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About The Author: Anthony Colagreco is a master massage therapist and private investigator who enjoys writing poetry during his spare time. He also is an assistant and advisor to Tony Ward Studio. To access additional articles by Anthony Colagreco, click here:https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/poetry/
Text by Artur Meyster, Copyright 2021
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The Future Of Education: How New Technologies Will Affect The Way We Learn
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During the coronavirus lockdown, organizations face a challenging situation. Since they needed to close their offices, most couldn’t operate. However, several leaned on tech professionals and new technologies to survive. Because remote work became the new normal, the way we live, work, and learn has changed. Tech tools like smartphones and laptops are now a must-have, and the need for technical skills has increased.
Day after day, more companies are investing in emerging tech inventions not only to improve their processes but to offer better products and services. In the education sector, e-learning is leaving traditional education behind. However, many other new technologies are reinventing teaching and learning. If you want to know how the future of education will look like, you should read this article. It will provide you with a better idea of how new technologies will affect the education sector.
Video-based Learning
In the digital era, video-assisted teaching is playing an essential role in making students feel engaged. Several companies have implemented it to enhance their courses and provide even better services. Video-based learning enables companies to analyze offered curricula and set new strategies to improve their teaching methods.
Video-based learning makes the learning process much more enjoyable. Everyone can have fun while playing and learning. For example, Youtube Kids is a top-rated app that almost every kid loves. Since young children can watch visually appealing videos, learn new songs, and play, learning while playing will no longer be challenging.
Other companies like Udacity offer excellent video-assisted coding courses for those who seek to break into the tech world. Its courses are very engaging and enable students to repeat every lesson as many times as they want. If a particular lesson becomes a challenge, you can watch it several times until you feel you’re able to move on.
Video-based learning will shape the future of education because it helps companies provide more personalized services. Students can learn faster and provide even better results. Video-assisted programs also give individuals schedule flexibility. For that reason, no matter how busy your schedule is, you’ll always have time to learn. After all, who hasn’t learned how to repair something by watching a five-minute Youtube video?
Online Classrooms
Cloud computing is taking online education to a whole new level. Years ago, if you weren’t able to attend a class, you probably needed to ask your classmates what the teacher said and taught. However, with online classrooms, education is becoming more accessible. Online classrooms enhance the interaction between students and teachers. By simplifying teaching and learning, you can set up classes in only minutes. Furthermore, communication isn’t a barrier, and you can send updates to parents or any individual in real-time.
Online classrooms also make providing feedback much more comfortable. Teachers can store frequently used comments, and, as a result, providing fast and personalized responses isn’t a struggle. Online classrooms provide organizations with data security. Hence, no matter what they need to keep protected, they can stay calm and focus on the important thing—reinventing the market.
The increasing demand for online platforms like Google Classrooms has encouraged organizations to hunt for tech professionals with software engineering and cloud computing skills. Therefore, if you’re looking to attract employers’ attention, you should consider becoming a software engineer. According to Bootcamp Rankings, there are over 19,200 open job listings and 1,000 hiring companies.
Artificial Intelligence: the Key to Personalized Education
These days, artificial intelligence is transforming everything, from mobile applications to manufacturing procedures and learning. Personalized education is key to increase students’ engagement. Hence, many companies have invested vast amounts of money in AI and machine learning to offer more customized services.
Personalized education wouldn’t be possible without the help of data scientists. Consequently, companies are offering exceptional salaries and perks to skilled candidates. After all, they can analyze and interpret gathered information to meet students’ needs.
AI chatbots are also playing an important role in education. By automating administrative tasks like grading, the job of teachers is now more comfortable. AI chatbots can also track student performance. Consequently, teachers and companies can adjust the curriculum provided to meet the requirements of any student.
Conclusion
Generally speaking, the need for digital tools will grow in the next decade. In that case, if you seek to stay relevant, you should get familiar with new tech inventions. Also, more companies will invest in tech to improve in-class and out-of-class experiences. As a result, education will become much more engaging and comfortable. Traditional education will probably become obsolete in the following years. Nevertheless, there’s still a long way to go before that happens.
