The quarrel between the Earl of Manchester and Oliver Cromwell: an episode of the English Civil War.

Mode of access: Internet.

Interoperable Standards Development : Final Report

Since 1995 the buildingSMART International Alliance for Interoperability (buildingSMART)has developed a robust standard called the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). IFC is an object oriented data model with related file format that has facilitated the efficient exchange of data in the development of building information models (BIM). The Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation has contributed to the international effort in the development of the IFC standard and specifically the reinforced concrete part of the latest IFC 2x3 release. Industry Foundation Classes have been endorsed by the International Standards Organisation as a Publicly Available Specification (PAS) under the ISO label ISO/PAS 16739. For more details, go to http://www.tc184- sc4.org/About_TC184-SC4/About_SC4_Standards/ The current IFC model covers the building itself to a useful level of detail. The next stage of development for the IFC standard is where the building meets the ground (terrain) and with civil and external works like pavements, retaining walls, bridges, tunnels etc. With the current focus in Australia on infrastructure projects over the next 20 years a logical extension to this standard was in the area of site and civil works. This proposal recognises that there is an existing body of work on the specification of road representation data. In particular, LandXML is recognised as also is TransXML in the broader context of transportation and CityGML in the common interfacing of city maps, buildings and roads. Examination of interfaces between IFC and these specifications is therefore within the scope of this project. That such interfaces can be developed has already been demonstrated in principle within the IFC for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) project. National road standards that are already in use should be carefully analysed and contacts established in order to gain from this knowledge. The Object Catalogue for the Road Transport Sector (OKSTRA) should be noted as an example. It is also noted that buildingSMART Norway has submitted a proposal

Former West's Furniture Showroom

Former West's Furniture Showroom located at 620 Wickham Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, Queensland was renovated by Robert Riddel, David Gole and David Oliver of Riddel Architecture. The building was originally designed by Karl Langer. Design features include natural light from skylights and windows positioned on an incline with a pond of water behind the glass.

The politics of literacy in David Almond and Dave McKean’s "The Savage" (2008)

Competency in language and literacy are central to contemporary debates about education in Anglophone nations around the world. This paper suggests that such debates are informing not just educational policy but children’s literature itself as can be seen in Almond and McKean’s The Savage. This hybrid text combines prose and graphic narrative and narration in order to tell the story of Blue, a young British boy negotiating his identity in the aftermath of his father's death. While foregrounding a narrative of ideal masculinity, The Savage enacts and privileges a formal and thematic ideal of literacy as index of individual agency and development. Almond and McKean produce a politicised understanding of language and literacy that simultaneously positions The Savage in a textual tradition of socio-culturally disenfranchised youth, and intervenes in that tradition to (perhaps ironically) affirm the very conditions previously critiqued by that very tradition. Where earlier authors such as Barry Hines sought to challenge normative accounts of language and literacy in order to indict educational policy and praxes, Almond and McKean work to naturalise the very logics of education and agency by which their protagonist has been disenfranchised. In doing so, The Savage exemplifies current approaches to education which claim to value social and cultural diversity while imposing national standardised testing predicated on assumptions about the legitimacy of uniform standards and definitions of literacy.

David Hicks and Cathie Holden (eds.) (2007). Teaching The Global Dimension. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 212 pages.

Teaching The Global Dimension (2007) is intended for primary and secondary teachers, pre-service teachers and educators interested in fostering global concerns in the education system. It aims at linking theory and practice and is structured as follows. Part 1, the global dimension, proposes an educational framework for understanding global concerns. Individual chapters in this section deal with some educational responses to global issues and the ways in which young people might become, in Hick’s terms, more “world-minded”. In the first two chapters, Hicks presents first, some educational responses to global issues that have emerged in recent decades, and second, an outline of the evolution of global education as a specific field. As with all the chapters in this book, most of the examples are drawn from the United Kingdom. Young people’s concerns, student teachers’ views and the teaching of controversial issues, comprise the other chapters in this section. Taken collectively, the chapters in Part 2 articulate the conceptual framework for developing, teaching and evaluating a global dimension across the curriculum. Individual chapters in this section, written by a range of authors, explore eight key concepts considered necessary to underpin appropriate learning experiences in the classroom. These are conflict, social justice, values and perceptions, sustainability, interdependence, human rights, diversity and citizenship. These chapters are engaging and well structured. Their common format consists of a succinct introduction, reference to positive action for change, and examples of recent effective classroom practice. Two chapters comprise the final section of this book and suggest different ways in which the global dimension can be achieved in the primary and the secondary classroom.

