The Benefits Of Online Forensic Nursing Education Programs

There are a few different ways to get certified in forensic nursing. One of these ways is to enroll in an online distance learning program from one of several colleges around the country, but if you can find one close to you, it could work to your advantage. These programs are becoming very popular and would give you a great opportunity to get certified at your convenience.

Forensic nursing offers exclusive challenges to registered nurses looking for exciting health care careers. Many colleges offer online nursing certification courses that help nurses earn the qualifications they need for a rewarding career in forensic nursing.

These programs are becoming more and more popular because you can study at your convenience and not miss any time away from your present job or other responsibilities you may have.

The internet is helping improve the availability and attractiveness of distance learning programs. There are over two million students involved in online programs with over 80% of all colleges offering a form of distance education programs.

While you should consider the popularity and effectiveness in your decision, the particulars about the online classroom experience may surprise you. It actually works in the same way that traditional classrooms work. You will have lectures although not in person. You'll have assignments although you won't be handing them in. And, of course, you'll have exams although you won't be using a pencil or paper.

Classes begin at certain times, but you won't have to attend in person. You'll be communicating with an instructor via email, bulletin boards, instant messenger , and chat rooms. Special software programs simulate your classroom and you'll have the ability of having virtual workgroups with other students in the program and also work individually with quizzes that may be assigned.

The software gives you access to text files as well as chat functions and bulletin boards. Either streaming audio or recorded video gives you access to the lectures. Most instructors will respond to email on a regular basis usually within 48 hours and offer live class sessions or prerecorded sessions.

With this type of computer assisted environment, these programs are highly effective.

The simple convenience of this type of environment will no doubt make these programs more popular. While weighing your decision about how to get certified, you should keep this option in mind.

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Are You Ready For Collage?

THE HISTORY OF COLLAGE

It wasn't until the 20th century that the term collage was coined (more about that shortly.) Nevertheless,Japanese calligraphers in the 12th century glued paper and fabric onto their written poetry as a background. This technique could by defined as collage. 15th and 16th century artisans in the Near East applied intricate paper designs for their handmade books. In medieval times, around the 13th and 14th centuries, artists enhanced their spiritual images and icons painted on panels with a variety of materials including gold leaf (paper thin sheets of gold attached with glue), fabric, jewels, relics and hand-colored papers. Nuns were creating beautiful and intricately design bookmarks for their prayer books. All of these artful applications are aligned with the collage technique.

In the early 19th century, with the advent of the camera and photography, families were gluing photos into scrap books. Commercial screens and lampshades with photo images of popular tourist attractions and European landmarks were mass produced and became very popular decorative household items

CONTEMPORARY COLLAGE

It wasn't until the 20th century that Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque first glued material on to their paintings. It was then "collage" became a word that refers to a specific kind of art form. The term collage is derived from the French "coller" meaning "to paste or to glue." Soon collage became the word for describing a new and exciting artistic process.

The scene was set and Picasso and Braque were the players. The traditional, idealistic, classical subject matter of the Renaissance and Romantic Eras was on the wane. The Impressionists had helped pave the way for this movement by choosing to paint local subject matter--public gardens, cathedrals and country lanes. Claude Monet, a famous Impressionist, painted many studies of haystacks under the continually changing light of day. So, it wasn't surprising that artistic forerunners like Picasso and Braque, were using theatre tickets and fragments of posters and newspapers, in their paintings. Ultimately, their use of mass media materials established the contemporary wide-open guidelines for modern art:

(1) Any material can be used to make an artwork

2) Any idea can be used for an artwork.

(3) Any technique can be used for making artwork.

Today, collage is an established art form that presents an imaginative, provocative, and often humorous perspective by employing common, everyday objects as subject matter. Collage transforms the usual into the unusual. The skills required for making a collage are both visual and physical. The physical skill involves combining objects to create a composition. The visual skill requires an eye and mind sensitive to meaning and context of the objects.

