Analyzing Digital Literacy Demands, Practices, and Discourses within a Library Computer Programming Club for Children

abstract: Among researchers, educators, and other stakeholders in literacy education, there has been a growing emphasis on developing literacy pedagogies that are more responsive to the ways young people experience literacy in their everyday lives, which often make use of digital media and other technologies for exchanging meaning. This dissertation project sought to explore the nature of these digital-age literacies in the context of children learning through and about new technologies. Conducting a year-long, multimethod observational study of an out-of-school library-based program designed to engage students in self-directed learning around the domain of computer programming, this project was framed around an analysis of digital-age literacies in design, discourse, and practice. To address each of these areas, the project developed a methodology grounded in interpretive, naturalistic, and participant-observation methodologies in collaboration with a local library Code Club in a metropolitan area of the Southwestern U.S between September 2016 and December 2017. Participants in the project included a total of 47 students aged 8-14, 3 librarians, and 3 parents. Data sources for the project included (1) artifactual data, such as the designed interfaces of the online platforms students regularly engaged with, (2) observational data such as protocol-based field notes taken during and after each Code Club meeting, and (3) interview data, collected during qualitative interviews with students, parents, and library facilitators outside the program. These data sources were analyzed through a multi-method interpretive framework, including the multimodal analysis of digital artifacts, qualitative coding, and discourse analysis. The findings of the project illustrate the multidimensional nature of digital-age literacy experiences as they are rendered “on the screen” at the content level, “behind the screen” at the procedural level, and “beyond the screen” at the contextual level. The project contributes to the literature on literacy education by taking an multi-method, interdisciplinary approach to expand analytical perspectives on digital media and literacy in a digital age, while also providing an empirical account of this approach in a community-embedded context of implementation.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Learning, Literacies and Technologies 201

Protest Beyond Representation: The Vitalism of Digital Protest Art\u27s Political Aesthetics

The complexities of post-modernity tend to dissolve any facile model of direct cause-and-effect in politics, and yet as a democratic polity, we look for the comfort in knowing that political expression can enact change. Protest art, or acts of creative expression intended to resist dominant powers, forces, and structures, models the potential for political expression to create change that is not immediate, direct, or obvious, but rather moves the social through expressivity and aesthetics. While these features lend themselves to an analysis guided by affect theory, this sub-discipline within communication studies has tended to lack the methodological specificity to reproduce or expand applications. Daniel Stern\u27s vitality pentad acts as a heuristic by which to study rhetorical objects; these objects are studied due to their expressivity, rather than their appeal to reason. Stern excludes still media forms such as photographs and illustrations; however, by looking at the way in which digital artifacts are imbued with movement in its networked path, we can understand that all digital media are time-based. The objects of study speak to the temporal, vital dimensions of digital protest art: Turkey\u27s Vandalina art collective, which places protest stickers on transit cars, demonstrates how force and scale engender feeling of intimacy in public spaces. Iran\u27s Zahra\u27s Paradise, a webcomic-turned-graphic novel, offers differing temporal environments for the reader and weaves its aesthetics into the narrative to create a sense of space and place. Finally, the images of #HandsUpDontShoot, through their directional pull across digital networks, illustrates social media\u27s tendency to remix aesthetic features of older media forms. Major insights drawn from this research speak to the political importance of subject formation--or interventions therein--and vitality forms as a method for rhetorical criticism, which allows the rhetorical critic to be more specific and methodical in applying affect theory to rhetoric. It also challenges the positivist notion that political expression must result in measurable change in order to be validated. Finally, this project addresses the virtual potentiality of digital data and offers a perspective that sees all digital media as time-based

Coded Territories

This collection of essays provides a historical and contemporary context for Indigenous new media arts practice in Canada. The writers are established artists, scholars, and curators who cover thematic concepts and underlying approaches to new media from a distinctly Indigenous perspective. Through discourse and narrative analysis, the writers discuss a number of topics ranging from how Indigenous worldviews inform unique approaches to new media arts practice to their own work and specific contemporary works. Contributors include: Archer Pechawis, Jackson 2Bears, Jason Edward Lewis, Steven Foster, Candice Hopkins, and Cheryl L'Hirondelle

