Mark Wilson

**Finalist in the Outstanding Music Education Print Resource Category for the 2025 Music & Drama Education Awards** Stringtastic Book 1: Cello teaches through playing in an engaging exploration of musical styles. Part of the fully integrated Stringtastic series in which violin, viola, cello and double bass can all learn and play together in any combination. Learn as you play through the world of Stringtastic, with 57 imaginative pieces that have been specifically designed to establish a secure playing technique and build confidence one step at a time. Following on from Stringtastic Beginners, this book takes the student from playing the notes of the D major scale to Grade 1 (Early Elementary). Featuring equal-level duets for all instruments, the pieces are ideal for individual and group tuition as well as flexible ensemble and classroom settings. Every piece is supported by an exciting backing track plus a piano-only track for practice, all available to download. The Stringtastic Book 1: Teacher’s Accompaniment book provides the complete piano score which works with any combination of the instrumental parts. Mark Wilson and Paul Wood have developed an engaging and accessible new series of string-playing method books… The presentation will appeal to young learners, and the careful, well-conceived pedagogy will thrill their teachers! Furthermore, the Stringtastic integrated approach gives proper deference to the social aspect of music-making by allowing violinists, violists, cellists, and bassists to play together from the start. I look forward to sharing this method with my young students and colleagues in early music education. Dr. Mark Elliot Bergman, Director of Strings and Orchestral Studies, Sheridan College.

**Finalist in the Outstanding Music Education Print Resource Category for the 2025 Music & Drama Education Awards** Stringtastic Book 1: Viola teaches through playing in an engaging exploration of musical styles. Part of the fully integrated Stringtastic series in which violin, viola, cello and double bass can all learn and play together in any combination. Learn as you play through the world of Stringtastic, with 57 imaginative pieces that have been specifically designed to establish a secure playing technique and build confidence one step at a time. Following on from Stringtastic Beginners, this book takes the student from playing the notes of the D major scale to Grade 1 (Early Elementary). Featuring equal-level duets for all instruments, the pieces are ideal for individual and group tuition as well as flexible ensemble and classroom settings. Every piece is supported by an exciting backing track plus a piano-only track for practice, all available to download. The Stringtastic Book 1: Teacher’s Accompaniment book provides the complete piano score which works with any combination of the instrumental parts. Mark Wilson and Paul Wood have developed an engaging and accessible new series of string-playing method books… The presentation will appeal to young learners, and the careful, well-conceived pedagogy will thrill their teachers! Furthermore, the Stringtastic integrated approach gives proper deference to the social aspect of music-making by allowing violinists, violists, cellists, and bassists to play together from the start. I look forward to sharing this method with my young students and colleagues in early music education. Dr. Mark Elliot Bergman, Director of Strings and Orchestral Studies, Sheridan College.

**Finalist in the Outstanding Music Education Print Resource Category for the 2025 Music & Drama Education Awards** Stringtastic Book 1 teaches through playing in an engaging exploration of musical styles. Part of the fully integrated Stringtastic series in which violin, viola, cello and double bass can all learn and play together in any combination. This Teacher’s Accompaniment book provides the complete piano score which works with any combination of the instrumental parts. Learn as you play through the world of Stringtastic, with 57 imaginative pieces that have been specifically designed to establish a secure playing technique and build confidence one step at a time. Following on from Stringtastic Beginners, this book takes the student from playing the notes of the D major scale to Grade 1 (Early Elementary). Featuring equal-level duets for all instruments, the pieces are ideal for individual and group tuition as well as flexible ensemble and classroom settings. Every piece is supported by an exciting backing track plus a piano only track for practice, all available to download. Mark Wilson and Paul Wood have developed an engaging and accessible new series of string-playing method books… The presentation will appeal to young learners, and the careful, well-conceived pedagogy will thrill their teachers! Furthermore, the Stringtastic integrated approach gives proper deference to the social aspect of music-making by allowing violinists, violists, cellists, and bassists to play together from the start. I look forward to sharing this method with my young students and colleagues in early music education. Dr. Mark Elliot Bergman, Director of Strings and Orchestral Studies, Sheridan College.

