Focusing a New Lens: STEM Professional Development for Early Education and Care Educators and Programs

The purpose of this groundbreaking grassroots report is to engage early childhood educators and policy makers in understanding the urgency and importance of early childhood educator professional development in STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). This report focuses on the teaching of children birth to five years old and out of school time students. STEM…Science…Technology…Engineering…Math. These are not curriculum topics that early childhood educators traditionally call to mind when planning activities. However, the evidence supporting the importance and emphasis on STEM education in early childhood is overwhelming. Children are engineers, problem solvers, and collaborators at heart- with boundless potential for leadership, creativity and innovation. Filling their days building and creating with blocks and manipulatives, wooden sticks and Legos, finger-paints and clay, they naturally seek solutions to challenges, discuss multiple options and, when necessary, start over! Essential to supporting, extending and deepening children’s STEM learning is the presence in classrooms of well-prepared educators, in both content and appropriate instructional strategies. Thus, this report urges educators to view their role, the children they teach and the early childhood environment through a powerful “new lens,” one that focuses on STEM education and professional development

Reconsidering the role of recorded audio as a rich, flexible and engaging learning space

Audio needs to be recognised as an integral medium capable of extending education’s formal and informal, virtual and physical learning spaces. This paper reconsiders the value of educational podcasting through a review of literature and a module case study. It argues that a pedagogical understanding is needed and challenges technology-centred or teacher-centred understandings of podcasting. It considers the diverse methods being used that enhance and redefine podcasting as a medium for student-centred active learning. The case study shows how audio created a rich learning space by meaningfully connecting tutors, students and those beyond the existing formal study space. The approaches used can be categorised as new types of learning activity, extended connected activity, relocated activity, and recorded ‘captured’ activity which promote learner replay and re-engagement. The paper concludes that the educational use of the recorded voice needs to be reconsidered and reconceptualised so that audio is valued as a manageable, immediate, flexible, potent and engaging medium

Extended Instruction in Business Courses to Enhance Student Achievement in Math

Poor achievement on standardized math tests negatively impacts high school graduation rates. The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate if math instruction in business classes could improve student achievement in math. As supported by constructivist theory, the students in this study were encouraged to use prior knowledge and experiences to make new connections between math concepts and business applications. The key research question examined if there was a significant increase in the standardized mathematics test scores of students enrolled in business classes with extended mathematics instruction compared to the standardized test scores of students not enrolled in business classes with extended mathematics instruction. The 2-sample t-test was used to compare the scores of 42 students in the treatment group to the scores of 47 students in the control group. Based on the findings, there was not a significant difference in the scores of the treatment and control groups. Recommendations for future research included redesigning the treatment to involve additional areas of mathematics instruction as well as extending the number of weeks for the treatment. This study may effect social change by informing teachers and administrators at the local site of the need to examine the effects of incorporating math into other content areas and recommending continued research in this area. The additional exposure, practice, and learning opportunities in math may help high school students achieve in mathematics and ultimately improve graduation rates

Mathematical practice, crowdsourcing, and social machines

The highest level of mathematics has traditionally been seen as a solitary endeavour, to produce a proof for review and acceptance by research peers. Mathematics is now at a remarkable inflexion point, with new technology radically extending the power and limits of individuals. Crowdsourcing pulls together diverse experts to solve problems; symbolic computation tackles huge routine calculations; and computers check proofs too long and complicated for humans to comprehend. Mathematical practice is an emerging interdisciplinary field which draws on philosophy and social science to understand how mathematics is produced. Online mathematical activity provides a novel and rich source of data for empirical investigation of mathematical practice - for example the community question answering system {\it mathoverflow} contains around 40,000 mathematical conversations, and {\it polymath} collaborations provide transcripts of the process of discovering proofs. Our preliminary investigations have demonstrated the importance of "soft" aspects such as analogy and creativity, alongside deduction and proof, in the production of mathematics, and have given us new ways to think about the roles of people and machines in creating new mathematical knowledge. We discuss further investigation of these resources and what it might reveal. Crowdsourced mathematical activity is an example of a "social machine", a new paradigm, identified by Berners-Lee, for viewing a combination of people and computers as a single problem-solving entity, and the subject of major international research endeavours. We outline a future research agenda for mathematics social machines, a combination of people, computers, and mathematical archives to create and apply mathematics, with the potential to change the way people do mathematics, and to transform the reach, pace, and impact of mathematics research.Comment: To appear, Springer LNCS, Proceedings of Conferences on Intelligent Computer Mathematics, CICM 2013, July 2013 Bath, U

TOWARDS EXTENDING THE ORIGINAL TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL (TAM) FOR A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION

Technology acceptance model (TAM) is arguably the most widely used intention theory that explains the individual’s acceptance of a certain technology.  Since Davis introduced TAM in 1986, it has been applied and validated in a variety of disciplines, including educational sciences. However, scholars note that depending on a specific context, the original TAM needs to be extended, which has been done by introducing external variables and other theories. Despite the existent TAM2 and TAM3, numerous scholars still opt for the original TAM, extending it with the variables and theories that are relevant to the specific context of their study. The aim of the present paper is to provide an overview of validated TAM extensions, which might later help to further the understanding of educational technology acceptance, which is a prerequisite of its adoption. Since interdisciplinarity in various contexts is becoming more and more common, the overview presents TAM extensions that come from a number of different disciplines. The overview is based on 108 papers that were retrieved from the Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) by searching for the keywords ‘extended Technology Acceptance Model’, ‘extended TAM’, and ‘TAM extension’.