Iso-Contour Queries and Gradient Descent with Guaranteed Delivery in Sensor Networks

Abstract—We study the problem of data-driven routing and navigation in a distributed sensor network over a continuous scalar field. Specifically, we address the problem of searching for the collection of sensors with readings within a specified range. This is named the iso-contour query problem. We develop a gradient based routing scheme such that from any query node, the query message follows the signal field gradient or derived quantities and successfully discovers all iso-contours of interest. Due to the existence of local maxima and minima, the guaranteed delivery requires preprocessing of the signal field and the construction of a contour tree in a distributed fashion. Our approach has the following properties: (i) the gradient routing uses only local node information and its message complexity is close to optimal, as shown by simulations; (ii) the preprocessing message complexity is linear in the number of nodes and the storage requirement for each node is a small constant. The same preprocessing also facilitates route computation between any pair of nodes where the the route lies within any user supplied range of values. I

Networked Music Composition and Performance

This thesis investigates the potential of computer networks to transform existing music-making relationships within the context of contemporary music composition and performance practice. It consists of two primary components: the development of the ZScore networked music-making environment and a portfolio of compositions written specifically for the ZScore system. The technical capabilities of the system and creative compositional intentions have been evaluated through a series of workshops and performances with musicians and live audiences. This study provides detailed information on the project’s technical and creative objectives, their implementation, and research outcomes. ZScore is a collection of third-party and newly developed components aiming to provide solutions for complex notation authoring, the reliable distribution of interactive score representations to heterogeneous clients over a computer network, precise performance scheduling, and the rendering of dynamic stave-based scores. Furthermore, it aims to facilitate distributed decision-making agency for all participants and provide immersive audience participation through mobile device connectivity. The specifications of the ZScore system have been derived from an analysis of existing networked notation systems and state-of-the-art solutions from other industries where high-throughput, low latency systems have been successfully deployed. The accompanying composition portfolio outlines the journey towards a new paradigm of music-making, starting from a traditional static score that is fully defined by a composer and faithfully performed by musicians, and concluding with an interactive networked composition model that provides music-making agency to all participants. The compositional approach deploys an interplay between objective and subjective metamodern methods and explores the entire spectrum between fully composed and freely improvised music. Each composition in the portfolio addresses a set of new challenges, both technical and aesthetic. The composition commentary provides insight into the specific challenges for each score, the strategies employed to address related issues, and the outcomes of the applied solutions

Design and Development of Sensor Integrated Robotic Hand

Most of the automated systems using robots as agents do use few sensors according to the need. However, there are situations where the tasks carried out by the end-effector, or for that matter by the robot hand needs multiple sensors. The hand, to make the best use of these sensors, and behave autonomously, requires a set of appropriate types of sensors which could be integrated in proper manners. The present research work aims at developing a sensor integrated robot hand that can collect information related to the assigned tasks, assimilate there correctly and then do task action as appropriate. The process of development involves selection of sensors of right types and of right specification, locating then at proper places in the hand, checking their functionality individually and calibrating them for the envisaged process. Since the sensors need to be integrated so that they perform in the desired manner collectively, an integration platform is created using NI PXIe-1082. A set of algorithm is developed for achieving the integrated model. The entire process is first modelled and simulated off line for possible modification in order to ensure that all the sensors do contribute towards the autonomy of the hand for desired activity. This work also involves design of a two-fingered gripper. The design is made in such a way that it is capable of carrying out the desired tasks and can accommodate all the sensors within its fold. The developed sensor integrated hand has been put to work and its performance test has been carried out. This hand can be very useful for part assembly work in industries for any shape of part with a limit on the size of the part in mind. The broad aim is to design, model simulate and develop an advanced robotic hand. Sensors for pick up contacts pressure, force, torque, position, surface profile shape using suitable sensing elements in a robot hand are to be introduced. The hand is a complex structure with large number of degrees of freedom and has multiple sensing capabilities apart from the associated sensing assistance from other organs. The present work is envisaged to add multiple sensors to a two-fingered robotic hand having motion capabilities and constraints similar to the human hand. There has been a good amount of research and development in this field during the last two decades a lot remains to be explored and achieved. The objective of the proposed work is to design, simulate and develop a sensor integrated robotic hand. Its potential applications can be proposed for industrial environments and in healthcare field. The industrial applications include electronic assembly tasks, lighter inspection tasks, etc. Application in healthcare could be in the areas of rehabilitation and assistive techniques. The work also aims to establish the requirement of the robotic hand for the target application areas, to identify the suitable kinds and model of sensors that can be integrated on hand control system. Functioning of motors in the robotic hand and integration of appropriate sensors for the desired motion is explained for the control of the various elements of the hand. Additional sensors, capable of collecting external information and information about the object for manipulation is explored. Processes are designed using various software and hardware tools such as mathematical computation MATLAB, OpenCV library and LabVIEW 2013 DAQ system as applicable, validated theoretically and finally implemented to develop an intelligent robotic hand. The multiple smart sensors are installed on a standard six degree-of-freedom industrial robot KAWASAKI RS06L articulated manipulator, with the two-finger pneumatic SHUNK robotic hand or designed prototype and robot control programs are integrated in such a manner that allows easy application of grasping in an industrial pick-and-place operation where the characteristics of the object can vary or are unknown. The effectiveness of the actual recommended structure is usually proven simply by experiments using calibration involving sensors and manipulator. The dissertation concludes with a summary of the contribution and the scope of further work

