Tag: K12PlayGround.com

K12Playground.com Promoting the Human in the Humanities

K12Playground.com Promoting the Human in the Humanities

Born Digital: Since 1996 we have allowed the public to submit their K12 School website and edit their contact information.

Founded on the belief that it is the intersections that bring the reason for authentic community to exist, the K12PlayGround.com connects the educators and community leaders, with a passion to collaborate, across disciplines and communities for the common good and the common wealth of the nation.

We wish to support Folklorists who will  lead K12 projects that help keep the human in the humanities. Visit: https://K12PlayGround.com

The last surviving sea silk seamstress and now you can learn to code for free.

Weaving looms were part of civilizations that existed in the Paleolithic era (this is the era where humankind invented stone tools). Certainly, it was around in the Neolithic era (10,200 BC, when humans started farming). A scrap of textile was found that researchers believe dates back to 5000 BC.

Flax was the fiber most often used by Egyptian weavers at this time, but other civilizations relied on wool for making cloth, except in China and Southeast Asia, where they were already weaving silk from silkworms. By the biblical times, all major civilizations were using weaving looms.

Women in Mesopotamia used the exceptionally light fabric to embroider clothes for their kings some 5,000 years ago. It was harvested to make robes for King Solomon, bracelets for Nefertiti, and holy vestments for priests, popes and pharaohs. It’s referenced on the Rosetta Stone, mentioned 45 times in the Old Testament and thought to be the material that God commanded Moses to drape on the altar in the Tabernacle.

Vigo is believed to be the last person on Earth who still knows how to harvest, dye and embroider sea silk into elaborate patterns that glisten like gold in the sunlight.

No-one is precisely sure how or why the women in Vigo’s family started weaving byssus, but for more than 1,000 years, the intricate techniques, patterns and dying formulas of sea silk have been passed down through this astonishing thread of women – each of whom has guarded the secrets tightly before teaching them to their daughters, nieces or granddaughters.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170906-the-last-surviving-sea-silk-seamstress

“If you want to enter my world, I’ll show it to you,” she smiled. “But you’d have to stay here for a lifetime to understand it.”
Vigo learned the ancient craft from her maternal grandmother, who taught traditional wool weaving techniques on manual looms to the women of Sant’Antioco for 60 years. She remembers her grandmother paddling her into the ocean in a rowboat to teach her to dive when she was three years old. By age 12, she sat atop a pillow, weaving at the loom.

“My grandmother wove in me a tapestry that was impossible to unwind,” Vigo said. “Since then, I’ve dedicated my life to the sea, just as those who have come before me.”

Discussion with Maestro Chiara Vigo + screening of Il Filo dell’Acqua

Museo del Bisso di Chiara Vigo

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g608919-d7309390-Reviews-Museo_del_Bisso_di_Chiara_Vigo-Sant_Antioco_Isola_di_Sant_Antioco_Province_of_Car.html

Meanwhile . . .

Joseph-Marie Jacquard is interested in using silk for weaving and visit’s  Suzhou CHINA.

The town has also been an important center for China’s silk industry since the days of the Song Dynasty, between 960 and 1279. Jacquard visited the Suzhou Silk Factory  a near 100-year old state-owned factory in Suzhou, the city of silk in China. They were using blocks for weaving at that time and this is where Jacquard copied the idea and brought it back to France.

Mechanized Weaving

Joseph-Marie Jacquard’s Loom Uses Punched Cards to Store Patterns
1801 – 1821 http://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=508

The head of a shop memorized all the patterns.

In the 1700s many inventors and industrialists tried to mechanize the weaving loom. This was done with varying degrees of success and it wasn’t until the early 1800s that power-weaving became common. This took weaving out of the home, where artist would hand-weave and turned it into a mechanized process that was done at factories.

The blocks became known as “punch cards” which would allow the machine a greater flexibility than anything mankind had then invented to do calculations.

A punch card is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. The information might be data for data processing applications or, as in earlier times, used to directly control automated machinery.

The terms IBM card, or Hollerith card, specifically refer to punch cards used in semiautomatic data processing.

Punch cards were widely used through much of the 20th century in what became known as the data processing industry, where specialized and increasingly complex unit record machines, organized into data processing systems, used punched cards for data input, output, and storage. Many early digital computers used punched cards, often prepared using keypunch machines, as the primary medium for input of both computer programs and data.

Punch cards are the beginning of computer programs. Learn to turn the ones and zero’s on and off.

