even imprisoned – were born between 2nd January 1996 and 1st January 1997. This means that some of the older students I met in SOTA were actually pioneers of the implementation of compulsory education in Singapore! It also means that all students in SOTA – and the students in all other schools beyond primary level for that matter – were there voluntarily. Unlike in the Finnish system, the Singaporean compulsory education does not concern children with special needs, and for the rest only the six-year primary school is compulsory and that only until they turn fifteen. By comparison, in Finland people in age groups 7 to 16 must cover the nine‐year school curriculum and can only be freed from this if ten years have lapsed since entering the education system.
As to the art education in primary school I found that there is a national core curriculum as well as an art syllabus in Singapore, which guides and defines the aims, focus areas and methods of art teaching in the mainstream schools, much the same way as in Finland. Although it does not dictate the exact contents, it seems to me – after seeing the art portfolios during the Talent Academy – that a certain set of artists and styles from Western art history is introduced to the primary students. Even in SOTA the visual arts syllabus I saw contained pretty much the same Europe/USA-centered set that has been taught in Finnish schools until recently. I wondered if this could be because of a national level emphasis on internationality and commerciality. However, as far as I understand, the affiliation to the international IB program in visual arts only requires that students acquaint themselves with various art traditions and that they are also introduced to the art of their own cultures and encouraged to research them.
The literature on a visual arts classroom shelf featuring Western/European artists, art styles and authors.
In fact another noteworthy feature about the Singaporean educational context is its intrinsic multiculturalism and multilingualism. In practice this has lead to the designation of English as the main language of all instruction throughout the Singaporean school system, even though Malay, Mandarin Chinese and Tamil are also official languages. English is the first language learned by half the children by the time they enter pre-school, and by the time they reach primary school nearly all subjects except the official Mother Tongue languages and the literatures of those languages are taught in English. (See e.g. Wikipedia: Education in Singapore; Dixon 2005)
Classroom impressions
I spent most of my second week at SOTA walking around the school premises and popping into the classrooms taking photos, participating in a couple of teacher assemblies, observing some ongoing art lessons, chatting with teachers, and even exchanging a few words with students every now and again. The variety of studio and theory based courses that I could choose to observe, ranging in varying combinations and scope from the first study year to the last, was so impressive that it could make any Finnish visual art teacher envious: Sculpture, Drawing, Ceramics, Theory & History of Art, Integrated Arts, Painting, Drawing & Concept Development, Design Concepts, Theory & Context, Media Arts, Specializing studios in Media Arts/ Design Concepts/ Painting/ Sculpture, Sculpture Workshop, Ceramics Workshop, Painting Studio, Media Arts Lab… The teaching facilities were equally impressive in quantity and scope, especially considering that the maximum size of a teaching unit was 20 students, and it was not uncommon to see that number split in two, each occupying one of the many labs, studios, or classrooms. There were also various sized auditoriums, dance studios, concert halls, exhibition spaces, courtyards, a big library and even an extensive rooftop terrace adorned with tropical trees, bushes, and a magnificent 360-degree view over the city to be used for diverse educational purposes.
The rooftop terrace with 360-degree view over Singapore
One of the several dance studios
One of the spacious inner yards lined with classrooms for various purposes.
The Theory & Context lesson I observed first was about Text & images and Art & context, and it was given by Mr. Tan Wee Lit on Monday afternoon to a group of 4th year students of whom eight boys and eleven girls – which I would consider a rather good gender distribution in any art class – were participating. One of the boys was reading his notes, and four of them had their laptops open in front of them while the teacher started preparing the assignment by playing some Edith Piaf through the loudspeakers: "Padam, padam, padam…" After a few verses he turned the volume down to ask his students what kinds of thoughts the music brought to their minds.
– It sounds like a clip from a musical, said one girl.
– Is it about war? A boy asked.
– Why? Wee Lit asked the boy.
– I don't know why, it just sounds like that to me. Like gun fire.
– It's about love, said Wee Lit. The room was a bit too resonating for me to hear the conversation properly, but the students seemed to agree with their teacher.
As Wee lit told me later, the idea was to share a song in a language foreign to the students, allowing them to interpret its meaning through other means than language or text, such as tone, intonation, pitch, expressions of feelings. This would prepare the students for the sharing of what they would be seeing next. Wee Lit wanted to show them some videos by Matthew Barney, an American artist (and the husband of Björk!) known for his infatuation with Vaseline and his art rich with imagery, projects, objects, and videos. Students were supposed to translate his work to their own drawing and artwork, trying to convey the idea so that it gets to the audience the way they want. All the students listened to the presentation in silence, but when the projector refused to work and Wee Lit went out for a moment to make a phone call (to find an alternative room with Audio Visual facilities that would enable screening), they started chatting with one another. One girl even left her place to look for something and one of the boys stood up. Then Wee Lit returned and wanted to take the group to another classroom to watch the videos. The second space, a little auditorium with tight rows of creaky chairs on ascending floor levels, was even more resonate than the first one. Most of the boys took seats on the second level next to each other, whereas most of the girls lined up in the seats on the top level at the back.
4th year students waiting to start watching an art film in a small auditorium.
The video we watched was one of the many in Mathew Barney's Cremaster-series. It was one of those experimental art films with no clear plot, but a sequence of events and actions that take place in surreal places and are held together mainly by the coherent aesthetics of the set and the characters, the colours, the objects, the visual imagery etc. It portrayed beautiful women making highly exaggerated, awkward, almost symmetrical gestures and strange deeds either dressed as stewardesses or half naked, their body parts well displayed by the artist. Suspecting that this was not what the students would voluntarily watch I observed them, wondering what they thought about it. There was no chatting or movement at all this time, on the contrary: one boy looked very dozy, and another was actually sleeping. The girls in the back row seemed more interested at first, but then I realised that at least two of them were also asleep, and towards the end of the show quite a few of the spectators seemed to have difficulties of maintaining attention and staying awake.
When the lesson ended, ten minutes of the video still remained unwatched. Wee Lit got up and went to the front. He said that there would be more film viewing next time but also encouraged the students to find the videos on the web and watch them by themselves. He asked: "What is cremaster? Anyone?" As nobody answered he explained that it was certain suspensory muscle of the testis. The video had been a study of the sex, although not only that.
Immediately after Theory & Context I had a chance to observe the same group of 4th year students on a two-hour lesson of Drawing & Concept Development, which was normally given by Ms Lydia Wong, but due to her absence was given by her replacement, Mr. John Stewart Jackson. John – a young artist who was originally from Alabama USA and had came to SOTA 5 years ago – who usually taught sculpture to the 5th and 6th year students, told the 4th year group that Ms Wong wanted them to carry on practicing the continual line drawing technique she had previously introduced to them. The assignment she had given for John to deliver demanded "seeking continuation between eye and hand, avoiding adding from imagination". Although (or maybe because?) John was very soft spoken, all the students sat still at their desks, which were organized in a circle around a plastic human skeleton in the middle, and listened attentively when he gave the instructions:
– Make several drawings to show Lydia. When you are finished, stick them on the wall with blu-tack. Draw slowly, don't lift the pencil from the paper. I'll put some of your favorite music on…
After this all students remained silent, and some of them started drawing almost immediately, while others carried on staring at the plastic skeleton that was supposed to be used as the model. In fact it was so quiet that one could hardly have believed that this was a drawing lesson in an art school! Was it because of my presence? All I could hear were the air conditioning and the noises of cars from the busy streets eight or nine floors below. One girl and a couple of boys were listening to music through their headphones, but everybody was concentrating really well. I wondered if they had the same level of motivation and concentration on all hands-on lessons. And were they always able to work without further instructions, without the teacher going around helping individual students?
Continual line drawing requires concentration.
But after a while, when all the students were already well versed into the assignment, John did get up and start checking around the circle of students to see how they were getting on. As the first drawings were gradually blu-tacked on the wall, he estimated them with individual students or little groups, while the rest carried on with their work. He encouraged the students to look at each other's drawings and to go and touch the model to get a tactile idea of its shapes. And, although he had repeatedly insisted from the beginning of the lesson that the continuous line should be drawn in a slow concentrated manner, at some point later I heard him telling the students to draw faster and try different speeds while executing versions of the drawing task.
Eventually I also ventured to get up from my chair and started walking around the students, looking at and photographing their drawings and exchanging a few words with them. This enabled me to acknowledge that apparently it was not my presence that caused silence in the classroom, nor was this kind of silence typical or demanded on the art lessons. As one girl put it, students were allowed to talk and they did talk on lessons that required it, but this particular task required concentration, so they kept quiet. By the time all the finished drawings were attached to the wall to be examined from near and afar and discussed together, the classroom soundscape had clearly livened up but was still more subdued and controlled than I would have expected from any group of fourteen to fifteen year old youths in my own country. These teens certainly did not appear to be in need of "classroom management".
