Truth, Goodness and Beauty: Revisiting the Classic Common Core Standards

As the educational community works to simultaneously understand and implement the Common Core standards and its emphasis on the development of various intellectual traits and capacities, it is worth pausing to consider this most recent educational reform in light of the classical understanding of the educational task. This article highlights three elements from the “classic” common core educational standards as understood by classical educational theorists: truth, goodness, and beauty and the role each plays in developing an educated person. These classic standards place the development and elevation of the human spirit as the foundation of all learning. Although truth, goodness, and beauty each have a unique contribution in the education of individuals, this article focuses on beauty and the way it stimulates a desire for both goodness and truth. Additionally, these standards require a different form of pedagogy; developing a commitment to truth and goodness and experiencing beauty do not come to a person with traditional forms of education. The ground for this investigation is found in the works of an ancient philosopher, Plato; a classical educational theorist, John Steward Mill; and a passage from the Christian scriptures, Psalms 27. The article culminates with suggestions, a primer for ways to bring beauty to students both in the physical environment of the classroom and in the person of the teacher

Promoting secondary school learners' curiosity towards science through digital public displays

This paper contributes to the understanding of how digital public displays can be utilized in schools taking into consideration educational goals. This work is part of a currently on-going research project that aims to promote students' curiosity in science and technology through creative film-making, collaborative editing activities, and content sharing. In order to explore the design space concerning digital public displays for schools' contexts, six workshops with secondary school teachers in two different countries were conducted to elicit sensitivities towards possible features and interaction techniques as well as inquire about expectations and technology adoption. Our findings suggest that teachers are receptive to the technology and were able to generate scenarios that take advantage of the possibilities offered by digital public displays to stimulate learning processes.However, there are several crucial elements regarding management and control of content that need to be carefully crafted/designed in order to accommodate each schools' organizational issues

Effects of the Photo Narrative Process on Students' Intercultural Learning in Agriculture

Cultural heritage describes our way of life. It comes from previous generational traditions and incorporates our current constructed and natural environments, and tangible artifacts. The purpose of this study was to explore effects of the photo narrative process on students’ intercultural learning in agriculture. The photo narrative process, derived from Photovoice, combines photography and narrative expression about artifacts important to one’s way of life. Photo narrative assignments were developed for students to capture facets of their own cultural heritage, and their host country nationals’ cultural heritage, while participating on three separate study abroad programs. Archival data was collected from students’ photo narratives (i.e., course assignments to illustrate one’s cultural heritage via photo and text) in three agricultural study abroad programs. Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2001) concept of visual social semiotics was used to analyze qualitative data, and Bennett’s (1986) Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity was used to measure students’ levels of intercultural competence. The results showed participants experienced frame shifts (i.e., perspective change in worldviews) from ethnocentrism to ethnorelativism, as evidenced in the rhetoric of their photo narrative artifacts after participating in the photo narrative process. The photo narrative process is a valuable educational technique to change participants’ intercultural competence. Consistent with young people’s preferred communication methods (i.e., social media), the combination of image and text empowers learners through expressive communication and reflection

Multicriteria mapping manual: version 1.0

This Manual offers basic advice on how to do multicriteria mapping (MCM). It suggests how to: go about designing and building a typical MCM project; engage with participants and analyse results – and get the most out of the online MCM tool. Key terms are shown in bold italics and defined and explained in a final Annex. The online MCM software tool provides its own operational help. So this Manual is more focused on the general approach. There are no rigid rules. MCM is structured, but very flexible. It allows many more detailed features than can be covered here. MCM users are encouraged to think for themselves and be responsible and creative

A risk management framework for user-generated content on public display systems

Digital public displays can represent a powerful medium for personal expression and situated communication. However, before they can actually serve as an effective communication medium, they need to move towards more open models, in which user-generated content can play a more prominent role in their relevance and value proposition. The key challenge, however, is how to share control with users while being able to guarantee that published content matches the social expectations of a place and the goals of the display owner. In this study, we explore a risk management methodology as a comprehensive approach to this issue. We propose a framework that supports the systematic elicitation of the risks involved, their prioritisation, and the selection of the specific combination of moderation techniques that is able to reduce risk to a level that is deemed acceptable, while minimising the moderation effort and the impact on the willingness of users to publish their content. With this overall framework, we expect to help display owners to reason about the moderation needs of their displays and the best mapping between those needs and various moderation techniques.This work has been supported by FCT-Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia-within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019

Digital touch for remote personal communication: An emergent sociotechnical imaginary

This article makes legible emergent social imaginaries of digital touch for remote communication in personal relationships, with attention to digital touch interfaces. It draws on data from rapid prototyping research workshops with apprentice professionals embedded within digital communication. Touch is discussed with respect to four analytical themes: materiality, body, emplacement and temporality. We illustrate how participants’ past and present experiences and future visions of remote digital touch thread through these themes and weave together to form a hegemonic, emergent sociotechnical imaginary of digital touch. The article contributes to social debates within digital personal remote communication by foregrounding touch, the material and the sensorial. The article’s novel interdisciplinary framework (combining design-based rapid prototyping with a multimodal and multi-sensorial analysis within the frame of the sociotechnical imaginary) also contributes to methodology around future-facing phenomena, prior to the process of their solidification into material, political formations