HOW DO YOU MAKE A COLLAGE?

Collage begins with collecting a variety of materials to produce a "visual vocabulary." This should be anything that attracts you. Ransack your dresser drawers, go to yard sales, page through your old photos or dumpster dive. Believe in your attractions to the objects you have found. Keep in mind that materials used in collage can be anything: papers of any sort, scraps of fabric, leaves, drift wood, plastic containers, grasses and seeds, old appliances, driftwood, leaves, etc. The possibilities are limitless! So begin collecting! Next, start exploring and experimenting with how your found objects might be combined in composition to create a collage. Remember, that the ultimate goal of collage is to assemble a collection of materials to make a new visual form. What could your collage represent? It could talk about your life using photos and other materials that reflect your personal history. It could make a statement, for example, it could show how you feel about global warming and the environment. Or your collage could take you to a place your always wanted to go to: a paradise of tropical beauty or a utopian city. Your imagination will be activated by collecting the materials and your assembling of them. And then your thoughts and feelings will be revealed.

COLLAGE METHODOLOGY

Collage is far more than just cutting and pasting things down on mat board. It takes skill to see beyond the obvious image. For example, if you were to go through magazine pages and cut out all of the images of eyes, then arrange them into a pattern, this would be a new way of seeing a familiar image in a different way. The image, repeated many times, gives itself up to the collage composition. Why? So you can see something else! When you look at the composition, the pattern will be evident first, then, you will identify the eye images. The eye images have become modules or units of design in a collage composition.

Here's another example. How could a group of photos and other materials you collected from of, say, your trip to Las Vegas, be composed into a collage to represent a desert sunset? You would have to go beyond the virtual material of photos and memorabilia and translate it into the desert sunset idea. You would have to adjust your eye to perceive the photos another materials as just colors and shapes. Once you can do this, you can leap the reality of your collected materials to another reality and create the sunset!

What if you want to make a collage which evokes the feeling of, say, the 1950's. Using photos and images of that time would be an effective, journalistic way of defining that period. However, it might be even more effective to choose a 50's type color combination through collecting many pink and black colored papers and then constructing a picture of a big-finned automobile or a poodle skirt from those found papers. Why? Because, the use of 1950's related images is usual. Choosing a 1950's color scheme and making an symbol or icon from that period of time is more creative, more demanding and more visually exciting.

Here's another example. You want to make an entire cityscape collage from the letters and logos of well known products: Coca-Cola, Chevrolet, Palmolive and John Deere,etc. which you have cut out from magazines. This project would be interesting and effective. However, it would be more of a challenge and a more provocative commentary,to depict a woodland scene using those commercial images. The combining of commercial, highly identifiable subject matter into a pastoral image is much more provocative and engaging to the viewer. Imagine the effect if one sees a lovely landscape, only to discover, upon a closer look, that the entire landscape is made from big corporation logos!

THE MAGIC AND POWER OF COLLAGE

Taking collage skills one step further brings the magic of collage to another level: the mysterious interaction between objects to form a new collage concept. For example, the a famous artist, Joseph Cornell, created small boxes that housed compositions of curious objects including old toys and parts of toys, mirrors, sea shells, trinkets, fragments, posters, theatre tickets and post cards. These boxes, which are now in many museum collections world wide, are tiny worlds, magic environments that often evoke a mysterious and sometimes frightening feeling in the viewer. This reaction is caused by the combination of the objects in the box. For example, a 19th century playing card is interesting as subject matter, but combined with a stuffed crow and an old wrist watch, the meaning of the composite objects changes. What does this combination of items evoke? The crow, by itself, is simply a stuffed crow. But in the combination with the other objects, it might be seen as vulture-like. The wrist watch, just an old, discarded wrist watch by itself, could be seen as a symbol of stopped time in the context of the other objects. And, the playing cards, just antique playing cards by themselves, in the context of the combined objects, can symbolize fate.