Reviewing the drawings together.
John: "This space is not cleaned by cleaners but students, because cleaners don't know what is trash and what is not."
IBDP, RWB, AGP, IA, IDU, CC – Connecting arts and academic
I never got to observe lessons of the 6th year students because they had to be preparing to present their science diploma portfolios to the IB international assessors all that week. To SOTA, an independent international school following an integrated arts and academic curriculum, situated in a city nation famous for it's atmosphere of commercial success, socio-cultural progress and cosmopolitan trends, opting for the IB diploma programme seems most fitting. In practice it means a lot of work for the staff and especially for the students.
At least the IB diploma in visual arts, which is undertaken during the 5th and 6th years, seemed to demand loads of independent work from SOTA students, both during and outside school hours. First of all, they would have to undertake elaborate investigations about their artistic mediums through experimentation and knowledge seeking in order to navigate towards realisations of their artworks. By the end of the two IB years they would have to exhibit a carefully chosen selection from the plethora of art pieces they had made for the diploma to be evaluated by the IB examiners. According to John, after this year the group of international IB assessors would no longer come to Singapore, because the organisation wants to reduce it's carbon footprint. Instead, the teachers would have to video the IB programme students presenting their art projects, process the videos and send them to the assessors.
Having to prove their work authentic and to show they had done the thinking themselves made the workload particularly heavy for the students because, even if most of them apparently had laptops, they had to handwrite their process notes, essays and analysis about their research subjects in the research workbooks (RWB), at least 5 pages weekly. To illustrate their points and narratives, which was a must, they could draw directly in these books or paste prints of digital photos and other visual documents of their project works and experimentations in them.
5th year students with their workbooks
As I was observing the Painting Studio given by Mr. Khiew Huey Chian to a group of 5th year students, I saw that all of them had the typically black workbooks – mostly of the bound unlined type recommended in the IB portfolio instructions – open or at hand on the desks while executing their individual art-based investigations. Leafing through the books I realized that these students must actually write huge amounts of text. A lot of it contained ideas and reflections that seemed mature indeed considering the age of the authors, while some of it added up to little more than gobbledygook, as if written for the sake of having to make an impression by masses of "witty" jargon or even just masses of text. I can well imagine that there are individuals who find any amount of literal deliberation enjoyable, or at least an exciting challenge, but for those who are more visually expressive and hands-on oriented it might also be the cause of much stress. I'm not absolutely sure if even my Finnish art education students ever needed to deliver as much written evidence of their artistic potential as these teenagers did just for their IB diploma in visual arts, but I want to think that in both cases all the time and energy spent in text production instead of visual thinking and doing will prove educationally worthwhile.
Having said that, compared to the Finnish matriculation examination system where arts are not represented at all, in IBDP arts can be, even if optionally, one of the six subjects that are assessed in the final examinations and required for a full IB qualification. The IBDP curriculum positions arts as the optional sixth subject group from which, for instance, the visual arts course can be chosen. In SOTA this subject group option is well catered for and well used among the students.
A trio of 5th year girl students opening the exhibition "Redefining Material" curated by them, showing works by both professional and student artists.
A sculpture of metal rods and wood by a 5th year boy student in one of the inner courtyards used as exhibition space.
When the IB arts diploma courses and projects of the last two years are added up with the arts courses of the first four years, one can see that there really is a lot of visual arts, dance, music, or theatre studies going on in SOTA on each respective study line and in each of the six school years. For some exceptionally talented individuals there is even more coaching available in the Artistically Gifted Programmme (AGP), which gives them opportunities to learn with global experts and in real world settings.
Furthermore, all students also have to introduce themselves to other than their own art forms. This happens during the first two years on Integrated Arts (IA) courses, where students of all four faculties are mixed and expected to form groups that bring together at least two art disciplines. After the first two years the students have to choose between four thematically different Integrated Arts groups, which then carry on for another two years. In these groups they are supposed to develop collective inter-arts projects where different art forms are actually integrated. I had a couple of opportunities to visit Integrated Arts lessons during my second week in SOTA. On one of them 4th year students, lead by two female teachers, were about to start developing collective projects around "motion in photography". When I entered the classroom, which was really more like a dance studio with spotless floor and no seats or desks, the students were sitting on the floor in groups of four and chatting. I was told to take off my shoes and join in. The other lesson I visited, also given by a female teacher, was intended for 2nd year students. The theme of the lesson, Keith Haring and pop art, culminated in learning a method to make simple 3-dimensional objects from 2-dimensional card cutouts in mixed arts pairs.
A group of 4th year students developing an idea…
A pair of 2nd year boys working on their 3-dimensional object.
The IB programme guidelines underline the importance of, and thereby encourage, interdisciplinary approaches. To this end teachers are supposed to guide students towards taking up individual and also collective projects, which force them to venture outside the limits of their own disciplines. In the curriculum and course descriptions I could also find a more concrete example of how arts and academic subjects are connected in SOTA: Interdisciplinary Units (IDU) are lessons specifically designed to exploit collaboration between disciplines. For example, in the Mathematics programme there was an IDU course called Motion Geometry, which was undertaken in collaboration with music and visual arts. In the Science programme there was a photography course with visual arts, media education, and TOK (theory of knowledge, one of the core courses of IB).
Clearly, to properly satisfy my original curiosity as to how the ideals of art-based education – implicated in the SOTA mission as learning environment anchored in the arts – and interdisciplinarity – expressed in the promotion material as integrated arts and academic curriculum or Connected Curriculum (CC) – were put to practice, I would have needed to look beyond the visual arts and interviewed teachers of other arts and sciences as well as observe their lessons. But I ran out of time.
So, to conclude…
In the end I was only able to focus on a small slice of all that I would have wanted to learn about the School of the Arts while in Singapore. Even so I have only partially managed to squeeze that slice of experience into the lengthy review above, most of it has to wait for another time to be told.
If given a chance, I will be pleased to go back and continue my investigation in SOTA, but I would also recommend it as an excellent context of exchange to any educators or teacher students who are interested in developing their pedagogical skills and thinking in an international, multicultural environment. It may be elitist in terms of its status as an arts specialised school for gifted children, and there are aspects in the written school rules that Nordic people might find outdated, too strict, or even unethical, such as obligatory school uniforms or caning as a possible punishment for boys. But SOTA certainly holds, especially if supported by research, great potential and an ideal framework for developing arts-based interdisciplinary education in school.
For a Finnish art teacher student an international teaching practice in SOTA would give an opportunity to:
– Learn about how art is taught outside Finland,
– Learn about the IB diploma program and how it is run,
– Learn about the everyday and the rules and practices of an Asian international school (pedagogical ideas, assessment, laws, school conduct rules, attires, punishments etc.),
– Experiment with integrating different subjects,
– Step outside her/his comfort zone and adopt an open attitude,
– Create connections to art schools all over the world and acquire experience that is useful for embarking on an international career later,
– Learn about an Asian city culture (values, mentality, working ethics, free time, home life, customs, etc.),
– Enjoy the varied Asian culinary cultures daily at very reasonable price,
– Travel inside and outside Singapore – travelling is cheap in Singapore and to the neighboring countries from there.
The children and young students in SOTA come from different language backgrounds, and although they all speak English as their first language, their differing intonations can, at first, demand quite a bit of concentration from a listener whose mother tongue is not English. Therefore, a minimum requirement for a student teacher wanting to achieve an effective learning experience would be good communicative skills in English language. In addition to this he/she would benefit from being sociable, independent and proactive, and from an ability to observe, compare, and analyze with an open, unbiased, non-judgemental mind.
A work titled "Controlled and un-controllable" by Rachael Chua Min Jun in the exhibition Redefining Material, curated by three students.
SOTA curriculum booklet http://www.sota.edu.sg/Portals/0/files/SOTA%20Curriculum%20Booklet%202012.pdf
SOTA homepage: http://www.sota.edu.sg/
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Hello, I'm "Stolem" on the Kashubian Wikipedia. I've chosen this name, because a "Stolem" is my favourite figure from the Kashubian mythologie. More or less a "Stolem" comes pretty close to a "Troll". Unfortunately I only speak a few words on Kashubian and can't help to extend the Kashubian Wikipedia. I'm interested in my ancestry and Kashubia during the time from 1939 - 1945.
Na starna bëła slédno editowónô: 12 str 2012, 04:42.


