An Augmented Reality Application for the Community Learning about the Risk of Earthquake in a Multi-storey Building Area

The earthquake comes with great risks, especially in urban areas where many multi-storey buildings exist. These risks have not been understood well yet by the people of the urban area. Socialization, simulation, and learning media need to be provided continuously to improve people awareness on the importance of knowledge about the earthquake risks. An interesting learning media is not only contain informations but also a 3D animation and an interaction with the user. For a more immersive interaction, this application is equipped with augmented reality technology that gives more real visual representation like the actual condition. The evaluation result shows that 82% respondent appreciates this application, at first common users do not know the risk of earthquakes on multi-storey building, with this application users can understand the importance of earthquake risk in buildings

Preparing children for climate related disasters

Climate-related disasters affect different dimensions of children’s health and well-being both directly and indirectly. Reducing children’s vulnerability and exposure to climate-related disasters is crucial to protect them against risks. Children as climate-change agents and future leaders at local, national and international level can obviously contribute to reduce vulnerabilities in families and communities and transfer knowledge to them. Moreover, children can advocate for climate change mitigation. In the long term, participation of children in the climate change mitigation programmes may lead to fewer disasters and, consequently, less risk to their health. As government policies have failed to fully address and respond to the drivers of climate-related disasters, disasters preparedness and education for children should be considered an essential activity to protect children from disaster’s risks. Main factors in shaping children’s behaviour and response to disaster are increasing the risk perception and knowledge of the children. When a child perceived likelihood, susceptibility and severity of a disaster (such as earthquake), then they would be able and willing to learn how to prepare for that. So far, disaster education programmes for children have mostly relied on offline school-based training. Different innovative approaches can be applied to continue education within online and digital formats including virtual reality, digital games and online platforms. However, an advocacy support by influential entities such as companies engaged in entertainment industry is required to raise the awareness of public and particularly the children about disaster preparedness

The Effectiveness of the Master of Flood Preparedness (MOFP) in Elevating Malaysian Youths' Awareness of Flood Preparedness

The frequency of floods in Malaysia is on the rise, leading to the loss of numerous lives and property. The youth population is particularly vulnerable and susceptible to the dangers posed by floods if they lack preparedness. Hence, they must enhance their level of preparedness to effectively mitigate the adverse consequences of floods. To address this need, the Master of Flood Preparedness (MOFP) was created to increase awareness of flood preparedness among young individuals. This game-based learning approach encompasses three key components: flood preparedness-related e-books, a game board, and play cards. These elements are integrated into a game format to deliver and enhance youth awareness of flood preparedness. Therefore, the primary objective of this study is to assess the impact of the MOFP on increasing flood preparedness awareness among Malaysian youth. The study employs purposive sampling, with 120 individuals aged between 15 to 40 years old serving as participants. Through a descriptive approach, the study reveals that a majority of the youth respondents hold a positive perception of the MOFP's usability. Furthermore, a notable percentage of the participants acknowledged the user-friendliness of the MOFP. Moreover, their levels of awareness experienced a substantial increase following their exposure to the MOFP, underscoring its effectiveness in augmenting youth awareness regarding flood preparedness. It is anticipated that this game-based learning approach will prove beneficial to various institutions, including schools, universities, policymakers, and individual youth, as it offers a means to deliver and enhance flood preparedness awareness among the youth population

Self-determined teacher learning in a digital context fundamental change in thinking and practice