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About The Author: Artur Meyster is the founder of Career Karma. To access additional articles by this author, click here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/career-karma/
Text by Bob Shell, Copyright 2021
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The Politics of Incarceration
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Back in September of 2020, a federal court ruled that the IRS could not deny any U.S. citizen the CARES Act stimulus money simply because she/he was incarcerated. In early October the Virginia Department of Corrections provided each of us with a 1040 form and instructions on how to apply for the $ 1,200 checks. We all filled out the forms and mailed them to the IRS immediately. So far as I can tell, no one who applied by mail has gotten a penny yet. Those who had friends or family apply for them on the Internet got their first checks long ago, and some have gotten their second ones. That’s about five months since we mailed in our forms! That’s pretty ridiculous, in my opinion. I can always use money!
I wrote on behalf of myself and others to the law firm that sued the IRS, asking for their help. In response they sent me a letter saying to go on the IRS website, call the IRS’s 800 number, or call them for information. Who do they think they’re dealing with? We can’t go on the Internet, we can’t call 800 numbers, and we can’t call them! Their advice is useless to us, all members of the class they sued on behalf of! Like many people on the outside, they don’t understand the restrictions we labor under.
Yes, we have so-called email, but I can’t enter someone’s email address into the system. They must do it from their end. My email ‘address book’ doesn’t even show the address, just the person’s name!
What we have is not real email.
So, because we lack Internet access we wait months for our money! The Business Office here says the IRS is releasing the checks in a slow trickle, five or so per week. There are over 1,000 men here, the majority of whom had to apply by mail. At five checks a week, it’ll take years! If I sound angry, I am. I’m in prison, yes, but I’m still a citizen, with as much right to that money as any other citizen! If I owe the IRS money, they make me pay interest for every day I’m late, but they’re sure not paying us interest for their delay.
People keep asking me how I’m progressing on the legal front. The answer is that I’m not, at least right now. Our law library is closed, so I can’t get on a computer to do my research, and the Virginia courts are operating under a declaration of judicial emergency, meaning they’re only performing basic functions. All my court deadlines are on hold until the Virginia Supreme Court ends the emergency. I’ll have 90 days then to file my briefs. My two suits to get my convictions overturned are stalled because of this, as is my suit to get my forest back. This last has been made all the more poignant by a book I’m reading.
‘The Hidden Life of Trees’ is the name of a wonderful book by Peter Wohlleben, German forester, who has his own forest.
We don’t think of trees feeling and acting. Wohlleben tells us that’s largely because trees live at a different speed from us. Our nerve impulses move along our neural pathways very fast, in milliseconds. But similar impulses in trees crawl along, taking seconds to move an inch. Time is stretched for trees, compressed for us. To us, it seems that trees act in slow motion, because their lives are unhurried. But they do feel, and they do communicate. A mother tree reckognizes her offspring and favors them by supplying nourishment the younger trees need. The forest community provides nourishment to sick trees, even keeping stumps alive until they can grow into trees again.
A forest is a community, with the complex conversation taking place underground between roots, where we can’t see it. A symbiosis between tree roots and fungi takes place right under our noses — or feet.
This book has made me appreciate my forest even more and made me even more determined to get it back. As a famous person once said, “I have not yet begun to fight!”
Meanwhile, life here continues in lockdown. We get out of our cells into our common area a few hours each day, which is why I can send/receive emails, but we’re fed in our cells, and only leave the building to go to the medical department, or to go to the gym, where they’re vaccinating us.
We’ve all gotten the first of two injections of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. I’m due for number two on the 18th. The vaccine hit me hard. My whole left side was painful for days. My cellmate spent the day after in bed, with chills, fever, nausea, the whole gamut of side effects. Some people had no reaction at all. The nurses told us the harder it hits you, the better, since that means your immune system has been triggered to produce antibodies.
Some medical authorities are saying that because this damnable virus is mutating rapidly, we may need annual booster shots for each new strain. Guess maybe they could give it to us along with our annual flu shot.
We’ve had quite a few people here, inmates and staff, catch the disease. Some have had to be hospitalized, and some have died, including a friend of mine I’d known for eight years.