Artist Robert Rauschenberg placed a stuffed goat with a tire around its middle on one of his paintings. The combination was startling, not just because of the oddness of the goat wearing the tire, but because the painting became a platform, or pedestal, for these curious objects. In collage, the combination of two or more objects or images can produce a subconscious reaction. The viewer cannot quite grasp why the collage is compelling, but reacts strongly, nevertheless: either confused, fascinated, repelled, frightened or awe-struck.

Here's an example: In the famous artist Lucas Samaras' artwork, the artist uses a simple chair as his subject matter. But, he has glued pins on it and covered it entirely. A chair, in itself, basically signifies comfort and rest. Covered with pins, however, the chair becomes an anti-chair--an object that has become off-putting, evoking a negative connotation. This, the viewer may think, is not a chair I would like to sit on, thank you.

THE USUAL TO THE UNUSUAL

Ultimately, the power and magic of collage are most effective when there is a tension in meaning between the objects or images that comprise the collage. Honing collage skills one travels from the usual to the unusual. A beginner might paste pictures of cars in a certain way on a mat board. The collage will not be much more than ad copy. However, developing skills in using collage can bring new perceptions. For example, pictures of cars arranged one on top of the other and in many rows translates the image to another connotation: that perhaps all of these lovely new vehicles will end up in the scrap lot. This makes the image much more provocative to the viewer and carries with it a larger, more interesting statement.

The real power and magic of collage is in learning collage skills, so that whatever one is working with, the translation of the images creates a strong and provocative composition.

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Traditional Magazines Vs Online Magazines - A Short Term Win and Long Term Rout

I receive a hard copy version of Inc. magazine each month, delivered to by my friendly mailman. He's been delivering our mail to us for years. The magazine is arriving for free, though I cannot recall how or why this arrangement occurred, perhaps it was from remnant sky miles on airline programs which remained unused, or for which I'll never accrue sufficient miles for anything. I like Inc. magazine and think many of the articles are interesting and thought provoking, once you can find them. In the March 2010 issue, for example, the reader first finds content on page six with a short profile accompanied by a large photograph, on page 14 there is a letter from the editor and on page 17 there is reader mail (hopefully email).

If we want to be generous and don't refer to the inside cover as an actual page, the reader is provided with three pages of content in the first 17 pages of the magazine, or a ratio of 82% advertisements to 18% content. Continuing on to page 41, there is approximately 14 pages of content out of 24 pages, which is a happier ratio of 42% advertisements to 52% content. Overall, in the first 41 pages I found 17 pages of content which translates to roughly 40% reader content and 60% advertisement. Of course, if I had the patience, I would have analyzed all of the pages of the magazine. But a quick Google search led me to a web site called Magazine.org, which states that the average (traditional) magazine is about a 50/50 ratio between ads and content. Overall, I guarantee my down and dirty research to be somewhere between relatively accurate to completely anecdotal and spurious. Feel free to contact me as you browse your own magazine pages counting ads versus content should your due diligence and subsequent findings prove otherwise!

Let's compare my Inc. Magazine findings with an online magazine. I would estimate that the online magazine I review daily has a ratio of 60% content to 40% advertisements, which is much better than the paper based version of Inc., or the Magazine.org estimate. However, and this is an important caveat, whenever the reader selects an online article to read, content always appears. In a traditional magazine, it's somewhat more challenging, and certainly more time consuming to find the table of contents and then leaf through the publication to arrive at page 41 to read your article. We all have a propensity to browse paper based magazines page by page until an article catches our eye.

It's rare that a paper based magazine shows up at our house. From time to time we might receive a promotional copy, but our online propensity continues to grow. We receive the New York Times on Sundays though we have questioned how long we will continue to subscribe to the paper based version. Our Boston Globe and Boston magazine delivery days have long since passed. We continue to embrace a virtual and online centric manner of content consumption, which is easier, faster and more environmentally friendly. We seem to quote Yahoo, blogs, and online resources far more than we now say, "I read an interesting article in the paper."

