On the Nature of Students\u27 Digital Mathematical Performances

In this study I investigate the nature of digital mathematical performances (DMPs) produced by elementary school students (Grades 4-6). A DMP is a multimodal text/narrative (e.g., a video) in which one uses the performance arts to communicate mathematical ideas. I analyze twenty-two DMPs available at the Math + Science Performance Festival in 2008. Assuming a sociocultural/postmodern perspective with emphasis on multimodality, my focus is on the role of the arts and technology in shaping students’ mathematical communication and thinking. Methodologically, I employ qualitative case studies, along with video analysis. I conduct a descriptive analysis of each DMP using Boorstin’s (1990) categories of what makes good films, focusing on surprises, sense-making, emotions, and visceral sensations. I also conduct a cross-case analysis using Boorstin’s categories and the mathematical processes and strands of the Ontario Curriculum. The multimodal nature of DMP is one of its most significant pedagogic attributes. Mathematics is traditionally communicated through print-based texts, but the production of DMPs is an alternative that engages students in conceiving multimodal narratives. The playfulness offers scenarios for students’ collaboration, creativity, and imagination. By making DMPs available online, students share their ideas in a public and social environment, beyond the classrooms. Most of the DMPs only explore Geometry and offer opportunities to experience some surprises, sense-making, emotions, and visceral sensations. The lack of focus on other strands (e.g., Algebra) may be seen as a reflection on what (and how) students are (or not) learning in their classes. The production of conceptual DMPs is a rare event, although I acknowledge that I analyzed only DMPs of the first year of the Festival, that is, students did not have examples or references to produce their DMPs. Some DMPs potentially explore conceptual mathematical surprises, but they appear to have gaps in terms of sense-making. The use of the arts and technologies does not guarantee the mathematical conceptuality of DMPs. This study contributes to mathematics education with an exploratory discussion about how mathematical ideas can be (a) communicated and represented as multimodal texts at the elementary school level and (b) seen through a performance arts lens. The study also points out directions about the pedagogic components for conceiving conceptual DMPs in terms of the performance arts and the components of the Ontario Curriculum

A Wake-Up Call: Lessons from Ebola for the World's Health Systems

The report ranks the world's poorest countries on the state of their public health systems, finding that 28 have weaker defenses in place than Sierra Leone where, alongside Liberia and Guinea, the current Ebola crisis has already claimed more than 9,500 lives. The report also advises that prevention is better than cure, finding that the international Ebola relief effort in West Africa has cost $4.3bn, whereas strengthening the health systems of those countries in the first place would have cost just$1.58bn. Ahead of an Ebola summit attended by world leaders in Brussels today, the charity warns that alongside immediate much needed support to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, lessons need to be learned and applied to other vulnerable countries around the world

Introduction: Ways of Machine Seeing

How do machines, and, in particular, computational technologies, change the way we see the world? This special issue brings together researchers from a wide range of disciplines to explore the entanglement of machines and their ways of seeing from new critical perspectives. This 'editorial' is for a special issue of AI & Society, which includes contributions from: María Jesús Schultz Abarca, Peter Bell, Tobias Blanke, Benjamin Bratton, Claudio Celis Bueno, Kate Crawford, Iain Emsley, Abelardo Gil-Fournier, Daniel Chávez Heras, Vladan Joler, Nicolas Malevé, Lev Manovich, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Perle Møhl, Bruno Moreschi, Fabian Offert, Trevor Paglan, Jussi Parikka, Luciana Parisi, Matteo Pasquinelli, Gabriel Pereira, Carloalberto Treccani, Rebecca Uliasz, and Manuel van der Veen

Factors Shaping the Effects of Visual Media Texts on Viewer Understandings

This project seeks to clarify the mechanisms through which the media contribute to audiences’ understandings of social groups. It encompasses two inter-linked studies. One study identifies two dimensions through which audiences evaluate the realism of media characters. It then investigates how one of these dimensions, character representativeness, is associated with the audience’s level of familiarity with the society portrayed in the media text and with their sense of the variability of the represented society. Participants from two different societies, the US and Greater China, evaluated the characters in two film segments, one from a culture with which they were familiar and one from a society with which they were unfamiliar. They then evaluated the homogeneity of the films’ societies. I assessed the participants’ perceptions of the characters’ representativeness through two measures. One measure supported the initial hypotheses of the study. Characters from socially distant societies were seen as significantly more representative than those from socially near ones. The other measure did not provide any support for this hypothesis. There was no consistent evidence that the perceived variability of a film’s society moderates perceptions of the representativeness of the film’s characters. iv The second study investigates whether viewers’ perceptions of the representativeness of a text’s characters shape the strength of the text’s effect on viewers’ perceptions. It also sought to determine whether the activation of particular category structures or viewer attributions of character behavior influenced effects. Volunteers saw a film clip and then completed a questionnaire about the representativeness of the characters and their perceptions of the source society. Before seeing the film clip, half the participants were primed with publication materials designed to activate the category structure of society membership. Neither the representativeness of the characters nor the variability of the film society is associated with the application of the characters’ attributes to the viewers’ perceptions. There are no consistent differences between the priming and control groups on any of the outcome measures. There is no consistent evidence that audience members’ attributions shape the media representations’ effect. Possible reasons for the studies’ failure as well as implications for future research are discussed

Extraordinary experience in modern contexts

Vivid dreams, visions, hearing voices, premonitions, kinaesthetic sensations, relationships with invisible entities have long been the subject of anthropological inquiry, as for example, in studies of shamanism and spirit possession. Most such studies are carried out in societies unlike our own located in faraway locales. This book looks at such phenomena as they are experienced in contemporary modern settings where they are not generally considered legitimate sources of knowledge.Introduction / Deirdre Meintel, Véronique Béguet and Jean-Guy A. Goulet ; Extraordinary Experience as Ways of Being in the World / Véronique Béguet ; Modernity’s Defences / David J. Hufford ; Science, Superstition, and the Supernatural: Exploring the Tension between Skepticism and Experiences with Spirits / Scott Habkirk ; The Quest for Evidence: Scientism, Doubt, and Paranormal Investigation in England / Michele Hanks ; “Feeling as One” during Fieldwork : The Anthropologist as Phenomenological Subject / Géraldine Mossière ; Spirit Mediumship and the Experiential Self / Jack Hunter ; Extraordinary Experience, Intersubjectivity and Doubt in Fieldwork: Studying Urban Spiritualists / Deirdre Meintel ; Epilogue: Three (Ir)Rational Ways of Being an Anthropologist in the Field / Jean-Guy A. Goule

NASA Lewis Research Center Futuring Workshop

On October 21 and 22, 1986, the Futures Group ran a two-day Futuring Workshop on the premises of NASA Lewis Research Center. The workshop had four main goals: to acquaint participants with the general history of technology forecasting; to familiarize participants with the range of forecasting methodologies; to acquaint participants with the range of applicability, strengths, and limitations of each method; and to offer participants some hands-on experience by working through both judgmental and quantitative case studies. Among the topics addressed during this workshop were: information sources; judgmental techniques; quantitative techniques; merger of judgment with quantitative measurement; data collection methods; and dealing with uncertainty