**Finalist in the Outstanding Music Education Print Resource Category for the 2025 Music & Drama Education Awards** Stringtastic Book 1: Violin teaches through playing in an engaging exploration of musical styles. Part of the fully integrated Stringtastic series in which violin, viola, cello and double bass can all learn and play together in any combination. Learn as you play through the world of Stringtastic, with 57 imaginative pieces that have been specifically designed to establish a secure playing technique and build confidence one step at a time. Following on from Stringtastic Beginners, this book takes the student from playing the notes of the D major scale to Grade 1 (Early Elementary). Featuring equal-level duets for all instruments, the pieces are ideal for individual and group tuition as well as flexible ensemble and classroom settings. Every piece is supported by an exciting backing track plus a piano-only track for practice, all available to download. The Stringtastic Book 1: Teacher’s Accompaniment book provides the complete piano score which works with any combination of the instrumental parts. Mark Wilson and Paul Wood have developed an engaging and accessible new series of string-playing method books… The presentation will appeal to young learners, and the careful, well-conceived pedagogy will thrill their teachers! Furthermore, the Stringtastic integrated approach gives proper deference to the social aspect of music-making by allowing violinists, violists, cellists, and bassists to play together from the start. I look forward to sharing this method with my young students and colleagues in early music education. Dr. Mark Elliot Bergman, Director of Strings and Orchestral Studies, Sheridan College.

**Finalist in the Outstanding Music Education Print Resource Category for the 2025 Music & Drama Education Awards** Stringtastic Book 1: Double Bass teaches through playing in an engaging exploration of musical styles. Part of the fully integrated Stringtastic series in which violin, viola, cello and double bass can all learn and play together in any combination. Learn as you play through the world of Stringtastic, with 57 imaginative pieces that have been specifically designed to establish a secure playing technique and build confidence one step at a time. Following on from Stringtastic Beginners, this book takes the student from playing the notes of the D major scale to Grade 1 (Early Elementary). Featuring equal-level duets for all instruments, the pieces are ideal for individual and group tuition as well as flexible ensemble and classroom settings. Every piece is supported by an exciting backing track plus a piano-only track for practice, all available to download. The Stringtastic Book 1: Teacher’s Accompaniment book provides the complete piano score which works with any combination of the instrumental parts. Mark Wilson and Paul Wood have developed an engaging and accessible new series of string-playing method books… The presentation will appeal to young learners, and the careful, well-conceived pedagogy will thrill their teachers! Furthermore, the Stringtastic integrated approach gives proper deference to the social aspect of music-making by allowing violinists, violists, cellists, and bassists to play together from the start. I look forward to sharing this method with my young students and colleagues in early music education. Dr. Mark Elliot Bergman, Director of Strings and Orchestral Studies, Sheridan College.

A CBCA NOTABLE BOOK 2023From award-winning author and illustrator Mark Wilson, a stirring story of the women who first won the right to vote in Australia - inspired by real people and historical eventsIn 1890, Rose Birks and her stepdaughter, Nellie, two strong-willed and determined women, began writing letters and attending meetings to help improve the lives of women and children in their home city of Adelaide. They soon found themselves part of a movement that would change the lives of women everywhere. Through their friendship with the famous female suffragist Mary Lee, they petitioned politicians and lawmakers - and in 1896 they became the first women in Australia to vote in an election. Votes for Women! tells their story.'Votes for Women! is an important book to be shared in all school and public libraries. A wonderful read' Readplus

This book proposes a conceptual framework for understanding measurement across a broad range of scientific fields and areas of application, such as physics, engineering, education, and psychology. The authors, who themselves span these disciplines, argue that the justification of the public trust attributed to measurement results can in principle apply identically to both physical and psychosocial properties. They further argue that the lack of a common conceptualization of measurement hampers interdisciplinary communication and limits the ability to share knowledge. They advance their views by first surveying the conceptual history of the philosophy of measurement and arguing that classical, operationalist and representational perspectives on measurement each make important contributions but also each have important shortcomings. A synthesis is then offered as the foundation for a new conceptual framework. The authors describe how the framework, which operates as a shared concept system, supports understanding measurement’s work in different domains, using examples in the physical and human sciences. They consider connections and consequences with respect to causality, objectivity, and intersubjectivity, among other topics, and how measurement science concepts and issues are construed across these disciplines and settings. They also address contemporary issues and controversies within measurement in the light of the framework, including operationalism, definitional uncertainty, and the relations between measurement and computation. The book concludes with a justification for the basic claim that measurement is an empirical and informational process that produces explicitly justifiable information. Researchers and academics across a wide range of disciplines including biological, physical, social and behavioral scientists, as well as specialists in measurement and philosophy will appreciate the work’s fresh and provocative approach to the field at a time when sound measurements of complex scientific systems are increasingly essential to solving critical global problems.