Consequently, I think there is no doubt that online magazines are on the right track from a content and delivery standpoint. That said, there are several things they could do to enhance the reader experience. For example they could place all ads to the right of the content instead of the top and right. They could make the font bolder and more readily viewable for the average reader. They could add a more graphical reader interface, and perhaps even offer writers the ability to post photos. Nonetheless, they provide an invaluable service to writer and reader alike, offering searchable and extensive content, without charge, an opportunity for new writers to publish and an eco-friendly, non paper based delivery system that is sure to render traditional paper based magazines obsolete in the coming decade. In my opinion, though it is early in the game, the score looks like online magazines 1, paper based magazines 0, in what is almost certain to be a long term rout.

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Technical Writing - How to Comply With Moral and Ethical Standards in Technical Documentation

Technical writing has a number of moral and ethical standards that a professional technical writer needs to comply with. Violate them at your own peril, by risking the sudden demise of your career. Here are some of these issues...

Plagiarism - Needless to say, copying and pasting other people's work is a reprehensible act. It's theft. You just don't do it. Period.

"Fair Use" and Quoting sources - However, this does not mean that you can not quote from other peoples' work within the bounds of "fair use." Done properly, quoting others actually acknowledges and honors the good work done by one's colleagues.

And this is how you do it properly: 1) Quote only up to 200 words. 2) Use quotation marks in the beginning and end of the quotation. 3) After the quote, give full credit to the author, together with exact citation of the source.

If you cannot remember or locate the exact words, you can always paraphrase a source by explicitly stating that you are paraphrasing him or her.

Copyrights - Be very careful about using copyrighted texts, images and multi-media files. Either get the permission from the copyright holder or pay for it before use.

Another alternative is to use non-copyrighted materials that are in "public domain" for one reason or another. You can for example search Wikipedia for such copyright-free public domain images.

Release Forms - If you are dealing with artists and photographers, it would help to have them sign a "Release Form" to the effect that, when you use their material the way you agreed upon, they will not press for any rights that are not spelled out in the Release Form. It is best to have such forms prepared or looked over by your attorney, just to be on the safe side.

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Before Writing a Research Paper - A Checklist

Before writing a research paper, one should know how to read a research paper. One should always ask oneself questions when reading a research paper. Take for example, "The automatic generation of compilers from denotational semantic descriptions of the source code" would usually describe a research paper that is based on compilation.

However, please be careful of agencies who write research papers and the prices that they charge. Because a recently published research paper by scholars at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and two other universities suggests that virtual teams may extract an unexpected price. And there are people who go ahead and add their hard-won knowledge to a common pool, but may become alienated from their organization and may unfortunately even fear that they are sowing the seeds for their own replacement.

One can refer to sites that provide steps to writing a research paper in detail, a few quick links to meticulously search the site. One can also ask a Librarian for directions to reference material, who will give information that will help one to identify, locate, and evaluate information for one's research paper. There are more sites about writing a research paper from various Universities who teach one how to cite, and how not to plagiarize (which is important) and names of various dictionaries & thesauri.

It is usual that one's professor has assigned one a research paper to write on an archaeological culture or site and one unfortunately does not know what in the world to write on. But remember that there are several ways to find a good topic for a research paper, located right here.

Jonathan travels around the world and has extensive experience in many fields. Business being just one of them.

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Paper Sizes and Formats Explained - The Difference Between A4 and Letter

Have you ever really taken a look at the packs of computer paper you buy? Or can you automatically eye the standard paper used for letters and academic purposes? You have more than likely heard of A5 or Tabloid, but for many, the only two page sizes that really matter are A4 or Letter. But there exist a number of paper sizes that are relevant to our everyday lives, and knowing them can save you time and money when printing and copying.

The Systems in Existence

Though other paper size standards exist, there are two predominant systems in use today. They are the international and North American systems.