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If you're looking for a large quality cat tree that's handmade in Great Britian then look no further. This large piece of handmade cat furniture has a large base (60cm on 2 longest sides) that weighs over 5kg on its own! This is critical in ensuring that the tall cat tree doesn't fall over when your cat jumps on it. The base adds stability so that your cat can climb safely without the fear of it falling over.
As with all of our handmade products, this cat tree is made from scratch in England at our small workshop in Devon. The rope used is 8mm 100% natural sisal rope and has a really chunky appearance that makes it appealing to your cat and also ensures that it will last a long time. If and when it does eventually wear out - simply head over to our parts page and buy the piece you need to replace. There's no need to replace the entire tree. Each piece is available to buy separately - how good is that!?
The base, platforms and beds are lined with 1 inch thick foam and then wrapped in luxurious fleece in the colour/pattern of your choice. Why not choose different colours for each bed/platform for a unique look? The cat beds are 44cm round with rigid sides for safety. The soft foam heats up when the cat sits on it and retains heat making a warm, cosy bed for your cat.
Here are some photos of the Cat Tree 021 finished in a variety of different colours.


Construction has started on a $143 million expansion of Interstate 65 between Columbus and Seymour.
The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) is working with contractor E&B Paving to add a travel lane in both directions of I-65 between S.R. 58 (Exit 64) near Columbus and U.S. 50 (Exit 50) near Seymour.
The project includes replacing existing pavement along the 14 mile segment that includes the new travel lanes, repairing and resurfacing pavement on a three mile segment between S.R. 58 and S.R. 46 (Exit 68), and rehabilitating 27 bridges.


Daryl Hall and John Oates are the best-selling pop duo of all time. In the 1970s and '80s, they recorded several Number One singles and 16 Top 10 hits. Exhausted by the pressures of fame, Hall and Oates decided to go their separate ways. After marginal success with their solo careers, the duo has begun recording and performing together again. VOA's Bernie Bernard tell us about the brand new Hall and Oates album, Do It For Love.
Since the early-1970s, Daryl Hall and John Oates have been known for their multi-million-selling albums and hit tunes such as Rich Girl, Kiss On My List and I Can't Go For That. Their music is rooted in Philadelphia soul with a mixture of catchy pop melodies. Daryl Hall worked as a back-up vocalist for classic Philadelphia groups such as the Stylistics, Delfonics and The Intruders.
Meeting as college students in the late 1960s, Hall and Oates started performing together, and were signed to Atlantic Records. Their producer in the early years, singer and songwriter Todd Rundgren, helped to establish their polished brand of pop and soul.
By 1984, the duo decided to take a break and pursue solo projects, but had little activity on the charts. Daryl Hall comments, "I didn't know where to go or if I wanted to go anymore. I felt like it was the end of an era." However, Hall and Oates stayed in close contact, playing a series of shows once a year.
Daryl Hall and John Oates decided it was time to get back into "the big game," as they say. The duo decided to release their 1997 album Marigold Sky on their own, small label, U-Watch Records. Three years ago, they signed a contract with Columbia Records, who encouraged them to work with a few different songwriters, and record in London. John Oates recalls, "They wanted us to do an 'N Sync-type song. We knew this wasn't going to be us. We wouldn't be cutting a Hall and Oates record." So, the duo parted ways with Columbia, and returned to the U.S. and their U-Watch label.
Their latest effort, Do It For Love, reunites them with original producer Todd Rundgren. After touring with Todd last year, Hall and Oates asked him to play and sing on the song written by New Radicals' member Gregg Alexander, Someday We'll Know.
The duo's John Oates says, "We tried to make a really organic album that brought our band into the proceedings, and captured the energy we out into our shows. Daryl and I have this common musical vocabulary, which comes from our similar upbringing - growing up together in Philadelphia, going to the same schools and listening to the same music when we were kids."
Do It For Love is reminiscent of the Hall and Oates of the 1970s and '80s, with smooth, soulful vocals and melodic guitars.
Billboard magazine just honored Hall and Oates with a special section highlighting their 30-year career and multiple Grammy Award-winning success. The duo has just embarked on a tour of the U.S. east coast, with dates in Japan scheduled for May and June.


