Landscape Study in Wireless and Mobile Learning in the post-16 sector

In the post-16 sector (further and higher education, and adult and community learning) there is a need to understand how wireless and mobile technologies can contribute to improving the student experience of learning, and help institutions fulfil their missions in an age of incomparably fast technological change. In the context of this interest and growing need, a Landscape Study project was commissioned by JISC through the Innovation strand of the JISC e-Learning Programme in 2004-5. Our project aims were to take a birds-eye view of developments and practice in the UK and internationally, and to communicate our findings to a broad and varied audience. The Summary report is accompanied by 3 associated reports on 'Current Uses', 'Potential Uses' and 'Strategic Aspects'. (The four reports are available in one single document here.

Grazing to Gravy: Faunal Remains and Indications of Genízaro Foodways on the Spanish Colonial Frontier of New Mexico

Understanding identity aspects of those labeled Genízaro during the late Spanish Colonial period of New Mexico benefits from finer-grained perspectives on what ranges and mixtures of practices persons bearing this casta designation may have performed while preparing cuisine. Materials from the northern frontier site of Casitas Viejas (LA 917) suggest that the closely related households of this fortified plaza may have departed from the less expansive culinary practices of colonial elites while drawing from their multiple social relationships at the various stages of production and consumption of foods. In other words, at different temporal and spatial scales, behaviors reflected in the material record refute historical notions about a creolized community that tried to diminish identity difference within the village. The goal of this work is to explore through the study of faunal remains some of the relationships between foodways and cultural identity in a manner that might assist in some disentangling of the sticky problems archaeologists face in interpreting traces of dynamic past situations of identity from a static material record recovered today

Designing for frustration and disputes in the family car

This article appears with the express permission of the publisher, IGI Global.Families spend an increasing amount of time in the car carrying out a number of activities including driving to work, caring for children and co-ordinating drop-offs and pickups. While families travelling in cars may face stress from difficult road conditions, they are also likely to be frustrated by coordinating a number of activities and resolving disputes within the confined space of car. A rising number of in-car infotainment and driver-assistance systems aim to help reduce the stress from outside the vehicle and improve the experience of driving but may fail to address sources of stress from within the car. From ethnographic studies of family car journeys, we examine the work of parents in managing multiple stresses while driving, along with the challenges of distractions from media use in the car. Keeping these family extracts as a focus for analysis, we draw out some design considerations that help build on the observations from our empirical work.Microsoft Research and the Dorothy Hodgkin Awar

A literature review of the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education

This review focuses on the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education. It provides a synthesis of the research literature in the field and a series of illustrative examples of how these tools are being used in learning and teaching. It draws out the perceived benefits that these new technologies appear to offer, and highlights some of the challenges and issues surrounding their use. The review forms the basis for a HE Academy funded project, ‘Peals in the Cloud’, which is exploring how Web 2.0 tools can be used to support evidence-based practices in learning and teaching. The project has also produced two in-depth case studies, which are reported elsewhere (Galley et al., 2010, Alevizou et al., 2010). The case studies focus on evaluation of a recently developed site for learning and teaching, Cloudworks, which harnesses Web 2.0 functionality to facilitate the sharing and discussion of educational practice. The case studies aim to explore to what extent the Web 2.0 affordances of the site are successfully promoting the sharing of ideas, as well as scholarly reflections, on learning and teaching

Multisensory learning in adaptive interactive systems

The main purpose of my work is to investigate multisensory perceptual learning and sensory integration in the design and development of adaptive user interfaces for educational purposes. To this aim, starting from renewed understanding from neuroscience and cognitive science on multisensory perceptual learning and sensory integration, I developed a theoretical computational model for designing multimodal learning technologies that take into account these results. Main theoretical foundations of my research are multisensory perceptual learning theories and the research on sensory processing and integration, embodied cognition theories, computational models of non-verbal and emotion communication in full-body movement, and human-computer interaction models. Finally, a computational model was applied in two case studies, based on two EU ICT-H2020 Projects, "weDRAW" and "TELMI", on which I worked during the PhD

New Media & Youth Identity. Issues and Research Pathways

Media have held a considerable and growing place in the social environment of industrial society in recent decades, transforming the perception that a people have of their place in the world and of their memberships and belonging, creating new paths for social relations, affecting lifestyles, socialization, and communication processes, and the construction of identity itself. The relationship between young people (especially teenagers and adolescents) and new media shows some peculiarities which are worth further reflection to understand the extent and outcomes of these social changes. This article aims to investigate the discourse on youth identity and new media in the social science literature, determining which are the key trends and exploring the more relevant research questions about this theme and the way these topics relate to one another. Titles and abstracts of articles published during the period 2004 \u2013 2013 were selected from the Scopus social sciences database and they were analysed using different content analysis techniques supported by the T-Lab software. The international literature on these topics presents a certain liveliness and heterogeneity in themes and its perspectives on theoretical and empirical research. Nevertheless, it has been possible to identify some key trends, focusing mainly on the idea of active identity construction by new media

Pragmatic translanguaging: Multilingual practice in adolescent online discourse

This study puts forward the term ‘pragmatic translanguaging’ to refer to consciously outcome-oriented language switch motivations. The study focuses on the translanguaging practices of adolescents in their online discourse and explores what Jørgensen (2008) calls the ‘designing mind’ behind such practices; that is, an awareness of both the practices themselves and the motivations for them. With this in mind, the aim is to ascertain whether online translanguaging practices are intentional and to identify the functions they perform. In order to do so, semi-structured interviews were carried out involving 97 high-school students from the Valencian Community, Spain. The resulting data were analyzed to see how the participants described their online translanguaging practices and their reasons for engaging in these practices. The results show translanguaging across a range of digital media and online platforms which is consciously targeted at producing a specific effect and is frequently motivated by awareness of this potential effect; that is, an enhanced pragmatic awareness. Furthermore, the data revealed that online translanguaging practices covered three main pragmatic functions, namely those of marking humor, marking identity, and modifying requests. The study indicates that multilingual adolescents translanguage for more than simple communicative reasons, and that online platforms give them an extended opportunity to engage in multilingual interaction. While recognizing the limitations of this purely qualitative study, the authors offer the term ‘pragmatic translanguaging’ as a focal point for further contributions to this under-researched area of multilingual pragmatics

Losing by Expanding: Corralling the Runaway Object

At the time of publication C. Spinuzzi was at the University of Texas at Austin.Third-generation activity theory (3GAT) has become a popular theoretical and methodological framework for writing studies, particularly in technical communication. 3GAT involves identifying an object, a material or problem that is cyclically transformed by collective activity. The object is the linchpin of analysis in the empirical case. Yet the notion of object has expanded methodologically and theoretically over time, making it difficult to reliably bound an empirical case. In response, this article outlines the expansion of the object, diagnoses this expansion, and proposes an alternate approach that constrains the object for case-study research in writing studies.Writin