Are the snowy owls in trouble? Venture into the Alaskan arctic and the summer realm of these predator birds to find out. Discover the diverse species necessary to owl survival, how climate change is affecting the landscape of their nesting site of past millennia, and what it takes to do field research in this action-packed addition to the award-winning Scientists in the Field series.It's July on Alaska's North Slope, and scientist Denver Holt is in Utqiagvik surveying nests. Denver has been coming here since 1992, and the snowy owls he studies have been coming here much longer: thousands of years.With its mix of coastal, low-elevation tundra and a rich presence of lemmings, the North Slope is the only area in Alaska where snowy owls regularly nest. How do snowy owls decide where they will nest? How do they manage to arrive at locations where food will be abundant? What drives the success of these delicate tundra ecosystems? These are the mysteries Denver is trying to solve to help ensure a bright future for these elegant hunters.

J.L. Austin has written of "the blinding veil of ease and obviousness that hides the mechanisms of the natural successful act". By revisiting a classic "small metaphysics" puzzle drawn from physics that launched a thousand ships of grander philosophizing, Imitation of Rigor employs recent insights into the architectures of effective reasoning as a means of explicating how Austin's covert "mechanisms" operate in concrete terms. By these means, the book attempts to reconnect analytic philosophy with the evolving practicalities within science from which many of its grander concerns originally sprang. In doing so, it provides an "alternative history" of how the subject might have developed had the diagnostic insights of its philosopher/scientist forebears (e.g. Heinrich Hertz and Ernst Mach) not been cast aside in the vain pursuit of inappropriate standards of "ersatz rigor".

Mark Wilson presents a series of explorations of our strategies for understanding the world. 'Physics avoidance' refers to the fact that we frequently cannot reason about nature in the straightforward manner we anticipate, but must seek alternative policies that allow us to address the questions we want answered in a tractable way. Within both science and everyday life, we find ourselves relying upon thought processes that reach useful answers in opaque and roundabout manners. Conceptual innovators are often puzzled by the techniques they develop, when they stumble across reasoning patterns that are easy to implement but difficult to justify. But simple techniques frequently rest upon complex foundations--a young magician learns how to execute a card-guessing trick without understanding how its progressive steps squeeze in on a proper answer. As we collectively improve our inferential skills in this gradually evolving manner, we often wander into unfamiliar explanatory landscapes in which simple words encode physical information in complex and unanticipated ways. Like our juvenile conjurer, we fail to recognize the true strategic rationales underlying our achievements and may turn instead to preposterous rationalizations for our policies. We have learned how to reach better conclusions in a more fruitful way, but we remain baffled by our own successes. At its best, philosophical reflection illuminates the natural developmental processes that generate these confusions and explicates their complexities. But current thinking within philosophy of science and language works to opposite effect by relying upon simplistic conceptions of 'cause', 'law of nature', 'possibility', and 'reference' that ignore the strategic complexities in which these concepts become entangled within real-life usage. To avoid these distortions, better descriptive tools are wanted. The nine new essays within this volume illustrate this need for finer discriminations through a range of revealing cases, of both historical and contemporary significance.

Roman consuls were routinely trained by background and experience to handle the usual problems of a twelve-month turn in office. But what if a crisis arose that wasn’t best met by whoever happened to be in office that year? The Romans had a mechanism for that: the dictatorship, an alternative emergency executive post that granted total, unanswerable power to that man who was best suited to resolve the crisis and then stand down, restoring normality. This office was so useful and effective that it was invoked at least 85 times across three centuries against every kind of serious problem, from conspiracies and insurgencies to the repelling of invaders to propitiation of the gods.In Dictator: The Evolution of the Roman Dictatorship, Mark B. Wilson makes the first detailed and comprehensive examination of the role and evolution of the dictatorship as an integral element of the Roman Republic. Each stage of a dictatorship—need, call, choice, invocation, mandate, imperium, answerability, colleague, and renunciation—is explored, with examples and case studies illustrating the dictators’ rigorous adherence to a set of core principles, or, in rare cases of deviation, showing how exceptions tended to demonstrate the rule as vividly as instances. Wilson also charts the flexibility of the dictatorship as it adapted to the needs of the Republic, reshaping its role in relation to the consuls, the senate, and the people.The routine use of the dictatorship is only part of the story. The abandonment and disuse of the dictatorship for 120 years, its revival under Sulla, and its appropriation and transformation under Caesar are all examined in detail, with attention paid to what the dictatorship meant to the Romans of the late Republic, alternative means of crisis resolution in contrast with the dictatorship, and the groundwork laid in those last two centuries for that which was to come. Dictator provides a new basis for discussion and debate relating to the Roman dictatorship, Roman crisis management, and the systems and institutions of the Roman Republic.