€200 billion will flow into the low-carbon agenda - or will it?
For the first time ever decarbonisation is an explicit goal of the next EU budget. And it shows: the European Commission wants to devote fully 20% of the €1 trillion budget, which runs from 2014 to 2020, to climate-related actions. The goal: to change the face of the European energy system and sow the seeds for a low-carbon economy in 2050. But it is the Member States who will ultimately have to make up their minds whether they want to make the EU's green dream come true. Sonja van Renssen reports from Brussels.
The battle for the next EU budget, which runs from 2014 to 2020, is entering a crucial phase. The European Commission has made proposals, which the Member States will have a final say on. The European Parliament also plays a role, but it can traditionally only say "yes" or "no" to the entire package (although MEPs are trying to expand their negotiating powers under the Lisbon Treaty). A final agreement on the budget is expected by the end of this year.
The budget is a notoriously complicated affair. There are lots of parts to it, member states rather than the Commission will ultimately oversee much of how it's spent, and it's not really organised along themes such as energy and climate change. But one thing is clear: its goal is to support the EU 2020 strategy for growth and jobs - including the 20% targets for emission cuts, renewables and efficiency - and lay the foundations for a low-carbon economy in 2050.
For this reason, the European Commission is proposing a thorough "greening" of the budget. It wants a fifth of the €1 trillion package to be spent on climate action, i.e. projects that contribute to climate adaptation or greenhouse gas emission reductions, which may be anything from building renovations and clean energy R&D to cross-border interconnectors and greener transport.
These plans targeted green growth and efficiency in particular. Unspent agricultural funds and a chunk of the EU's regional funds were redirected to energy efficiency investments. A €3.98 billion European Energy Programme for Recovery (EEPR) gave money to gas and electricity infrastructure, offshore wind, and carbon capture and storage projects; the €146 million that remained became the basis for a new European efficiency and renewables fund.
Hedegaard reportedly had to fight hard for her 20% slice of the next budget, however. The Commission is headed by 27 commissioners, each of whom wants to walk away from a budget discussion with something to show. One commissioner taking a fifth of the cake is difficult for the others to swallow, even if funds for climate action would also benefit those in charge of energy, transport, agriculture, enterprise, research, and so on. EU energy commissioner Günther Oettinger reportedly wanted no more than 10% of the budget to go to climate.
Hedegaard managed to win out because she gained the backing of Commission president José Manuel Barroso. One source suggests that Barroso saw climate change and its "mainstreaming"
mission as a peg for the whole green growth agenda which might in turn function as a peg for the whole European project - justifying a sizeable budget for the bloc in the first place. But maybe the truth is simpler than that: the EU 2020 strategy has five headline targets, one of which is climate and energy related… so why not give it a fifth of the resources available?
A fifth of the budget for climate action does not mean that a fifth of the budget will go to decarbonisation or to the energy sector. Money will also need to be spent on climate adaptation for example, and climate will feature more strongly in international aid.
The two biggest parts of the EU Budget are the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and "cohesion policy", which distributes funds to regions to even out development disparities. These together make up two-thirds of the budget. Much of the money reserved for climate-related activities will have to come from these two programmes, e.g. improved farming practices that also benefit the climate.
The Commission's Energy department, headed by Commissioner Oettinger, can expect money for its priorities from the cohesion policy funds, from the so-called Connecting Europe Facility - a new €50 billion programme to fund cross-border infrastructure (energy, transport and broadband) - and from an enhanced low-carbon research, development and deployment programme.
For Ingrid Holmes, who leads work on low-carbon finance at think tank E3G in London, the most critical part of the EU budget proposals is the new infrastructure fund - the Connecting Europe Facility. One of the main objectives of new cross-border infrastructure is to enable decarbonisation of the energy system by adapting it to cope with the expected large-scale expansion of intermittent renewable sources. Holmes says that the most important task of the new policy must be to leverage private investments in infrastructure. 'Last time we had a big infrastructure build-out it was publicly funded. Now we need private capital and investor preferences [for low-carbon investments].' This is where policymakers come in: they must set incentive frameworks and take on some of the policy and technology risk of investors, says Holmes.
In a new report published in February, E3G argues that many of the public funds needed to unlock private capital could come from public banks such as the European Investment Bank (EIB) rather than directly from EU or national government coffers. It suggests the EIB doubles its low-carbon investment by 2020 (to 60% of all its activity) and that the EU reviews financial regulation such as that related to the pension industry to ensure long-term investment in low-carbon infrastructure is not penalised. Public institutions must increasingly operate alongside commercial banks to help investors in low-carbon projects secure both early-stage finance and re-finance their projects once operational, Holmes says.
well as €31.7 billion for transport infrastructure and €9.2 billion for broadband). 'It's the first time the Commission is proposing real money for energy projects in a financial framework,' points out Mark Johnston from WWF. The energy component is 58 times the Trans-European Energy (TEN-E) fund it replaces, and gas and electricity projects will be allowed to use the money for construction, not just feasibility studies. CO2 transport infrastructure projects are the exception.
Still, the Facility will not suffice to cover the €100bn funding gap identified by the Commission in its Infrastructure Package last year. According to the Commission, some €210 billion must be invested in energy infrastructure between now and 2020 (€140 billion for high voltage electricity lines, €70 billion for gas pipelines and €2.5 billion for CO2 transport), but half of it will likely not materialise because of overly lengthy permitting procedures and a weak business-case for cross-border projects. To address this gap, the Commission issued new legislative proposals last October in which it proposed special rules for infrastructure projects "of common interest". Limiting permitting procedures to three years is expected to plug half the funding gap as delayed but viable projects get off the ground. The Connecting Europe Facility is supposed to plug the other half with the help of regulatory support such as tariff-based incentives when projects are especially risky (e.g. very complex to coordinate), a standardized cost-benefit methodology for individual projects and a process for regulators to allocate costs across borders.
Most of the Connecting Europe Facility will be distributed as grants, but €1bn of it will go to "innovative financial instruments" that are expected to leverage €20bn in private capital for commercially viable projects. So-called project bonds would replace the guarantee a company used to be able to get for its bonds on the market with a guarantee or loan from the EIB backed up by the €1bn from the EU budget. The idea is to reanimate bond markets, which experts believe will take over from bank debt in financing infrastructure. So far, MEPs like the idea but member states have mixed views. Smaller countries fear they might never have a project big enough to use project bonds, since it would only make sense for those costing at least €150m. A pilot phase is due to start this year with €230m left over from the current EU budget, but MEPs and member states first need to agree to release the money.
Aside from the question over how to fund infrastructure projects, there's a question over exactly what projects and programmes should be funded and how much the 20% set aside for climate change in the budget will actually benefit the climate. E3G wants the Connecting Europe Facility to be 'reoriented towards the strategic investments required for decarbonisation'. So far there is no indication about what projects might make it onto the priority list. Environmentalists fear too many gas pipelines will get built at the expense of high-voltage electricity lines to integrate renewables and smart grid projects to reduce energy consumption in the first place. 'Decarbonisation implies a shift from gas to electricity,' emphasises Johnston from WWF.
A similar worry hangs over funds earmarked for climate action in cohesion policy. Cohesion policy in the energy sector has always been aimed at least in part at modernising the energy systems of central and eastern European states. In the new budget, the Commission calculates it will contribute at least €17 billion to climate action through mandatory investments in efficiency and renewables. New rules for the so-called European Regional Development Fund will require rich member states to allocate at least 20% of what they get to efficiency and renewables, and poor member states 6%. Decarbonisation will also become a mandatory priority for all regions.
Even if all this investment materialises however, what good is it for the climate if the rest of cohesion policy continues to fund more traditional development such as road building? NGOs such as CEE Bankwatch and Friends of the Earth Europe have long accused the EU of supporting unsustainable development. In February this year, they unveiled fresh evidence that it is funding projects such as airports and waste incinerators that could cancel out the benefits of funds earmarked for efficiency and renewables. In theory the Commission will be able to keep tabs on the impact of its expenditure in future through another innovation in its budget proposals: a monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) system to measure how much is spent where and with what climate impact. Tagging policies as "climate-related" or not will prove challenging however.
Uncertainty over where exactly money ends up is high for cohesion policy because, unlike EU R&D funding for example, it is spent by national and regional governments rather than the Commission directly. There is also an issue of how much of the funding is actually taken up. Much of the money set aside for efficiency and renewables in the current budget has not been used by member states, for example because they're not aware of it or cannot meet the co-financing requirements (there is still the crisis, after all). More general barriers to energy efficiency investments also persist and many do not believe the new EU energy efficiency directive currently being debated in Brussels will overcome them.
essential if the EU is to keep alive a fighting chance of maintaining its global competitiveness. It was of course also a goal for 2010, under the Lisbon strategy, but perhaps now the EU has a better chance of making it through the green economy. The EU continues to dominate clean energy investment worldwide, although the ongoing economic crisis is shrivelling up R&D funds and the trajectory is downhill. Many industries moreover are still fighting tooth and nail to protect the status quo of a fossil-fuel based economy.
In its 2014-20 budget proposals, the Commission proposes that a third of its €80bn "Horizon 2020" R&D programme goes to climate-related activities. This will be spread out over multiple programmes, but the one that is closest to industrial hearts is without doubt the Strategic Energy Technology or SET Plan.
Called the "technology pillar" of the EU's climate and energy policy, it was drawn up by the Commission back in 2007 to promote the research, development and deployment of low-carbon technologies. At its core is the coming together of public and private actors to launch joint initiatives in six priority areas: wind, solar, bioenergy, CCS, electricity grids and nuclear fission. The history of the SET plan has been above all one of trying to secure adequate funding. In 2009, the Commission said it needed an additional €50bn (€5bn per year over ten years, public and private combined) if the EU was to meet its 2020 climate and energy goals. This would come on top of the €3bn a year it was already investing.
The next EU budget is an opportunity for the EU to help plug this gap. Under the current proposals, the SET Plan would get part of €6.5bn set aside for all non-nuclear energy R&D. For many, this is a missed opportunity. A group of companies and other organisations that call themselves Friends of the SET Plan say the budget takes a step in the right direction but more public funds - EU and national - are needed. The public sector must contribute €37bn to the SET Plan between now and 2020, they say: "The SET-Plan is the only EU instrument which can bring forward essential European low-carbon technologies from R&D stage to market commercialization by 2020."
These organisations like the SET Plan because it focuses on deployment rather than pure R&D. It provides funds for pilot and demonstration projects that drive technologies up the learning curve and bring down costs. They may still need deployment subsidies such as feed-in tariffs after, but these will be less. Company participation in pure R&D funded by the EU has been steadily decreasing.
Member states are supposed to spend half the money they will earn selling carbon allowances to industry from 2013 on climate-related activities, but it remains to be seen how many will do so and what proportion will go to research and innovation. The EU ETS is already supporting low-carbon technology deployment through the "NER300", which consists of 300 million carbon allowances currently being gradually auctioned off specifically to raise money for CCS and renewables. The carbon price is crucial in all these ETS-related funding streams and whether member states and MEPs agree on a "set-aside" of allowances to raise the future price will therefore be crucial in the coming months. For some technologies such as CCS however, projects will fail without substantially increased member state contributions.
It comes down to member states on all fronts. It is they, rather than the European Parliament, who hold most of the power when it comes to approving the budget and the Commission's proposals have already raised eyebrows in EU capitals. Some do not want the EU to spend as much as €1 trillion and many don't like the idea of earmarking funds, whether for climate or something else. The Commission has issued proposals for a budget that can set the scene for a decarbonised economy in 2050. But it is member states, through their support for this budget and in complementary funds of their own, who must show the world that Europe believes in its own low-carbon agenda.


