INJECT: Algorithms to Discover Creative Angles on News

INJECT is a new digitaltool tosupport journalists to think more creativelywhendiscoveringnewangles on stories under devel-opment. It deliversinteractiveand intelligentsupport embeddedin the text editorsthat journalists work with regularly. This support is generated bycombiningcomplex creative searchesofmillionsof related news storiespublished in multiplelanguageswith entityextraction algorithms and interactive creative guidance tailored to news. This paper reportsthetool’sarchitecture, some itsalgo-rithms, and the design decisions made to delivera reliable and us-able tool for journalistsin different newsroomsand work contexts

Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action

Outlines a community education movement to implement Knight's 2009 recommendation to enhance digital and media literacy. Suggests local, regional, state, and national initiatives such as teacher education and parent outreach and discusses challenges

Computational Thinking in Education: Where does it fit? A systematic literary review

Computational Thinking (CT) has been described as an essential skill which everyone should learn and can therefore include in their skill set. Seymour Papert is credited as concretising Computational Thinking in 1980 but since Wing popularised the term in 2006 and brought it to the international community's attention, more and more research has been conducted on CT in education. The aim of this systematic literary review is to give educators and education researchers an overview of what work has been carried out in the domain, as well as potential gaps and opportunities that still exist. Overall it was found in this review that, although there is a lot of work currently being done around the world in many different educational contexts, the work relating to CT is still in its infancy. Along with the need to create an agreed-upon definition of CT lots of countries are still in the process of, or have not yet started, introducing CT into curriculums in all levels of education. It was also found that Computer Science/Computing, which could be the most obvious place to teach CT, has yet to become a mainstream subject in some countries, although this is improving. Of encouragement to educators is the wealth of tools and resources being developed to help teach CT as well as more and more work relating to curriculum development. For those teachers looking to incorporate CT into their schools or classes then there are bountiful options which include programming, hands-on exercises and more. The need for more detailed lesson plans and curriculum structure however, is something that could be of benefit to teachers

The Art and Science of Data-Driven Journalism

Journalists have been using data in their stories for as long as the profession has existed. A revolution in computing in the 20th century created opportunities for data integration into investigations, as journalists began to bring technology into their work. In the 21st century, a revolution in connectivity is leading the media toward new horizons. The Internet, cloud computing, agile development, mobile devices, and open source software have transformed the practice of journalism, leading to the emergence of a new term: data journalism. Although journalists have been using data in their stories for as long as they have been engaged in reporting, data journalism is more than traditional journalism with more data. Decades after early pioneers successfully applied computer-assisted reporting and social science to investigative journalism, journalists are creating news apps and interactive features that help people understand data, explore it, and act upon the insights derived from it. New business models are emerging in which data is a raw material for profit, impact, and insight, co-created with an audience that was formerly reduced to passive consumption. Journalists around the world are grappling with the excitement and the challenge of telling compelling stories by harnessing the vast quantity of data that our increasingly networked lives, devices, businesses, and governments produce every day. While the potential of data journalism is immense, the pitfalls and challenges to its adoption throughout the media are similarly significant, from digital literacy to competition for scarce resources in newsrooms. Global threats to press freedom, digital security, and limited access to data create difficult working conditions for journalists in many countries. A combination of peer-to-peer learning, mentorship, online training, open data initiatives, and new programs at journalism schools rising to the challenge, however, offer reasons to be optimistic about more journalists learning to treat data as a source

The Data Journalism Handbook

The Data Journalism Handbook: Towards a Critical Data Practice provides a rich and panoramic introduction to data journalism, combining both critical reflection and practical insight. It offers a diverse collection of perspectives on how data journalism is done around the world and the broader consequences of datafication in the news, serving as both a textbook and a sourcebook for this emerging field. With more than 50 chapters from leading researchers and practitioners of data journalism, it explores the work needed to render technologies and data productive for journalistic purposes. It also gives a “behind the scenes” look at the social lives of data sets, data infrastructures, and data stories in newsrooms, media organizations, start-ups, civil society organizations and beyond. The book includes sections on “doing issues with data,” “assembling data,” “working with data,” “experiencing data,” “investigating data, platforms and algorithms,” “organizing data journalism,” “learning data journalism together” and “situating data journalism.

Innovating Pedagogy 2015: Open University Innovation Report 4

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This fourth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. We proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories, and practices. We then pared these down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice, particularly in post-school education. Lastly, we drew on published and unpublished writings to compile the ten sketches of new pedagogies that might transform education. These are summarised below in an approximate order of immediacy and timescale to widespread implementation

Computational thinking: an investigation of the existing scholarship and research

2013 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Despite the prevalence of computing and technology in our everyday lives and in almost every discipline and profession, student interest and enrollment in computer science courses is declining. In response, computer science education in K-12 schools and universities is undergoing a transformation. Computational thinking has been proposed as a universal way of thinking with benefits for everyone, not just computer scientists. The focus on computational thinking moves beyond computer literacy, or the familiarity with software, to a way of thinking that benefits everyone. Many see computational thinking as a way to introduce students to computer science concepts and ways of thinking and to motivate student interest in computer science. The first part of this dissertation describes a study in which the researcher systematically examined the literature and scholarship on computational thinking since 2006. The aim was to explore nature and extent of the entire body of literature and to examine the theory and research evidence on computational thinking. Findings reveal that there has been a steady increase in the popularity of the concept of computational thinking, but it is not yet developed to the point where it can be studied in a meaningful way. An examination of the research evidence on computational thinking found inadequacies in the conceptual characteristics and the reporting of studies. Weaknesses were identified in the theoretical conceptualization of interventions, definitions of key concepts, intervention descriptions, research designs, and the presentation of findings. Recommendations for bolstering the research evidence around this burgeoning concept are presented, including collaboration between computer scientists and educational researchers to apply social science research methods to conduct robust studies of computational thinking interventions. The second part of this dissertation describes how computational thinking is currently incorporated into K-12 educational settings. The bulk of the literature on computational thinking describes ways in which programs promote this way of thinking in students. The K-12 programs that encourage computational thinking are classified, described, and discussed in a way that is intended to be meaningful for K-12 educators and educational researchers. Potential barriers and factors that might enable educators to use each category of interventions are discussed

The Data Journalism Handbook

The Data Journalism Handbook: Towards a Critical Data Practice provides a rich and panoramic introduction to data journalism, combining both critical reflection and practical insight. It offers a diverse collection of perspectives on how data journalism is done around the world and the broader consequences of datafication in the news, serving as both a textbook and a sourcebook for this emerging field. With more than 50 chapters from leading researchers and practitioners of data journalism, it explores the work needed to render technologies and data productive for journalistic purposes. It also gives a “behind the scenes” look at the social lives of data sets, data infrastructures, and data stories in newsrooms, media organizations, start-ups, civil society organizations and beyond. The book includes sections on “doing issues with data,” “assembling data,” “working with data,” “experiencing data,” “investigating data, platforms and algorithms,” “organizing data journalism,” “learning data journalism together” and “situating data journalism.