An interview with Professor David Held : exploring the concepts of cosmopolitanism and democracy

David Held is the Graham Wallace Chair in Political Science, and co-director of LSE Global Governance, at the London School of Economics. He is the author of many works, such as Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities (2010); The Cosmopolitanism Reader (2010), with Garrett Brown; Globalisation/AntiGlobalisation (2007), Models of Democracy (2006), Global Covenant (2004) and Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (1999). Professor Held is also the co-founder, alongside Lord Professor Anthony Giddens, of Polity Press. Professor Held is widely known for his work concerning cosmopolitan theory, democracy, and social, political and economic global improvement. His Global Policy Journal endeavours to marry academic developments with practitioner realities, and contributes to the understanding and improvement of our governing systems.

David F. Treagust : congenial soul, science educator, and international research leader

For almost a half century David F. Treafust has been an exemplary science educator who has contributed through his dedication and commitments to students, curriculum development and collaboration with teachers, and cutting edge research in science education that has impacted the field globally, nationally and locally. A hallmark of his outstanding career is his collaborative style that inspires others to produce their best work.

Learning by design workshop

The Learning by Design Workshop Program 2010, a part of the Queensland Government Unlimited: Designing for the Asia Pacific Event Program, was a one-day professional development design thinking workshop run on October 9, 2011 at The Edge, State Library of Queensland for self-selected public and private secondary school teachers from the subject areas of Visual Art, Graphics and Industrial Technology and Design. Participants were drawn from a database of Brisbane and regional Queensland schools from the goDesign and Living City Workshop Programs. It aimed to generate leadership within schools for design-led education and creative thinking and give teachers a rare opportunity to work with professional designers to generate future strategies for design-based learning. Teachers were introduced to the concept of design thinking in education by international keynote speakers CJ Lim (Studio 8 Architects) and Jeb Brugmann (The Next Practice), national speaker Oliver Freeman (NevilleFreeman Agency) and three Queensland speakers, Alexander Loterztain, David Williams and Keith Holledge. Inspired by the Unlimited showcase exhibition Make Change: Design Thinking in Action and ‘Idea Starters’/teaching resources provided, teachers worked with a professional designer (from a discipline of architecture, interior design, industrial design, urban design, graphic design or landscape architecture) in ten random teams, to generate optimistic ideas for the Ideal City of tomorrow, each considering a theme – Food, Water, Transport, Ageing, Growth, Employment, Shelter, Health, Education and Energy. They then discussed how this process could be best activated and expanded on to build interest and knowledge in design thinking in the classroom. Assisted by illustrators, the teams prepared a visual presentation of their ideas and process from art materials provided. The workshop culminated in a video-taped interactive design charette to the larger group, which is intended to be utilised as a toolkit and praxis for teachers as part of the State Library of Queensland Design Minds Website Project.

'In the hands of the Receivers': The Politics of Literacy in The Savage by David Almond and Dave McKean

David Almond and Dave McKean's The Savage is a hybrid prose and graphic novel which tells the story of one young man’s maturation through literacy. The protagonist learns to deal with the death of his father and his own 'savage' self by writing a graphic novel. This article reads The Savage in the context of earlier, 'Northern' literacy narrative - particularly Tony Harrison's poem "Them & [uz]" and Barry Hines' Kes — through the discourse of neoliberalism and the notion of the reluctant boy reader. It is suggested that Almond and McKean are influenced by currently dominant ideologies of gender and literacy.

Sympathy for the devil [Book reviewed : "Tasmanian Devil: A Unique and Threatened Animal" by David Owen and David Pemberton]

Two representations have dominated public perceptions of the largest living marsupial carnivore, the Tasmanian devil. One is the voracious, hurricane-like innocent savage Taz of Looney Tunes cartoon fame. The other, familiar in nineteenth- and twentieth-century rural Tasmania, is the ferocious predator and scavenger that wantonly kills livestock — and perhaps even people, should they become immobilized in the wilderness at night. Devils can take prey nearly three times their size and eat more than a third of their body weight in a sitting. Even so, it is hard to imagine how this species, being only slightly larger than a fox terrier, could be so maligned in name and image...

A Nobel Prize for governance and institutions : Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom

This paper reviews the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics jointly awarded to Oliver Williamson for his work on governance in organizations and the boundaries of the firm, and to Elinor Ostrom for her work on the governance of common pool resources. We review the careers and the research contributions of Williamson and Ostrom to the theory and analysis of economic institutions of governance. Both winners of this Prize for 'economic governance' are thoroughly deserved, yet like the Hayek- Myrdal Prize of 1974 their respective approaches, methods and findings are almost diametrically opposed. Williamson offers a top-down contracts-based solution to the incentive problems of opportunism in corporate governance, whereas Ostrom offers a bottom-up communication-based solution to the governance opportunities of community resources. We offer some critical comments on Williamson's analytic work and discussion of the potential for further application of Ostrom's case-study based experimental methodology. We conclude with a suggested third nominee to make better sense of how these two great scholars' works fit together, namely George Richardson'