**Finalist in the Outstanding Music Education Print Resource Category for the 2025 Music & Drama Education Awards** Stringtastic Beginners is a fun new series designed to teach through playing in an engaging exploration of musical styles. A fully integrated series, violin, viola, cello and double bass can all learn and play together in any combination. Each book contains over 40 imaginative pieces to steadily establish a secure playing technique and build confidence, one step at a time, taking the student from complete beginner (open strings) to playing the notes of the D major scale. The first 20 pieces comprise two independent tunes that can be played as duets – one for open strings and a more advanced part using the left-hand fingers, which students can revisit as they progress. Ideal for individual and group tuition as well as flexible ensemble and classroom settings. Every piece is supported by an exciting backing track plus a piano-only track for practice, all available to download. This Teacher’s Accompaniment book provides the complete piano accompaniments which work with any combination of instrumental parts. Mark Wilson and Paul Wood have developed an engaging and accessible new series of string-playing method books… The presentation will appeal to young learners, and the careful, well-conceived pedagogy will thrill their teachers! Furthermore, the Stringtastic integrated approach gives proper deference to the social aspect of music-making by allowing violinists, violists, cellists, and bassists to play together from the start. I look forward to sharing this method with my young students and colleagues in early music education. Dr. Mark Elliot Bergman, Director of Strings and Orchestral Studies, Sheridan College.

**Finalist in the Outstanding Music Education Print Resource Category for the 2025 Music & Drama Education Awards** Stringtastic Beginners is a fun new series designed to teach through playing in an engaging exploration of musical styles. A fully integrated series, violin, viola, cello and double bass can all learn and play together in any combination. Each book contains over 40 imaginative pieces to steadily establish a secure playing technique and build confidence, one step at a time, taking the student from complete beginner (open strings) to playing the notes of the D major scale. The first 20 pieces comprise two independent tunes that can be played as duets – one for open strings and a more advanced part using the left-hand fingers, which students can revisit as they progress. Ideal for individual and group tuition as well as flexible ensemble and classroom settings. Every piece is supported by an exciting backing track plus a piano-only track for practice, all available to download. Plus, the teacher’s book provides the complete piano accompaniments which work with any combination of instrumental parts. Mark Wilson and Paul Wood have developed an engaging and accessible new series of string-playing method books… The presentation will appeal to young learners, and the careful, well-conceived pedagogy will thrill their teachers! Furthermore, the Stringtastic integrated approach gives proper deference to the social aspect of music-making by allowing violinists, violists, cellists, and bassists to play together from the start. I look forward to sharing this method with my young students and colleagues in early music education. Dr. Mark Elliot Bergman, Director of Strings and Orchestral Studies, Sheridan College.

**Finalist in the Outstanding Music Education Print Resource Category for the 2025 Music & Drama Education Awards** Stringtastic Beginners is a fun new series designed to teach through playing in an engaging exploration of musical styles. A fully integrated series, violin, viola, cello and double bass can all learn and play together in any combination. Each book contains over 40 imaginative pieces to steadily establish a secure playing technique and build confidence, one step at a time, taking the student from complete beginner (open strings) to playing the notes of the D major scale. The first 20 pieces comprise two independent tunes that can be played as duets – one for open strings and a more advanced part using the left-hand fingers, which students can revisit as they progress. Ideal for individual and group tuition as well as flexible ensemble and classroom settings. Every piece is supported by an exciting backing track plus a piano-only track for practice, all available to download. Plus, the teacher’s book provides the complete piano accompaniments which work with any combination of instrumental parts. Mark Wilson and Paul Wood have developed an engaging and accessible new series of string-playing method books… The presentation will appeal to young learners, and the careful, well-conceived pedagogy will thrill their teachers! Furthermore, the Stringtastic integrated approach gives proper deference to the social aspect of music-making by allowing violinists, violists, cellists, and bassists to play together from the start. I look forward to sharing this method with my young students and colleagues in early music education. Dr. Mark Elliot Bergman, Director of Strings and Orchestral Studies, Sheridan College.

**Finalist in the Outstanding Music Education Print Resource Category for the 2025 Music & Drama Education Awards** Stringtastic Beginners is a fun new series designed to teach through playing in an engaging exploration of musical styles. A fully integrated series, violin, viola, cello and double bass can all learn and play together in any combination. Each book contains over 40 imaginative pieces to steadily establish a secure playing technique and build confidence, one step at a time, taking the student from complete beginner (open strings) to playing the notes of the D major scale. The first 20 pieces comprise two independent tunes that can be played as duets – one for open strings and a more advanced part using the left-hand fingers, which students can revisit as they progress. Ideal for individual and group tuition as well as flexible ensemble and classroom settings. Every piece is supported by an exciting backing track plus a piano-only track for practice, all available to download. Plus, the teacher’s book provides the complete piano accompaniments which work with any combination of instrumental parts. Mark Wilson and Paul Wood have developed an engaging and accessible new series of string-playing method books… The presentation will appeal to young learners, and the careful, well-conceived pedagogy will thrill their teachers! Furthermore, the Stringtastic integrated approach gives proper deference to the social aspect of music-making by allowing violinists, violists, cellists, and bassists to play together from the start. I look forward to sharing this method with my young students and colleagues in early music education. Dr. Mark Elliot Bergman, Director of Strings and Orchestral Studies, Sheridan College.