In here we deal with a man based on how he comports himself. We really don’t pay attention to what he’s in for, and usually don’t even know. Of course, there are those who delight in knowing, and in spreading rumors. A prison is a community. I’ve been the victim of rumermongers, based on a totally false rumor started by some lowlifes years ago. It goes away, and periodically pops its ugly head up again. I just ignore it, and carry on being myself. Life’s too short to worry about stupid people telling stupid tales.
The COVID lockdown has also delayed completion of my next book. I’m calling it COSMIC DANCE II as a working title, but may publish it under another title. I’ll let everyone know when it’s published.
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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence for involuntary manslaughter for the death of Marion Franklin, one of his former models. He is serving the 13th year of his sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Facility, Virginia. To read Bob Shell’s, first essay on civil war, click here: https://tonywarderotica.com/bob-shell-in-praise-of-ecdysiasts/
Text by Bob Shell, Copyright 2021
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In Praise of Ecdysiasts
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Because I spent more than thirty-five years photographing nudes, I appreciate people comfortable in their skin. Ecdysiasts are people, usually female but also male, who make their living taking off their clothing to music, strippers in common parlance, but also modern dancers.
I found my best photography models from among their ranks. It’s not that I specifically sought out strippers, that’s just how it turned out. In the pre-Internet days I found my models in two ways, advertisements in college newspapers, and word of mouth. I don’t remember how many times I’d have a model in my studio for a shoot, and after the photo session she’d say, “I have this friend…” I always told her to invite the friend in with her next time for a test. In several cases these friends turned out to be better models than the original woman. This was particularly the case with dancers, and dance students who tended to have other dancers/dance students for friends.
The other best models I found were naturists, commonly called nudists. There was a naturist camp near Richmond, Virginia, called ‘Whitetail Park’ where I must say all the tails I saw were nicely tanned, and I found a number of very good models. It may still be there, but I’ve been unable to travel since 2003. I also found a large nudist colony in Cologne, Germany, beside the Rhine River right across from the Koln Messe, the giant exhibition halls where international trade shows used to be held, and found models there when I was in Germany.
After the rise of the Internet, I found most models through my own website (bobshell.com) and sites like OneModelPlace and ModelMayhem.
The other way I found models was referrals from other photographers. My late friend Johnny Meeks of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, referred a number of very good models to me. Johnny was the original drummer for the Allman Brothers, whom he met while in art school in Sarasota, but turned from music to photography.
Now, before anyone calls me a sexist for concentrating on photographing women, I’ll say that I also photographed a few men, but I find the more rounded contours of the female body more attractive photographically.
I always paid my models well, even when I was first starting out and had little money myself. I also kept scrupulous records, keeping signed model releases in a file of everyone who ever modeled for me. After my arrest in 2003, the police had access to those releases, which have name, address, and Social Security number, and tried for more than four years to find anyone who’d ever modeled for me with anything negative to say about me. My models never felt exploited, and a number are friends today.
I’ve photographed nudes in Virginia, Illinois, Louisiana, California, Nevada, Maine, Florida, etc., and internationally in England, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Japan. In every case I honored whatever the local laws were, but the USA is the most restrictive, allowing me to only photograph women eighteen and older.
My career as a photographer was cut short by my conviction in 2007, based on testimony the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia says was, “Just wrong!” Once I’m out of here and free again, I plan to renew my career. I’m full of repressed ideas for photos.
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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence for involuntary manslaughter for the death of Marion Franklin, one of his former models. He is serving the 13th year of his sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Facility, Virginia. To read Bob Shell’s, first essay on civil war, click here: https://tonyward.com/cosmic_dance/
Editor’s Note: If you like Bob Shell’s blog posts, you’re sure to like his new book, COSMIC DANCE by Bob Shell (ISBN: 9781799224747, $ 12.95 book, $ 5.99 eBook) available now on Amazon.com . The book, his 26th, is a collection of essays written over the last twelve years in prison, none published anywhere before. It is subtitled, “A biologist’s reflections on space, time, reality, evolution, and the nature of consciousness,” which describes it pretty well. You can read a sample section and reviews on Amazon.com.