2016 is winding down and DJ Snake's Encore is still making noise. The French producer just released his gargantuan remix pack for his track with Yellow Claw Ocho Cinco which consists of 27 tracks!
This is by far the largest official remix pack in the history of Dance Music and Ocho Cinco is one hell of a track to do it with. Remixes include bass maniacs Cesqeaux, Sikdope, Kayzo, Herobust, Autoerotique, Botnek & Bad Royale. Check out all the remixes below.


In a world of Fab Labs, you can think about the other five and a half billion brains on the planet not just as potential consumers, but as creators, as inventors. Creation itself can become much more distributed, and you can bring not information technology, but IT development to the masses. You can close what you might think of as a fabrication divide.
Can you hear me now? Gooood.
These Fabs Labs are being used in small communites around the world to create a myriad of practical tools such as a Fu-Fu pounder in Ghana (fu-fu is a dish in Ghana…read the article), a tester for bad milk in India, and a sheep tracker north of the Arctic circle. MIT set up one of these Fab Labs in the barn of sheep farmer Haakon Karlsen. He used the parts and software in the Lab to create a custom GPS sheep tracking device out of cell phones. The trackers help him find his sheep in the dark, track their movement, and even tells him the temperature wherever the sheep happen to be.
thinks that, more fundamentally, the idea of personal or small-group fabrication has tapped into the primal need that some people have to create things, to modify the world in which they live.
…the earth does not yield its fruits without a particular human response to God's gift, that is to say, without work. It is through work that man, using his intelligence and exercising his freedom, succeeds in dominating the earth and making it a fitting home.
Of course these Fab Labs are thriving. Creativity, problem-solving, inventiveness: these are some of the qualities that define us as humans. We are essentially entrepreneurial beings.
This is not a new idea. Thank God some are rediscovering it.


In a few weeks, the Facebook application platform will mark its second anniversary. While it garnered lots of press coverage in the months after it launched, the arrival of the iTunes app store shifted attention away from Facebook's vibrant ecosystem. The media glow is understandable: among other things, the younger iTunes platform is adding apps at a much faster rate than Facebook or Myspace.
Open Source "Social App Server" Might Crack Garden Walls?
New social application server space may crack social network garden walls.
Multiple Platforms, One Geek. What's a man to do?


We value the support of each of our retail partners. We hope you'll find these industry resources useful. The links below connect you to resources such as communication forms and online ordering portals. We currently only accept Credit Cards in the online portal. You may also send orders to sales@fireandflavor.com or fax them to 706-369-9468.


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My principal project for mozilla community is ASK-SUMO this app provide a search, this search works with SUMO, support 18 languages.
Willy is an inaugural member of Marketplace's Community Curation Board. He plays a key role in discovering the best apps content to feature on Marketplace, abnd has so far done a great job in selecting feature-worthy apps like LINE, Karate Crush, OpenWapp, Scientific Calculator, and others. Willy's role requires ongoing monthly contributions.
Mozilla Rep, developer, Mozilla hispano member.


text:
Sovljak (otok), otočić kod Tribunja
 Sovljak (Ub, Srbija), naselje u općini Ub, Srbija

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


This birthday card was made for a male friend who is very stylish and a snazzy dresser; I thought he would like the pattern and the colours. I simply used stickers from a pack I bought in Paperchase, which had circles of different sizes and different colours and a few swirls, and arranged them on the card in what I thought was a nice design. I then added a 'happy birthday' silver outline sticker at the bottom.


The wedding, a way to personal fulfillment or to hell. Here there is a story like many others, a normal couple that approaches the sacrament with perhaps the wrong purposes, but how many of us know the right ones? The reader will judge.


Selleys Original Sugar Soap is a professional strength and high performance formula which powers through tough grease and grime.
When done right, and with permission, a graffiti mural can add life and character to a building. Colourful and bright graffiti murals are becoming increasingly popular, with the artistic form being recognised as effective ways to liven up city streets, and even being commissioned to convey messages to an audience.
Offensive and distasteful graffiti, however, is an eyesore to businesses and residences that have had their fences and walls "tagged". Read the below tips to help remove and prevent any graffiti that may have become an unwelcome addition to your property.
Removing graffiti from a painted substrate like a wall or fence can be easy with the use of dedicated Graffiti Removal Products, such as Watch Dog, Selley's Muck Off Graffiti Remover, Rust-Oleum Graffiti Remover Gel, Goof Off Graffiti Remover and Mostenbocker's Lift Off*.
For smooth, non-porous surfaces such as glass and metal, use Watch Dog Lift Away Smooth Surface Graffiti Remover. Simply spray the solution onto the graffitied area and leave for a minute or two or until the graffiti starts to break away. Using a soft cloth or soft scrubbing brush, agitate the product on the surface to assist the breakdown of the graffiti, and reapply if necessary. Ensure the surface is thoroughly cleaned after using the Lift Away to stop additional surface coating being removed.
If the surface you need to remove the graffiti from is unpainted and porous, including brick, cement, pavers, granite, sandstone, etc; use Watch Dog Wipe Out Porous Surface Graffiti Remover. This product is designed to remove graffiti from porous surfaces without creating a ghosting or shadowing effect on the final result. Apply the product by brushing, rolling or spraying the Wipe Out to the affected surface, wait between 15 and 30 minutes, and use a scrubbing brush or high pressure hose to agitate the product on the surface. Wash away product residue with water after completing the removal process.
* Not all products are available across all Inspirations Paint stores. Chat to your local Inspirations Paint store for product availability.
If the graffiti is quite large in size and on a porous, unpainted substrate, you may find the job requires a more heavy-duty removal technique than what Tip 1 offers. Employing the use of a high-pressure water or sand blaster may be the most effective method of removing this type of graffiti damage, and we recommend chatting to our in store experts for professional advice for this removal method.
Painting over the graffiti with the colour of the damaged substrate is an effective cover up method in a range of different situations that works best on previously painted surfaces. If the surface is dark in colour, you may choose to just paint over the graffiti to cover it up. To ensure all traces of graffiti are no longer visible, you may want to follow the steps in Tip 1 to remove the graffiti first before painting over the surface. If your substrate is lighter in colour, we don't recommended just painting over the graffiti as there is a high chance the graffiti will still show through, so we suggest removing the graffiti first before painting.
If your ColorBond fence has been tagged, head into your local Inspirations Paint store to chat with the team about using a touch up spray paint to cover over graffiti.
If you are not sure or cannot remember what colour you originally used on your surface, click here for some great tips on how to Colour Match!
After you have removed or covered up the graffiti, you may want to consider applying a protective coating onto your substrate to help the surface area to resist future graffiti-ing. These protective coats will not make your surface completely immune to graffiti in the future; however, it will aid the removal of any future graffiti. Dulux sell a variety of graffiti preventative coatings, but it is best to head into your local Inspirations Paint store to discuss which product is best for your surface type and colour.
5. Talk to your Inspirations Paint local experts!
We love paint projects, and can feel your frustration at having the appearance of your home or business tarnished with graffiti. We are on hand to chat to you about the best way to treat your damaged area; however, it is also important to note that not all graffiti can be completely removed. It is important to try to remove the graffiti as soon as it is discovered, as the longer it is left the more it will adhere to the surface making it harder to remove. The type of material that was used to graffiti will affect the results, as well as the colours used. It is always important to provide as much information as possible when chatting to you Inspirations Paint expert to discover the best technique and product for removal, and provide photos if you can!
It is time to love where we live! October 29, 2017 is Graffiti Removal Day in New South Wales. For more information on how you can volunteer to help remove and prevent graffiti across NSW, or to nominate a site that you feel needs a clean-up, follow this link for more information!


text:
Das Studienfach Sicherheitstechnik befasst sich mit den Risiken der modernen Industriegesellschaft, denen Mensch oder Umwelt ausgesetzt sind. Es fokussiert auf alle Gefahren, die mit dem Gebrauch der Technik, dem Betrieb industrieller Anlagen oder mit Gefahrgut verbunden sind. Die Sicherheitstechnik sorgt dafür, dass nach Möglichkeit keine Schäden auftreten.

Studienfach
Technische Erzeugnisse sind häufig mit Gefährdungen verbunden, so dass Sachschäden oder Körperverletzungen entstehen können. Die unmittelbare Sicherheitstechnik erhebt den Anspruch, die technischen Erzeugnisse so zu gestalten, dass sie ungefährlich sind.