As the term implies, the international standard, also known as the ISO 216 standard, is used throughout the world. It is based on an aspect ratio of the square root of two, like the side of a square and its diagonal. This idea was originally proposed by the German scientist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg in 1786. In 1922, Dr. Walter Porstmann brought Lichtenberg's ideas into being in Germany. This new standard was known as the DIN 476 standard. The system became widely used during World War II. The most commonly used ISO paper size is A4.

The North American system is used primarily in the USA and Canada. The current sizes are based on traditional sizes such as Letter (8.5 in x 11 in) and Legal (8.5 in x 14 in). The names of North American sizes have started with ANSI ever since the adoption of ANSI/ASME Y14.1 by the American National Standards Institute in 1995. Though the sizes now begin with ANSI, they are nevertheless based on the traditional sizes.

ISO 216

The most convenient and distinguishing characteristic of ISO paper is that each format has an aspect ratio equal to the square root of two (1:4142) which makes it simple to enlarge or reduce a document for printing on another ISO paper format. The most popular series of the ISO standard is the A series. The most widely used paper of this series is the A4 format. All paper sizes of this series have a name that consists of an A followed by a number. The larger that number, the smaller the paper.

The basis for the whole system is the A0 format which has an area of one square meter. With an aspect ratio equal to the square root of two, a sheet of A0 paper ends up being 841 x 1189 millimeters. Figuring out the dimensions of the subsequent paper sizes does not require any real mathematical strain since each ensuing size can be created by simply folding the paper in half with the crease parallel to the shortest sides. If you do this with an A0 sheet of paper, the resulting dimensions will be 594 x 841 millimeters, or the A1 format. Take note that the height of A1 is equal to the width of A0.

Two other ISO paper series exist - B and C. The B series was brought into being to provide a wider range of paper sizes, where as the C series is used only for envelopes. The B paper sizes are a bit larger than their A series counterparts and are based on the geometric mean of two consecutive A series sheets. For example, B4 is between A3 and A4 in size, and B5 is between A4 and A5.

The C series was introduced to provide an envelope with enough space for an A series sheet. The sizes of the A series fit in C series envelopes of the same number. That is, a sheet of A4 easily fits into a C4 envelope. The C sizes are just between the A and B series. All of them have a height-to-width ratio equal to the square root of two.

Though these are the main formats of the ISO standard, there are other sizes used for printed items such as labels, business cards, and so on. They are often derived by cutting standard sizes into equal parts. This often leads to sizes with an aspect ratio other than the square root of two.

Simplified Enlargement and Reduction

Many copy machines have preset magnification factors for enlarging or reducing a copied document in order to print it on a different paper size. These presets typically take the form of buttons labelled 'A3 to A4' and so forth. This eliminates wasted margins and saves you the trouble of trying to guess the right magnification factor, which can lead to a heap of misspent paper.

A Fit for Any Envelope

The consistent aspect ratio of the ISO papers makes it easy to fit larger paper sizes into smaller envelopes. This can be done by simply folding the larger papers in half (crease parallel to the shorter sides) until you reach the desired size. The difference in the number of the page sizes equals the number of times you should fold it. So if you have a C4 or B4 envelope and a sheet of A2 paper, you should fold it in half twice. The same method works for filing larger paper sizes in file folders of a smaller size.

This works with the B and C envelope formats. Another commonly used format is the DL format. A DL format envelope will accommodate an A4 sheet folded in thirds or an A5 sheet folded in half lengthwise.

North American Sizes

The North American paper sizes are based on traditional formats with arbitrary aspect ratios. The most popular formats of the traditional sizes are the Letter (8.5 x 11 inches), Legal (8.5 x 11 inches), and Tabloid (11 x 17 inches) formats. You more than likely use these formats in your everyday life. Letter is the standard for business and academic documents. The Legal format is used to make legal pads, and the Tabloid format is commonly used to make tabloids or smaller sized newspapers. Very little is known about the origin of the traditional American paper formats.