**Finalist in the Outstanding Music Education Print Resource Category for the 2025 Music & Drama Education Awards** Stringtastic Beginners is a fun new series designed to teach through playing in an engaging exploration of musical styles. A fully integrated series, violin, viola, cello and double bass can all learn and play together in any combination. Each book contains over 40 imaginative pieces to steadily establish a secure playing technique and build confidence, one step at a time, taking the student from complete beginner (open strings) to playing the notes of the D major scale. The first 20 pieces comprise two independent tunes that can be played as duets – one for open strings and a more advanced part using the left-hand fingers, which students can revisit as they progress. Ideal for individual and group tuition as well as flexible ensemble and classroom settings. Every piece is supported by an exciting backing track plus a piano-only track for practice, all available to download. Plus, the teacher’s book provides the complete piano accompaniments which work with any combination of instrumental parts. Mark Wilson and Paul Wood have developed an engaging and accessible new series of string-playing method books… The presentation will appeal to young learners, and the careful, well-conceived pedagogy will thrill their teachers! Furthermore, the Stringtastic integrated approach gives proper deference to the social aspect of music-making by allowing violinists, violists, cellists, and bassists to play together from the start. I look forward to sharing this method with my young students and colleagues in early music education. Dr. Mark Elliot Bergman, Director of Strings and Orchestral Studies, Sheridan College. This entertaining book of 57 original pieces, composed by Wilson and Wood, is appealing to youngsters. Cute illustrations and amusing lyrics set to the music help foster a sense of rhythm. Marian Heckenberg, Stringendo Magazine, April 2024

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SPEECH PATHOLOGY AUSTRALIA BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR AGES 8-10 AWARD 2023Growing up on a farm in country Victoria, all Rachel wants is to help people. When war comes, she travels to distant Europe and the Middle East, working tirelessly to care for wounded and sick soldiers from the battlefields of Gallipoli and the Western Front.Inspired by the life of Rachel Pratt, a World War I Australian army nurse who was awarded the Military Medal for bravery, this is an incredible story of bravery and sacrifice.

A genre scorching mixed media collection that documents humanity's painful but willing descent into characterless orbs incapable of emotion or thought. A psychotic narrative unfolds through glimpses into windows of neighboring houses in a characterless subdivision and their residents as beautiful warts and scars are smoothed over in favour of perceived normalcy. Xanax rivers. Luxury coats crafted from human remains. Carnal activity in wax museums. Popular culture figures dying of dementia. Salvation through consumption. Bear witness to the carving that will eventually render complete, unencumbered stagnation.

This book proposes a conceptual framework for understanding measurement across a broad range of scientific fields and areas of application, such as physics, engineering, education, and psychology. The authors, who themselves span these disciplines, argue that the justification of the public trust attributed to measurement results can in principle apply identically to both physical and psychosocial properties. They further argue that the lack of a common conceptualization of measurement hampers interdisciplinary communication and limits the ability to share knowledge. They advance their views by first surveying the conceptual history of the philosophy of measurement and arguing that classical, operationalist and representational perspectives on measurement each make important contributions but also each have important shortcomings. A synthesis is then offered as the foundation for a new conceptual framework. The authors describe how the framework, which operates as a shared concept system, supports understanding measurement’s work in different domains, using examples in the physical and human sciences. They consider connections and consequences with respect to causality, objectivity, and intersubjectivity, among other topics, and how measurement science concepts and issues are construed across these disciplines and settings. They also address contemporary issues and controversies within measurement in the light of the framework, including operationalism, definitional uncertainty, and the relations between measurement and computation. The book concludes with a justification for the basic claim that measurement is an empirical and informational process that produces explicitly justifiable information. Researchers and academics across a wide range of disciplines including biological, physical, social and behavioral scientists, as well as specialists in measurement and philosophy will appreciate the work’s fresh and provocative approach to the field at a time when sound measurements of complex scientific systems are increasingly essential to solving critical global problems.