“Self-determined Teacher Learning in a Digital Context” reports on a longitudinal study of teacher empowerment through Constructionist learning about computational technologies and learning about learning itself. The study includes but looks beyond how teachers engage with technology, to how they redefine their own understandings o f learning as they use technology in working alongside their students. The teachers’ emerging self-reflective practice enables them to better understand the multifaceted structure of the learning situation and their own relations to its social, cognitive, and affective aspects. The “Empowering Minds” study also addresses how teachers can become critical judges o f technologies, in order to define for themselves and suggest for others what being digital can mean in learning. These processes have the potential to change educational strategies on personal, community and national scales. How teachers understand learning and how we conceptualise teacher learning will directly affect future generations’ potentials. Teachers grapple with epistemological issues in designing and developing environments around new protean materials that enable each person’s construction of ideas and expression of self. Learning theory becomes less abstract and more meaningful as teachers create a language for talking among themselves about learning. The resulting concrétisation of learning processes becomes possible through anchoring the learning with and about technologies in the teachers’ everyday reality o f the classroom. Teachers become empowered to use their own practice as “an object-to-thinkwith” in the Papertian sense. By externalising and examining their understandings of learning, they experiment with and ultimately transform their teaching practice, their relationships with their students, and their understandings of their role as teachers. Constructionists have been challenged to demonstrate that their assertions about education work. The approach described here is a compelling response. Furthermore its continuance among the original participants and its extension to a variety o f new initiatives demonstrate both sustainability and scalability

Painting a surrealist case study tableau: culturally relevant post-disaster education programming

This retrospective study explores how each disaster site needs to be considered as its own individual portrait for analysis and how inclusion of cultural elements contributes to the recovery of those affected by the disaster and helps in reinstating their cultural identity. This study was conducted after hurricane Katrina’s landfall, at the largest FEMA trailer park, Renaissance Village, from its inception in October 2005 until its closure June 2008. It portrays how programs may ensure their sustainability if cultural elements are included in the program design, development, and delivery of services. The nuanced notions of culture are predominantly recognized in many realms such as curriculum theory, educational leadership, and especially in the social justice literature. Current post-disaster educational responses portray a predominant lack of, and dismissal of cultural values in educational responses to disasters. This is mainly due to time and funding constraints. This study presents a blue print for future post-disaster education programming, which promotes using local culture as the main driving force. This study contributes to the Emergency education field as well as culturally relevant pedagogy literature

A Corpus-driven Approach toward Teaching Vocabulary and Reading to English Language Learners in U.S.-based K-12 Context through a Mobile App

In order to decrease teachers’ decisions of which vocabulary the focus of the instruction should be upon, a recent line of research argues that pedagogically-prepared word lists may offer the most efficient order of learning vocabulary with an optimized context for instruction in each of four K-12 content areas (math, science, social studies, and language arts) through providing English Language Learners (ELLs) with the most frequent words in each area. Educators and school experts have acknowledged the need for developing new materials, including computerized enhanced texts and effective strategies aimed at improving ELLs’ mastery of academic and STEM-related lexicon. Not all words in a language are equal in their role in comprehending the language and expressing ideas or thoughts. For this study, I used a corpus-driven approach which is operationalized by applying a text analysis method. For the purpose of this research study, I made two corpora, Teacher’s U.S. Corpus (TUSC) and Science and Math Academic Corpus for Kids (SMACK) with a focus on word lemma rather than inflectional and derivational variants of word families. To create the corpora, I collected and analyzed a total of 122 textbooks used commonly in the states of Florida and California. Recruiting, scanning and converting of textbooks had been carried out over a period of more than two years from October 2014 to March 2017. In total, this school corpus contains 10,519,639 running words and 16,344 lemmas saved in 16,315 word document pages. From the corpora, I developed six word lists, namely three frequency-based word lists (high-, mid-, and low-frequency), academic and STEM-related word lists, and essential word list (EWL). I then applied the word lists as the database and developed a mobile app, Vocabulary in Reading Study – VIRS, (available on App Store, Android and Google Play) alongside a website (www.myvirs.com). Also, I developed a new K-12 dictionary which targets the vocabulary needs of ELLs in K-12 context. This is a frequency-based dictionary which categorizes words into three groups of high, medium and low frequency words as well as two separate sections for academic and STEM words. The dictionary has 16,500 lemmas with derivational and inflectional forms

Digital Roots

Several of the most known and discussed concepts of the digital age predated the digitalization itself and have been previously used in the “analogue times”. Other concepts were coined for the digital society but have transformed and are continuously transforming over time. This edited book selects some of these concepts and starts a time travel through their history, heritage, reinvention, and reinvestment in media and communication studies

Proceedings of the Seventh Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education

International audienceThis volume contains the Proceedings of the Seventh Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (ERME), which took place 9-13 February 2011, at Rzeszñw in Poland