There have been a few attempts to standardize the paper industry in America. President Hoover brought about the Government size when he ordered that all governmental documents and forms be printed on paper with the dimensions of 8 x 10 1/2 inches. The usage of this format did not find its way to the general public, so President Reagan later made the Letter format the standard again.

In 1995, the American National Standards Institute adopted the ANSI/ASME Y14.1 standard. The different formats of this system are denoted by ANSI followed by a letter. Even though this standard exists, the traditional sizes still remain the most widely used.

This relatively young standard is based on the traditional Letter format (ANSI A). The Letter format is comparable to the ISO A4 format in as much as it is widely used for business and academic needs, but the sizes do differ.

The ANSI paper formats are similar to those of the ISO standard in that cutting a sheet in half will produce two sheets of the next size. The difference lies in both size and the aspect ratio. The ANSI sizes have an aspect ratio that alternates between 1.2941 and 1.5455. This makes enlarging and reducing a page to fit other ANSI formats difficult and less systematic than with the ISO layouts. You will more than likely end up with margins differing from the original page.

The use of American paper sizes often leads to many problems when it comes to the international exchange of documents and therefore has become less common in universities where students are more often held to international standards when attending conferences or submitting articles to international journals. Luckily, documents can be prepared to be printed on both ANSI and ISO paper formats.

Printing A4 Documents on Letter and Vice Versa

A business partner from Germany has just sent you a document in the A4 format that you need to print out. You print the document and notice that there are some parts cut off at the top and bottom of each page. This is due to the difference in size between the A4 and Letter (ANSI A) formats. To print or copy an A4 document on Letter, you should set the magnification factor to 94% since the Letter format is 6% less tall than A4. If you plan on printing a Letter document on A4, you should set the magnification factor to 97% since A4 is 3% less wide.

Something to Think About

Which paper type you use really depends on your physical location. Some people should keep a supply of both ISO and ANSI paper on hand. Such people include university students and those who do business internationally or often send mail abroad. Many of your local office supply stores carry both types of paper regardless of the country, but sometimes it may require special ordering.

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Online School Administration Software Keeps Busy Parents Informed

Most parents would agree that it is important to keep track of their children's education given the competitive world we live in. Generally parents would need to wait 9 weeks between parent teacher conferences and the occasional report card to understand how their children are doing.

Unfortunately, today's work environment doesn't encourage time spent in evaluating your child's grades, nor does it give you the space to have a conversation with their teachers and headmasters. Most often than not, parents only find out about behavioral or academic issues once they have escalated and then it requires so much more effort to get the child back on track. Handling special situations gets tougher too.

Busy parents need a better way to communicate with their children's teachers and keep up with their progress these days. Today's world has many parents that work a lot of hours and many even travel most of the time.

What's the solution? The use of technology has brought to you, the parent, an option that has been evolving over the last decade. Using online school administration software keeps you up-to-date on your child's progress and activities during school hours.

Now parents can keep up with their child's progress on a regular basis without having to put work on hold. In today's electronic-age, this is the perfect solution to handling their activities, report cards, progress reports, schedules and disciplinary records from one place and with one application.

You can't beat the value of this product. Early warning signs of a declining academic progress can be seen early on and handled. Further-more, online school administration software is so simple to use to keep track of your child's progress when you're abroad or away from home for work. More importantly, teachers can always communicate early signs of misbehavior to you.

Software like this is innovative and gives the parents a real heads up when it comes to their child's school activities. Parents can log in weekly or even daily to find out how their child scored on their term papers and pop quizzes. Some parents are even allowed access to the grade book in the online school administration software which will highlight assignment grades and then translate those grades into the cumulative grade point average. A further advantage is in being able to develop the conversation with your child around why the grades are dropping, rather than nagging them to find out what their grades are.

With the availability of this information online, come higher requirements for safety and security. Parents would be given usernames and passwords that are generated by the online school administration software itself. This is to ensure that no one else can gain access to any personal information about the student or the family.

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