Falls dies nicht möglich ist, wird durch mittelbare Sicherheitstechnik und Schutzeinrichtungen die  Gefährdung auf ein gemeinhin akzeptiertes Maß reduziert. Wenn unmittelbare und mittelbare Vorkehrungen nur unvollständig zum Schutz führen, warnt die hinweisende Sicherheitstechnik mit Signalen und Hinweisschildern vor den drohenden Gefahren.

Berufsbild
Absolventen des Studienfachs sind in allen Branchen vielseitig einsetzbar. Der Sicherheitsingenieur ist zuständig für Arbeitssicherheit, Brandschutz, Umweltsicherheit und Strahlenschutz. Zudem kann er als Berater, Gutachter, Entwicklungs- und Laboringenieur sowie in Aufsichts- und Prüftätigkeiten aktiv sein. Weitere Stellen sind bei den Berufsgenossenschaften, staatlichen Aufsichtsbehörden, Versicherern und Feuerwehren zu finden.

Aufgrund ihrer Hochschul- oder Fachhochschulausbildung erfüllen die Sicherheitsingenieure nach einjähriger praktischer Tätigkeit alle Anforderungen der Deutschen Gesetzlichen Unfallversicherung (DGUV) und erlangen die sicherheitstechnische Fachkunde (SiFa), um als Fachkraft für Arbeitssicherheit (FASi) tätig zu sein.
Zum Berufsbild gehört auch die Techniker- und Meistersausbildung mit sicherheitstechnischer Fachkunde, deren Aufgaben durch das Arbeitssicherheitsgesetz definiert sind.

Ausbildungsplätze
Das Studium der Sicherheitstechnik ist seit 1975 an der Bergischen Universität Wuppertal in der Fakultät für Maschinenbau und Sicherheitstechnik möglich. Der Bachelor of Science in Sicherheitstechnik ist ein berufsqualifizierender Abschluss nach sechs Semestern.
Ein Master ist nach vier weiteren Semestern möglich mit den Schwerpunkten Sicherheitstechnik, Arbeitssicherheit, Umweltsicherheit, Bevölkerungsschutz und Brandschutz oder auch ein Master in Qualitätsingenieurwesen.

Darüber hinaus kann eine Promotion erlangt werden, je nach Schwerpunkt der Dissertation Dr.-Ing. als Doktoringenieur, Dr. rer. sec. als doctor rerum securitatis oder Dr. phil. als doctor philosophiae. Bis 2002 bestand ein Diplomingenieurstudiengang mit den Schwerpunkten Arbeitssicherheit, Umweltschutz, Verkehrssicherheit und Brand- und Explosionsschutz.

Seit 1999 bietet die Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg DHBW in Karlsruhe die Fachrichtung Arbeitssicherheit im Studiengang Sicherheitswesen an, der Bachelor of Science ist gegliedert in Umwelttechnik und Strahlenschutz. Das Studium besteht aus sechs Semestern mit Theorie- und Praxisphasen, Studierende erhalten durch den dualen Partner eine Ausbildungsvergütung.

Seit dem Wintersemester 2007/2008 wird der Studiengang Security & Safety Engineering (Sicherungs- und Sicherheitstechnik) mit dem Bachelor of Science an der Hochschule Furtwangen University, Fakultät "Gesundheit, Sicherheit, Gesellschaft" (GSG) angeboten. Das Studium umfasst sieben Semester, das fünfte ist ein Praxissemester.

Seit 2014 bietet die Hochschule Ruhr West in Mülheim an der Ruhr das Studium der Sicherheitstechnik an. Zurzeit besteht die Möglichkeit, den Abschluss Bachelor of Science Sicherheitstechnik  nach 7 Semestern inkl. Praxissemester zu absolvieren.

Das Sicherheitsingenieurwesen der Hochschule Trier im Fachbereich Maschinenbau umfasst sechs Semester und endet im Unterschied zur Universität Wuppertal mit dem akademischen Grad "Bachelor of Engineering".

Weblinks
 Studiengang Sicherheitstechnik – Studiengang Sicherheitstechnik in der Fakultät für Maschinenbau und Sicherheitstechnik der Bergischen Universität Wuppertal
 Studiengang Security & Safety Engineering – Studiengang Security & Safety Engineering, Hochschule Furtwangen
 FH Trier Sicherheitsingenieurwesen – FH Trier – Sicherheitsingenieurwesen (Bachelor)

Einzelnachweise

Studienfach
Technische Sicherheit
Umwelttechnik


Learning progression is about much more than helping pupils to increase their knowledge. It is about deepening their understanding and developing their skills, and it should be a constant feature of all lessons. As teachers, we need to know exactly where we want our children's learning to take them, how each activity supports their progress towards this, and how we will assess the amount of progress they make.
These days everything in life seems to be a journey – "my journey to recovery", "my journey to the finals", etc. However hackneyed this analogy may now be, it's still a great one to use in terms of learning progression: we rarely set out on a journey without knowing what our destination is or how we plan to get there, so why not plan a lesson like we plan a journey [click on the image to enlarge it]?
In the above plan the kit could refer to pens and pencils, etc. or it could refer to skills – for this lesson we will need to be observant, we will need some good teamwork, etc. The route map is the planned progression. The checkpoints are the moments at which we check everything is going according to plan. The alternative routes are the support and extension options we will offer, or the routes we could fall back on if the original plan is not working out. The panorama is the point at which we look back over our route and reflect on what has been achieved (or, for those of you with small children, the Balamory Moment).
This approach probably won't work for everyone, but some sort of analogy often helps us to picture what the progress in our lesson will look like.
In the above images, we are aiming high, and each stage of the journey should be more demanding than the last. There are many ways to structure a lesson which gradually raises the level of challenge, but a perennial source of inspiration for this is Bloom's Taxonomy.
The following diagram takes the principles underlying Bloom's work, and suggests various trigger words which could be used to make each activity more demanding than the last [click on image to enlarge]. When we worked on this during one INSET session, each department adapted this generic list to suit the nature of the subjects it offers [click on image to enlarge].
A lesson plan which features prompts from three different columns in the above table (moving from left to right), or ideas from three different segments of the above circle (moving clockwise from "knowledge") ought to deliver good progression.
If you'd like to read a little more about SOLO, take a look at this from @leardinglearner, and if you'd like to see some practical materials based on SOLO for use in a range of subjects, take a look in this dropbox.
What's the difference between Bloom's and SOLO? The argument is that whilst Bloom's taxonomy might help teachers to create a lesson structure which promotes progression, it is not so good as SOLO at helping pupils to understand how they have progressed, or how to take ownership of their own learning. Familiarise yourself more fully with both of them, and decide what you think.
However you decide to build progression into your lesson, you cannot simply assume that pupils will achieve that progression, and this is why the checkpoints are essential to the ultimate completion of the journey, and thus the success of the lesson.
Ultimately, effective progress from your pupils requires effective planning from you. And your starting point for this must always be establishing clear objectives. For pointers on objective setting, read this excellent article by David Didau.