Tell the punch cards what to do 🙂

 Scott E  Fahlman             :-) 
From: Scott E  Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>
I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:
:-)
Read it sideways.  Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes - given current trends.  For this, use
:-(

Learn to code for free.

https://www.freecodecamp.org/

“There are so many aspects of civilization that can be improved through better systems — and software is just a way of telling computers how to enact those systems.” — Quincy Larson

Educational CyberPlayGround: K12Newsletters 7-11-2019

K12PlayGround.com

►Discover the right school for your child.
Add Your School / Update Your School or Organization

►Find and compare K12 Schools and School Districts in the USA and Territories.

►Join Interdisciplinary #STEAM #STEM K12 School Projects. Link to your video project from your school information page and promote your work.

►JOIN Folklore / Folklife and National Security projects across the nation.

〠❁★♥✾☻♥★❁♫☯©®〠☯♫❁★♥✾☻♥ ★❁

The National Endowment for the Arts Folk & Traditional Arts team
is very excited to share a summary and video from the Close Listening: A National Case for the Value and Impact of the Folk & Traditional Arts convening that was held at the 2018 National Assembly of State Arts Agency’s pre-conference in Baltimore, MD last October: https://www.arts.gov/artistic-fields/folk-traditional-arts/close-listening-on-the-value-and-impact-of-the-folk-and-traditional-arts.

The video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_rALZNb-7M> includes highlights from conversations with several participants, and the summary <https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/Close-Listening-Summary-July2019.pdf> includes a list of key recommendations from the convening and brief summaries of each session. We hope that you will find these materials as inspiring as we have. Please feel free to share far and wide.

Cheryl Schiele~ Folk & Traditional Arts Specialist | Multidisciplinary Arts National Endowment for the Arts

“End of Old Song“
See the entire film at http://www.folkstreams.net/
Filmed in the mountains of North Carolina, this acclaimed documentary revisits the region where English folklorist Cecil Sharp collected British ballads in the early 1900s. The film contrasts the nature of the ballad singers with the presence of the juke box.

Google’s 4,000-Word Privacy Policy Is a Secret History of the Internet

Mermaids Have Always Been Black

The uproar over Disney casting Halle Bailey as the Little Mermaid overlooks generations of Caribbean and African folklore
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/opinion/black-little-mermaid.html

 

Educational CyberPlayGround, Inc. NetHappenings and K12Newsletters 6.2.19

Educational CyberPlayGround, Inc. NetHappenings and K12Newsletters 6.2.19

SCIENCE  – STEM

  • Find a School – Discover the right school for your child.

  • The history of sign language

  • The contemporary Icelandic belief in elves explained

  • Anatomy of a Perfect Album: On Joni Mitchell’s Blue

  • Joel Bernstein lifetime achievement award for photography

  • Virality Is Dead

  • David Epstein on the Genius of the Self-Taught Musician

  • Personas of a Rock ‘N’ Roll Icon

  • 737 MAX Disaster fatal consequences

  • US Customs Facial Recognition Photos Data Breach

  • Why airport face scans are a privacy trap

  • GPS Degraded Across Much of US

  • Online Spreadsheet Discloses Museum Workers’ Salaries

Find a School – Discover the right school for your child.
Find and compare K12 Schools and School Districts in the USA and Territories.  https://k12playground.com/

ARTS – STEAM

The history of sign language
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/archaeology-and-history/magazine/2019/05-06/creation-of-sign-language/

Anatomy of a Perfect Album: On Joni Mitchell’s Blue
“ONLY A PHASE, THESE DARK CAFÉ DAYS.”
https://lithub.com/anatomy-of-a-perfect-album-on-joni-mitchells-blue/
Mitchell starts the record right off with wanderlust, her first words: I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling, amplifying the feeling later: I am on a lonely road and I am traveling / Looking for the key to set me free. By boat, plane, foot, and ice skate, her whims and fancies take her to a Greek island, Paris (she doesn’t like it there), Spain, Las Vegas, maybe Amsterdam and Rome, and return home to her Ithaca, which is California. You hear Mitchell’s original Canadian-ness when she lands on the word “sorrow” as “soe-row” on “Little Green,” a poignant 1967 song, revived for this recording, from the perspective of a young single mother, also in the reverent way she intones the Canadian national anthem, “O Canada,” in the middle of “A Case of You.”

