Angels, tooth fairies and ghosts: thinking creatively in an early years classroom

This chapter offers an evaluation and interpretation of the creative thinking and collaboration that took place in a class of five year olds in an English primary school during the academic year 2004–05. This school was committed to developing itself as a creative learning community by participating in a creativity-training programme, Synectics, more usually employed in an adult business context. This school wanted to develop its capacity for creative teaching and learning. This intent was in tune with national and international developments in education where strenuous efforts were being made to extend the reach of creative education which had for a long time been more or less exclusively associated with the arts. The chapter offers an outline of these developments to set the research in context. The research described is a case study and second phase of an evaluation of the project EXCITE! (Excellence, Creativity and Innovation in Teaching and Education) and was carried out by researchers from the Open University. Previous research suggests that when children first start school, they are already competent creative thinkers and storytellers and that both creative and narrative modes of thinking involve abductive rather than deductive inferential reasoning. It is argued that although children may need training in paradigmatic (deductive) modes of thought, they do not necessarily need further training in narrative modes of thought. The examples of young children’s thinking discussed in chapter support this argument. The Synectics creativity-training programme does not claim to ‘teach’ creative thinking per se. The evidence presented suggests that when teachers use Synectics tools and techniques to inform practice, these allow them to create a positive, emotional climate that allows young children to use analogy and metaphor to construct creative explanations and narratives through collaborative discussion

Illinois Nonprofit Economy Report

Donors Forum's Illinois Nonprofit Economy Report includes valuable information on the growing role that nonprofits play throughout Illinois. According to the report, last year Illinois nonprofits employed more then 427,000 workers -- providing almost as many jobs as the state's three largest Fortune 500 companies (Boeing, Walgreens, and State Farm) do together, worldwide

The Making of Cloud Applications An Empirical Study on Software Development for the Cloud

Cloud computing is gaining more and more traction as a deployment and provisioning model for software. While a large body of research already covers how to optimally operate a cloud system, we still lack insights into how professional software engineers actually use clouds, and how the cloud impacts development practices. This paper reports on the first systematic study on how software developers build applications in the cloud. We conducted a mixed-method study, consisting of qualitative interviews of 25 professional developers and a quantitative survey with 294 responses. Our results show that adopting the cloud has a profound impact throughout the software development process, as well as on how developers utilize tools and data in their daily work. Among other things, we found that (1) developers need better means to anticipate runtime problems and rigorously define metrics for improved fault localization and (2) the cloud offers an abundance of operational data, however, developers still often rely on their experience and intuition rather than utilizing metrics. From our findings, we extracted a set of guidelines for cloud development and identified challenges for researchers and tool vendors

Integrated energy design: education and training in cross-disciplinary teams implementing energy performance of buildings directive (EPBD)

In Europe, energy and climate policies started to take shape from the 1990s onwards culminating with the ambitious 20-20-20 climate goals and the Low-Carbon Europe roadmap 2050. The European Commission empower the importance of achieving the objective of the recast Directive on energy performance of buildings (EPBD) that new buildings built from 2021 onwards will have to be nearly zero-energy buildings. The general belief is that the energy performance optimization of buildings requires an integrated design approach and cross-disciplinary teamwork to optimize the building's energy use and quality of indoor environment while satisfying the occupants' needs.In this context, there is a substantial need for professionals such as architects and engineers specifically trained and educated in integrated design approach and trained to work in cross-disciplinary teams. To be able to push forward the development, it is essential that educational institutions foster professionals with such knowledge, skills and competences. An initiative toward this direction is the EU-project of IDES-EDU: "Master and Post-Graduate education and training in multi-disciplinary teams".The paper describes the necessity of more integrated and cross-disciplinary approaches to building design through state-of-the-art of the building sector and educational initiatives in the participating countries in the project, and through theory of design processes. The paper also communicates the results of newly developed cross-disciplinary education established by fifteen different educational institutions in Europe. Finally, the paper explains and discusses the challenges encountered during development and implementation of the education across different professions and countries. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Connecting frontier research with industrial development : Lanthanide and Actinide Chemistry in the European f-Element Network (EUFEN)

The chemistry of f-elements, even though often not known to the general public, forms part of many industrial processes, manufacturing and medical applications, such as medical imaging (e.g. MRI scans), strong magnets, data storage media, superconducters, LEDs, catalysis, as well as energy, and metal extraction. It plays a crucial role in the scientific and industrial landscape of the European Union (EU) in fields of energy, security, training, sustainability, and society. The use of these elements widens the scope of synthetic possibilities in chemistry, and materials with outstanding electromagnetic properties have already been realised. The synthesis of lanthanide containing supramolecular materials with exceptional materials properties has already been reported, e.g. the ability to bind and release gases, high-temperature superconductivity, and all-white light emitting diodes. The EUFEN (European f-Element Network) COST action provides cooperative mobility mechanisms for nationally funded f-element chemists pursuing fundamental frontier research to initiate collaborations, training, networking, and dissemination among each other. Novel developments and results in terms of f-element crystal engineering carried out at the University of Malta are therefore part of EUFEN.peer-reviewe