There's five feet of snow now at Bison Lake, on Colorado's west slope north of Glenwood Springs. Melted and measured by the folks who run the federal SNOTEL network, that translates to 15.6 inches of "snow water equivalent", the metric that matters once spring and summer warmth start its trip down into the Colorado River.
The water nerds pronounce SWE as "swee", a word that sounds vaguely like a ski move, but it's really the most important number in western water right now, the measure of water supply for the year to come, sitting in the relatively small patch of high country that feeds the entire Colorado River Basin. Last year at this time, the SWE values at Bison Lake were nearly twice as high, and the bounty just kept building. This year things aren't looking so good.
In December, I paid a visit to Boulder Harbor on the west shore of Lake Mead to see the results for myself. Boulder Harbor is one of those places where the dropping reservoir is made tangible. Two years ago, its boat ramp was closed, its shrinking harbor abandoned to an epic flock of American coots feasting on the critters left in the muck and an osprey that entertained me with a spectacular dive to pick off a stranded fish. Now, thanks to last year's big snowpack, the water's back, and boaters have displaced my osprey and coots.
But things appear to be headed back in the other direction. On its face, the effect is clear. After rising with last year's big snowpack, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the Colorado River's two largest reservoirs, are forecast to drop a collective 42 feet in surface elevation over the next year, according to the latest forecast from the US Bureau of Reclamation.
As western water leaders converged on Las Vegas in December 2001, Southern California's inability to contain its voracious appetite seemed finally to be bumping up against reality - there is only so much water in the Colorado River.
Shared among seven states and Mexico via a shifting, uncertain set of bargains, the river was running up against the era of limits.
For years, California had been living large off the surplus of others. It slurped Colorado River leftovers other states weren't using, pumping it 250 miles to rapidly growing coastal cities. But as the rest of the southwest grew and began taking its rightful share of the Colorado, California faced an urgent deadline. It had to come up with a plan to cut its use or see a large share of its water supply simply cut off on Jan. 1, 2003.
The Colorado River carves a defining course through North American geography and history. Winter snow falling in the Rockies, mostly in Colorado and Wyoming, feeds it. The Colorado and its longest tributary, the Green, spend much of their lives in the deep, arid canyon country of the arid interior western United States.
Is There More Water to Be Moved From the Colorado Basin?
There appears to be a race among the states to develop the next big use of water, because for water users who don't get their straw into the system first, their risk of curtailment increases.
The sudden rush of water into the lake has meant seven-day workweeks for the National Park Service and concessionaire crews that manage the boating facilities. Again and again they have reeled in floating docks and marina utility lines that were extended as the reservoir shrank. Dive teams were called in to move anchors.
At the Hite marina on the lake's northern end, where boating facilities had been stranded on the dry lake bed for years, workers used a backhoe and trucks to free them from layers of muck and silt as the water rose.
This is not a criticism of Boxall, one of the best reporters on the Western water beat. Such is water management on the Colorado River that, in the wake of the worst drought in a century of record-keeping, from 2000 to 2010, everyone in the seven western U.S. states and Mexico that depends on the Colorado River continued to get their full allotment. As the lakes receded, journalists (myself among them) turned to the recreational boating business in our search for a visible manifestation of drought. Marina operators engaged in the ritual they call "chasing water", moving their floating docks farther and farther out into the lakes as the reservoirs shrank. Reporters followed along.
How Far Can We Bend the Law of the River?
With this post we welcome John Fleck, a reporter with 20 years of experience with the Albuquerque Journal covering science and environmental issues. In the past decade, he has made aridity, climate change, drought and the resulting water policy questions a central topic of his newspaper work. As Albuquerque and Santa Fe, northern New Mexico's two largest metro areas, have shifted in recent years to using water imported from the Colorado River Basin, his journalism has emphasized the relationship between New Mexico's water and broader regional waterscience, politics and policy questions. He is the author of "A Tree Rings' Tale," a book for young people about climate, science, water and the West, and is working on "Moving Water", a book about Colorado River water policy in the 21st century.
The Law of the River – the stack of compacts, statutes, court decisions and operating rules governing the division of the Colorado River's precious water – once had a sacred aura. "It was tantamount to having been written on tablets," in the worlds of Las Vegas water manager Pat Mulroy.
With Lake Mead at 39 percent capacity and Lake Powell at around 59 percent after an 11-year drought, there's no question that there is a crisis on the Colorado River, and, experts predict, climate change will make things worse. With 30 million people dependent on the river, the outcome of disputes on distribution of Colorado River water is critical for the West. Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography say Lake Powell has a 50 percent chance of becoming unusable by 2021. Some experts say that within the next 15 years, the Central Arizona Project, which supplies Phoenix and Tucson and the agricultural lands between them, may become the testing ground to see what happens when the water runs low. Is the 1922 Compact still the best law of the river?
Doug Kenney, Director of the Western Water Policy Program & Senior Research Associate, Natural Resources Law Center, University of Colorado.
We join the conversation on the Colorado River crisis by posting a provocative speech given by Doug Kenney at the December, 2010 meeting of the Colorado River Water Users Association (CRWUA) in Las Vegas. He recently authored a report for the Western Water Policy Program entitled, Rethinking the Future of the Colorado River. He called his speech at CRWUA a "Reader's Digest" version of that report.


text:
Q: Animate SVG Line from Left to right Snap.svg I'm trying to create an animated line as if its being drawn from one point to another. I have managed to get the line drawing on to the page but can't work out how to animate it as if it's being drawn?
https://jsfiddle.net/0sdt33dz/
function svgAnimate (){
var s = Snap('#svg');
var linePath = "M-3,148.6c0,0,43.9,7,49.4-17.2c3.5-15.3-9.4-19.7-17.3-13.8c-6,4.4-10,19,11.3,25.4 c24.9,7.5,70.7-31.2,91-61.8S233-41.5,286.3,29.2c0,0-60.7,35.5-24.9,87.9c36.2,53,83.5,15.6,83.5,15.6s19.3,19.5,68.4,17.1";
var lineLength = Snap.path.getTotalLength(linePath);
var lineDraw = s.path(linePath);
lineDraw.attr({
    fill:'none',
    stroke:'#009FE3',
    'stroke-width' :6,
    'stroke-linecap' :'round',
    'stroke-linejoin' :'round',
    'stroke-miterlimit' :10
});
lineDraw.animate({
    stroke : '#fff'
},3000, mina.easein)
console.log(lineLength);
}
svgAnimate();

A: You're almost there, just missing two things.
First, you need to set the stroke-dasharray to '<length> <length>', this will create a "dashed" line with gaps/fill equal to the length of the entire line
lineDraw.attr({
    fill:'none',
    stroke:'#009FE3',
    'stroke-dasharray': lineLength + ' ' + lineLength,
    'stroke-dashoffset': lineLength,
    'stroke-width' :6,
    ...

After this you need to animate the offset of the stroke to 0 using stoke-dashoffset
lineDraw.animate({
    strokeDashoffset : 0
},3000, mina.easein)

working fiddle

A: var s = Snap("#myLine");

//Line parameters (x1, y1, x2, y2)
var line = s.line(30, 45, 30, 45);
line.attr({
    stroke: "#000",
    strokeWidth: 2
});

//Old x2 values is 30 and now it is increasing to 70 with 1 second duration
line.animate({x2: 70}, 1000);

I hope this answer will help you!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Megan Thee Stallion Earns First Billboard Hot 100 Entry With "Big Ole Freak"
This website is a way to incorporate the love of music, culture, and writing. I use it to showcase various individuals with talents that you may never know they had (Dance, Music, Poetry, Art, and more). The other side is to focus on moments in the music & entertainment industry; with a goal to showcase #BlackExcellence through various forms. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I do working on it! Thanks for stopping by & come through again!
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Part of the Cost of Living art collection: this piece represents the cost of our electric bill for January 2018 ($230.84). You can view the entire series in this blog post and also this one.
It measures 13.75" wide x 23.75" tall. Ready to hang and protected with a protective finish. Signed by the artist.


The American Star, a coastal ship from American Cruise Lines built in 2007, is sister to the 2005-built American Spirit.
Both take up to 100 passengers compared to 49 for running mate American Glory. The American Star is 220 ft long and U.S.-flagged; the crew is all North American. The 230-ft, 120-passenger Queen of the West, a sternwheeler, was added to the fleet in 2010 for cruises along the Columbia and Snake Rivers in the Pacific Northwest.
Want to read the full American Star travel42 Cruise Ship Review?