Friend  JOEL BERNSTEIN Musician / Photographer / Writer / Archivist  Compilation of Photographs – all the album covers you know
2018 IPHF FEATURES PROFILE ON JOEL FOR HIS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD [ friend during junior high / high school times ]
https://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Ringleaders/joel.html

Images of rock legends from Laurel Canyon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6OXzsUQWpg

“Virality Is Dead
I’m an independent concert promoter going on 40 years now. My clients are now only a few, and I work them nationwide. Without question, Facebook “boosted posts” are quietly putting radio and print out of business in terms of how to get the word out on a cost-effective basis. And you don’t really need virality anymore in order to promote an artist or event.
I’m not talking Facebook “ads,” but “boosted posts.” Users see these posts from the artist’s page in their newsfeeds and can share them organically, unlike “ads,” which cannot be shared. I used to spend thousands of dollars breaking a show with print ads and radio. I won’t mention the act or the market, but recently I spent $1000 on a print ad in a major metropolitan market and… in a literal example of the old saying… “Did 10 tickets.” That’s right. I sold exactly 10 tickets, not even covering the cost of the ad. I spent a fraction of that amount on boosted Facebook posts and did 500 tickets. And you wonder how the Russians spent only $100k on Facebook and turned an entire election in 2016? ~ Brian Martin”
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Investors-say-promoter-owes-them-2-million-3242597.php

David Epstein on the Genius of the Self-Taught Musician
https://lithub.com/david-epstein-on-the-genius-of-the-self-taught-musician/

What David Bowie Borrowed From William Burroughs On the Shifting Personas of a Rock ‘N’ Roll Icon
https://lithub.com/what-david-bowie-borrowed-from-william-burroughs/

Online Spreadsheet Discloses Museum Workers’ Salaries
http://www.artnews.com/2019/05/31/google-spreadsheet-museum-workers-disclose-salaries/
In another sign of increasing demand for transparency at art institutions across the world, museum workers have begun making public their salary rates via a Google Spreadsheet document that began circulating on Friday morning. Titled Art/Museum Salary Transparency 2019, the document allows users to add information about the terms of their employment and their rates of pay at some of the biggest museums in the world.

Folklore: The contemporary Icelandic belief in elves explained
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181217-the-elusive-hidden-people-of-iceland

Overview of the ArtPlace/DAISA initiative (download a copy of the report) here: https://www.artplaceamerica.org/agriculture-food
The report argues that “integrating artistic and cultural practices with food and agriculture enables a creative and inclusive process and ensures community members see their identities, histories, and interests reflected in the work.” ~ Clifford Murphy – Folk & Traditional Arts Director | Multidisciplinary Arts National Endowment for the Arts

SCIENCE  – STEM

Don’t smile for surveillance: Why airport face scans are a privacy trap
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/10/your-face-is-now-your-boarding-pass-thats-problem/

How Boeing’s Bean-Counters Courted the 737 MAX Disaster Just when the smallest jet should have been replaced with a new model, the company fell into tight-fisted hands—with fatal consequences. https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-boeing-bean-counters-courted-the-737-max-disaster

US Customs And Border Protection’s Database Of Traveler Facial Recognition Photos Was Stolen In A Data Breach
“CBP learned that a subcontractor … transferred copies of license plate images and traveler images collected by CBP to the subcontractor’s company network. The subcontractor’s network was subsequently compromised by a malicious cyber-attack.” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/daveyalba/the-us-governments-database-of-traveler-photos-has-been

GPS Degraded Across Much of US
Blog Editor’s Note: Even as a Presidential Advisory Board was discussing GPS as “the Gold Standard” for satellite-based navigation last week, the system may have been operating in a degraded mode.
On Sunday the Federal Aviation Administration held a teleconference to discuss the issue that seems to have persisted for several days.  While not “failing,” GPS signal quality seems to have degraded and this is impacting some equipment and services. Specifically, the aviation safety Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast system has been impacted across much of the United States. FAA has posted the following map depicting the areas impacted:
These problems have delayed and cancelled flights, possibly by the thousands. The FAA seems to have addressed some of this problem by issuing waivers for some aircraft to fly without operable ADS-B safety systems, as long as they stay on pre-planned routes and below 28,000 ft altitude.
Speculation on some on-line forums point to specific manufactures’ equipment and aircraft that are primarily effected. Previous degradation in GPS signal quality, such as the SVN-23 caused problem in January 2016, have shown that equipment from different vendors react differently to the problem. Some are unaffected, some go offline, and some just perform poorly.
The January 2016 SVN-23 degradation caused much of the nation’s ADS-B system to be unavailable for much of the day. Other receivers and systems were impacted also. Cellular networks, first responder systems, digital broadcast, and numerous other systems were impacted.
Watchstanders at the US Coast Guard Navigation Center seemed unaware of the problem early Monday morning, but promised to investigate and respond.
https://rntfnd.org/2019/06/10/gps-degraded-across-much-of-us-ads-b-impacted/