I write what we like: A textual analysis of Fallist microblogging

Fallists belong to a constellation of radical student activist movements that pledge to disturb and reimagine South African society. Rather than restricting themselves to coordinated forms of collective action, Fallists’ advance their “revolution-as-becoming” within a context of everyday resistance (Haynes & Prakash, 1991; Molefe, 2015). In this dissertation, I propose that Fallists form an “emerging networked counterpublic” made up of individual activists that enact everyday forms of resistance on Twitter (Jackson & Foucault Welles, 2016:399). This dissertation explores the use of Twitter by a microblogger who has emerged organically as a “crowdsourced elite” among Fallists (Papacharissi & de Fatima Oliveira, 2012). I contend that this microblogger exemplifies the repertoires of communication and resistance that pervade within Fallist networks on Twitter (Jackson & Foucault Welles, 2016). The microblogger is identified through methods of observation and social network analysis (SNA). “#whitetip,” a Twitter hashtag network that exemplifies Fallist communication and resistance, informs the interpretive content analysis that follows. This analysis is conducted on the tweets that the microblogger broadcast between 1 April and 30 September 2016. Tweets are categorised according to “evaluative frames” that emerged inductively during the course of analysis. I find that “resentment,” “pride and care,” and “play” made up the vast majority of evaluative frames. The microblogger employs the platform in a manner that disturbs dominant understandings of public sphere communication: the microblogger’s tweets are evaluative rather than deliberative, and assert a marginal, embodied subjectivity (Papacharissi, 2014; Warner, 2002)

Catching the flu: syndromic surveillance, algorithmic governmentality and global health security

This thesis offers a critical analysis of the rise of syndromic surveillance systems for the advanced detection of pandemic threats within contemporary global health security frameworks. The thesis traces the iterative evolution and ascendancy of three such novel syndromic surveillance systems for the strengthening of health security initiatives over the past two decades: 1) The Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED-mail); 2) The Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN); and 3) HealthMap. This thesis demonstrates how each newly introduced syndromic surveillance system has become increasingly oriented towards the integration of digital algorithms into core surveillance capacities to continually harness and forecast upon infinitely generating sets of digital, open-source data, potentially indicative of forthcoming pandemic threats. This thesis argues that the increased centrality of the algorithm within these next-generation syndromic surveillance systems produces a new and distinct form of infectious disease surveillance for the governing of emergent pathogenic contingencies. Conceptually, the thesis also shows how the rise of this algorithmic mode of infectious disease surveillance produces divergences in the governmental rationalities of global health security, leading to the rise of an algorithmic governmentality within contemporary contexts of Big Data and these surveillance systems. Empirically, this thesis demonstrates how this new form of algorithmic infectious disease surveillance has been rapidly integrated into diplomatic, legal, and political frameworks to strengthen the practice global health security – producing subtle, yet distinct shifts in the outbreak notification and reporting transparency of states, increasingly scrutinized by the algorithmic gaze of syndromic surveillance