These quotes are chosen at random from a script written in the theatre of the absurd known as 'the west'. Does Barrack Obama, the Harvard law graduate, not know that Jerusalem is an occupied city? Does Hillary Clinton not know that the Israeli 'families' living at Gilo have built their homes on land belonging to someone else? Does Silvio Berlusconi seriously regard Hamas rocket attacks as a threat to Italy and even the 'entire West'? Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton were speaking at the AIPAC conference in Washington last June, Angela Merkel in the Knesset in March and Silvio Berlusconi at Sharm al Shaikh this week. He and other European 'leaders', as they are called, Merkel, Sarkozy and Gordon Brown among them, had gathered in Egypt to 'discuss' Gaza with Husni Mubarak and Mahmud Abbas, i.e to tell them what their part would be in the European plan to bring peace to Gaza.
Remember that during the three weeks of Israel's onslaught on Gaza close to 500 children were amongst the 1300 people killed. More than 85 per cent of them were civilians. As bodies are still being pulled out of the rubble it will be some time before the final civilian death toll is known. Banned weapons were used. Whole families were massacred and whole streets destroyed with bunker buster bombs. The living was left for days alongside the dead because Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances and medics from reaching them. Trapped between the sea and the fences erected by Egypt and Israel the Gazans were simply shot down like animals in a game reserve. Then the killers were hauled off so that Barack Obama's inauguration would not be ruined by the spectacle of children still being killed.
There is a moral sickness in the 'west'. It does not apply to people but their governments, most of which, it should be remembered, 'cooperated' with the United States in the launching of two massively destructive genocidal wars on Iraq and a third on Afghanistan. The lesson from Sharm al Shaikh is that the 'west' is again up to its old tricks. Since the invasion of Egypt by France in 1798 it has postured as the defender of civilized values while engaging in acts of theft and slaughter. The French occupation of Algeria (1830-1962) was the first step on the long road that led to Palestine. In his time William Gladstone ordered the British invasion of Egypt in 1882, which was followed by the invasion of Sudan and the slaughter of thousands of protonational Sudanese warriors at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. The civilian population of Omdurman were terrorized into submission through the British shelling of their city. Bodies lay everywhere. In his time another British Prime Minister, David Lloyd-George, directed the Greek invasion of western Anatolia in 1919, described by a commission of inquiry, with Arnold Toynbee agreeing, as a 'war of extermination' of Turkish Muslims in the occupied territory.
Only a few years before the Greek invasion, hundreds of thousands of Muslims had been massacred or herded out of their homeland in south-eastern Europe by the armies of four Balkan states during the Balkan War of 1912-13. The same powers that were to determine the future of the Middle East in Paris and San Remo after the First World War did nothing to stop them. In 1917 a British army marched into Baghdad, its commander declaring that 'our armies do not come into your lands as conquerors of enemies but as liberators'. 'Iraq', a country which did not then exist, was immediately subjected to land and air attack to make sure that its people received the full benefits of their 'liberation'. From that time until and beyond that day in April 2004 when graduating Iraqi police were told by Jerry L. Bremer, the 'head' of the 'Coalition Provisional Authority', that 'once again the Land of the Two Rivers is the focal point of the clash between the forces of darkness and the light of civilisation', Iraq has never recovered from the shock of the 'impact of the west'. In Tony Blair, Britain found a late 20th reincarnation of William Gladstone and David Lloyd-George, all of them enthusiastic for war, all of them profoundly sanctimonious, deeply hypocritical and totally ignorant of the countries and cultures they were destroying. Gladstone and Lloyd-George were completely hostile to Islam. Tony Blair, on the other hand, is such a narcissist it is difficult to say that he stands for any fixed truth.
In 1917 Arthur James Balfour 'gave' Palestine to the Zionists. Of course it was not his or his government's to give but rightful ownership was hardly a consideration at the high point of imperialism. Balfour's gift was cloaked in the rhetoric of high morality and noble purpose. The reality was seedy. For its own imperial purposes Britain needed a loyal minority on the ground in Palestine, something like France's Maronite protégés in Lebanon, but did not have one. On the assumption that the Zionists would fill such a role the British government decided that they should have Palestine, and that Britain should protect them, should build up the 'national home' and should close the door to the future until they had built up some viable demographic base. For their own purposes the Zionists never talked openly of establishing a state in Palestine. They hid their ambitions and tailored their aspirations and their rhetoric to meet British interests. They talked of bringing civilization and progress to the 'primitive people of Asia', as Moses Hess wrote. They were loyal but only for as long as loyalty served their purposes. When Britain was exhausted as an imperial power they turned immediately to the United States, the only 'western' power that could replace Britain and France in the Middle East and further their interests.
From 1917 the 'west' has never budged in its support for the Zionist project in Palestine. Influential voices of protest have been raised from time to time (i.e. Ernest Bevin's in 1948) but until the present, right up to the summit conference at Sharm al Shaikh, Israel apparently can commit no crime that cannot be overlooked, explained away or justified by 'western' leaders. Hands will be wrung at the 'disproportionality' of its actions but never is it subjected to punishment for the worst of the crimes committed by 'defence forces' acting on the orders of the government of Israel. Never once has it been suggested by anyone outside the Arab or Muslim worlds that Israel should be made to pay reparations for the loss of life and destruction of property. Even now someone else is going to have to pay for the reconstruction of Gaza which, because the 'west' refuses to restrain or punish what Norman Finkelstein has called a 'lunatic' state, a state Yitzhak Laor describes as being engaged in 'a long war of annihilation against Palestinian society', will remain vulnerable to destruction again whenever the government of Israel decides. Israel has plunged the Middle East into war after war, and many more could have started as the result of its provocations had Arab states felt able to respond.
No state in the Middle East has treated international law and the United Nations with greater contempt yet no other state in the world has been so indulged. There is apparently nothing Israel can do that warrants punishment. It can invade, occupy and settle; it can assassinate; it can send death squads into Palestinians towns; it can massacre; it can use banned weapons; it can reduce the suburbs of Beirut, the towns of southern Lebanon, the refugee camps of the West Bank and Gaza to an urban wasteland; it can set bomb hospitals so that patients have to be evacuated in the middle of the night; it can bomb orphanages, schools, mosques, bridges, roads, power plants, fuel depots, anything it wants to bomb and anywhere it wants to bomb; it can create wave after wave of refugees; it can turn them into refugees twice or three times and still bomb them wherever they find shelter; it can uproot olive groves and orange orchards; it can declare any kind of war it wants, topographical, hydrographical, demographical, without the 'west' intervening except to declare that it will stand by Israel. So the question has to be asked – is there anything Israel can do that the governments of the 'west' will not allow beforehand or indulge afterwards? If the murder of hundreds of children does not make a difference, what will? Is the 'west' still so mesmerized by the Nazi holocaust of the Jewish people that Israel has the licence to do whatever it wants?
In its sleepwalking state the 'west' does not seem to realise what it is standing by, and what it should be standing for, because its refusal to deal rationally with Israel, through the application of international law, and through the application of sanctions, isolation and ejection from the United Nations if it does not respond to warnings, threatens to end in a collision of terrifying proportions.
The point is being made by an increasing number of commentators that Israel cannot survive in its present state. The reason may be demographic, because in two or three decades there will be far more Palestinians between the Mediterranean and the Jordan than Jewish Israelis. The reason may also be that people across the Middle East and elsewhere have reached the conclusion in the wake of Gaza that Israel in its present state and peace are permanently incompatible. Israel's depredations have certainly bred anti-Semitism but basically Israel is reviled for what it is and what it has done. It is in a region where it has made itself hated through its own actions.
The spectacle of religious Jews watching the destruction of Gaza from afar and dancing in celebration, the anti-Arab graffiti written on the walls of Hebron and Gaza might not speak for all Israelis but certainly speaks for a large number. The triumphalist rhetoric in the Israeli media, the indifference of the Israeli mainstream to death and destruction in Gaza and Lebanon is proof that nothing is going to change until Israel is made to pay for its savage, atavistic and deeply uncivilized behavior. There is no two state solution on the horizon. There is no one state solution on the horizon. There is no principled involvement by the United States or European governments on the horizon, so what else can there be on the horizon but more war and finally, perhaps inevitably, one aggressive war that Israel cannot win without the direct involvement of those 'western' states committed to its 'defence'. This is the dark, bleak future boiling over the horizon in the wake of Gaza.


The cold weather is knocking on our door…Do not get caught with your heating system not functioning properly.
needed. We recommend for you to schedule a fall PMA (preventative maintenance agreement) soon.
2) Clean ignition assembly, test safety controls and clean and replace the filters.
3) Check Burners, inspect the wiring and clean the blower.
4) Check the thermostat operation.
Call Dayco today to schedule your tune-up with one of our NATE Certified Technicians.
Let us provide your heating solution's. Satisfaction Guaranteed with a Smile.


I have covered technology in Asia for The Wall Street Journal since early 2014. Below are links to a selection of my work.
You can view my most recent stories on WSJ.com here.
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Enterprise: India's Biometric Feat: Big Boon or Big Brother?
Scoop: China Bike-Sharing Titan Mobike Sets Sights on Washington, D.C.
Interactive: Despite Challenges, Hong Kong Startups Begin to Take Off. More here.
Prior to working at the Journal, I was a Bangkok-based freelance journalist.
This page was last updated Jan., 2015.