Office of Research and Graduate Studies -- Annual Report 2003-2004

Contents Science and Engineering page Recombinant Bandage 02 Advanced Computing, Everyday Life 04 Software Engineering 05 Silicon Nanotubes. 06 Nutritional Genomics and Nanomaterials. 08 Genetics of Virulence 09 Rapid PCR Device. 10 Selenium, Cancer and Aging 12 Education Math in the Middle Institute. 14 Project Fulcrum 16 School Readiness for Parents 17 Behavioral Science Assessing Threatening Behavior 18 Family Dynamics of Infertility 19 Arts & Humanities Encyclopedia of the Great Plains 20 Global Politics 22 Sculpture Conservation. 22 Commission with Philip Glass 23 Rising Stars page Luminescence. 24 Giant Thunderstorms 24 Debugging Software 25 Technology Development Robotic Traffic Barrels 26 Buffalograss for Turf 26 Textiles from Cornhusks 27 Graduate Studies Undergraduate Research 28 Professional Development 29 Interactive Economics Education 29 Extending Our Reach The Nebraska Lectures 30 Research Fair 2004 30 Water Law, Science and Policy 31 Financials: FY 2003-2004 3

An extensible framework for automatic knowledge extraction from student blogs

This article introduces a framework for automatically extracting knowledge from student blogs and injecting it into a shared resource, namely a Wiki. This is motivated by the need to preserve knowledge generated by students beyond their time of study. The framework is described in the context of the Bachelor of Creative Technologies degree at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand where it is being deployed alongside an existing blogging and ePortfolio process. The framework uses an extensible, layered architecture that allows for incremental development of components in the system to enhance the functionality over time. The current implementation is in beta-testing and uses simple heuristics in the core components. This article presents a road map for extending the functionality to improve the quality of knowledge extraction by introducing techniques from the artificial intelligence field

A Game-based Approach for Open Data in Education:A Systematic Mapping Review

Abstract Open Data is defined as digital data that is made available with the technical and legal characteristics necessary to be freely used, reused, and redistributed by anyone, anytime and anywhere. Examples of Open Data can be data on mobility or pollution, which an increasing number of cities are making available to citizens. In education, the novel field of Open Data has the potential of empowering a young generation with digital skills and critical thinking through work with real-life Open Data. However, the scarcity of methods and tools for skills development and insertion into educational designs reduces the possibility of achieving this potential. This study is part of the project ODECO, aimed at addressing challenges in the creation of Open Data ecosystems in several contexts, such as education. A systematic mapping review was conducted to uncover the research connections between Open Data education and educational games. Twenty-eight studies were identified and analysed through iterative searching and including keywords related to Gamification, Open Data and Education. In doing this, relevant themes and novel approaches in the current literature were found. This paper discusses how the fields of Open Data education and educational games methodologically and theoretically contribute to outline a game-based approach for Open Data in education. An Open Data Gamified Education Framework leads to authentic learning experiences for real-world problem solving in relation to eight actions: connecting classroom activities to real facts, empowering students to act with Open Data, supporting technical Open Data skills in the classroom, building literacy and developing skills, enhancing civic participation, creating more realistic and appealing narratives, extending teaching outside the classroom by collecting data in real time and local settings, and increasing engagement and motivation. Acknowledgments. This study is funded by the ODECO Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2020, grant agreement 955569), which aims at addressing challenges in the creation of user driven, circular, skill-based, and inclusive Open Data ecosystems (ODECO - Towards a Sustainable Open Data ECOsystem, 2021)

Academic Writing Training Programs to Developing Teachers’ Writing Skills for Publication

This action research-based writing training is a component of the community service initiative organized by social studies lecturers at the Teacher Training Faculty of Tanjungpura University. The training adopted an action research approach, which involved some cycles, each comprising planning, implementation, observation, and reflection stages. This approach was chosen to encourage participants to share their insights to improve the training quality. The research goal was to gather teachers' perceptions and recommendations for enhancing the quality of action research-based academic writing training. The study involved 33 secondary school Social Studies teachers taking place at SMK 2 Singkawang. To collect data, an open-ended questionnaire was utilized. The results revealed that teachers faced challenges in accessing internet resources and suggested extending the duration of the training. They also recommended providing more comprehensive information and examples for each section of the research article. Lastly, the teachers expressed a positive view of the training