Text by Andrea Blanco, Copyright 2021
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Gianni Versace a Seductive Mind
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Gianni Versace was born in Reggio Calabria, Italy in 1945, the son of a dressmaker is why Gianni became interested in fashion at an early age. He spent a lot of time in her workshop learning the craft from his mom while developing a talent for drawing fashion figures with a charcoal marker. He was very interested in art and poetry during his youth.
Gianni was always a familiar person and from a young age his muse and main inspiration was his sister, Donatella. The relationship between them was very close and they have a multitude of stories to tell about their lives together. In fact it was Gianni at just 11 years old who convinced his sister to dye her hair blonde due to her fanaticism for Patty Pravo, a famous Italian singer.
Gianni’s career in the world of fashion began in 1976 with designs made for his own sister, after having worked for
various companies in the sector. With the help of his brother Santo, he decided to create his own brand with the symbol of the medusa as the company logo. Gianni had a great interest in classical culture, therefore, this mythological character that represents strength, power, and to ward off evil was the perfect logo for his firm.
Art has always been an important part of Gianni’s life. During his lifetime he collected some classics including Degas and Modigliani. He also enjoyed the work of contemporary artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. In the fashion world, Yves Saint Laurent was a steady influence.
With respect to Pop Art, Andy Warhol played with the idea of producing images of Campbell’s soup or icons like Marilyn Monroe and turning them into works of art. In the same way, Versace influenced by Warhol designed garments stamped with the image of Marilyn Monroe have become unique pieces. Allessandra Fanari, a teacher at the L’institut Marangoni in Paris says, “when we talk about art the concept is more important than the object itself. If you change the context of an object you turn it into something different, into art itself.”
Thanks to Gianni’s great knowledge of the history of art, he was able to combine opposing styles giving rise to extravagant and unique designs. In addition, he was passionate about the Baroque period, its forms, extraordinary flair and style. Versace knew how to see art, appreciate it and express it through his designs as a way to show the world beauty.
He is considered one of the first designers who related fashion and music by collaborating with good friends such as Elton John, Whitney Houston, and Madonna. Those collaborations brought him great prestige and notoriety on the international stage, getting music and Hollywood celebrities to start looking towards him in the early 1990s to design costumes for their performances and movies. Gianni brought the rock concerts to his catwalks and made fashion shows popular in different sectors by using actors, movie stars and singers as his models.
At the beginning of the nineties, Gianni Versace put together all the top models of the moment on the same catwalk, an action that changed the history of fashion, since until then super models were reserved for magazines.
Under his motto “I don’t have time for the boring monotony of good taste” he combined leather, lace and metal to fill Haute Couture with sensuality and a move away from minimalism with a strong brand identity recognized for its extensive use of color and extravagant prints.
There are many reasons for Gianni Versace’s lasting success. According to Tony Ward, currently a visiting Instructor of Fine Arts at Haverford College and former lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, “one of them is that he was one of the first fashion designers to reveal his sexuality. It was a risky decision because many in his field thought that he would alienate his client base, however that was simply not the case.” In addition, “Versace differed from most fashion houses because Gianni believed in running a family business and that was one of the keys that allowed the brand to continue with success after his death in 1997.” On the other hand, Ward considers that the way Versace combined fabrics with bold color, graphics and modernist design was the work of his genius.
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For some mega fans like Bryan Abrams, a prolific collector of Versace since meeting the designer in 1982, spoke at the University of Pennsylvania about his Versace collection during one of professor Ward’s fashion classes. Bryan has collected exclusive and unique pieces for years, because he states, “wearing Versace is completely different from any other brand. Gianni created a completely new way of looking at fashion. His colors and vibrancy are like no other fashion house. When you wear Versace, you stand out!”
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About The Author:
Andrea Blanco is studying for a masters degree specializing in fashion communication and marketing in Barreira A+D, Valencia (Spain). “I studied this because I love fashion and everything in this world and I like to learn more about fashion and art, fashion and music, history…. Moreover I like to be up on the latest trends. Someday I would like to work in fashion communications and share my passion for fashion with the world.”