Constants in Future Cities and Regions

The paper resumes some of the conversations the authors had in three years of research, based on the review of best participatory planning practices worldwide. The case projects are selected and discussed with the protagonists across four leading issues: Simulation, Scenario and Visioning, Government and Governance, and Scale. The case-oriented discussion is a peculiarity of the book , contributing to give shape to future cities or regions. The aim is to build a critical thinking on how urban planning, policy and design issues are faced differently or similarly throughout every cases studied. The book include the description of computer models and media, socio-political experiments and professional practices which help communicating the future effects of different design, policy and planning strategies and schemes with a wide range of aims: from information, through consultation, towards active participation. The cases have confirmed that simulation tools can impact on local government and can drive new forms of "glocal" governance, shaping and implementing future plans and projects at different scale and time span. The following paragraphs will point at some of the constant thoughts the authors had around the selection and editing of the book's case studied and related issue

Cognitive apprenticeship in architecture education: using a scaffolding tool to support conceptual design

Modeled on the master-apprenticeship relationship, student designers gain access to implicit design knowledge mainly through the conversations with their tutors during studio projects. However, intimate design studio tutelage is being challenged by increasing student to staff ratios. If leveraged effectively, technology offers the potential to maximize tutors' time investment in order to allow them to tend to more students. Scaffolding tools (Reiser, 2004) as supplement to teacher support, can assist learners with complex tasks previously out of their reach. This case study is a critical realist inquiry into the use of a scaffolding tool, Cognician Cogs. It seeks to reveal the ways in which and circumstances under which these Cogs scaffold conceptual design in a second year architecture studio project. The study draws upon Cognitive Apprenticeship as a conceptual framework to shed light on design studio practices involving specially developed Cogs. The mixed methodology approach adopted consisting mainly of qualitative data in the form of the project brief, scaffolding tool content, sample design critique conversations and interviews with three tutors and nine students. Supplementary quantitative data included closed survey question responses and Studio work marks collected from the entire class (39). Thematic analysis of the qualitative data was framed by the Vitruvian guiding principles of architecture: 'Firmness', 'Commodity' and 'Delight'. The study revealed that the intended use of the Cogs to cover aspects of Firmness and Commodity only resulted in the over-scaffolding of Firmness and the under-scaffolding of Delight. The students' resulting designs were practically acceptable, but lacked novelty

Communication System For Firefighters

Currently firefighters use two-way radios to communicate on the job, and they are forced to write reports based on their memory because there is not an easy way to record the communications between two-way radios. Firefighters need a system to automatically document what happened while they were responding to a call. To save them a significant amount of time when creating reports, our solution is to implement an application that allows firefighters to take pictures, record video and communicate in real time with their team of on-site responders. The proposed system will use a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) hosted on the fire truck itself to act as an access point (AP) to which the firefighters can connect. This AP will also save communication between firefighters to a local storage location. Upon return to the fire station, the AP will route all of the information stored locally to a larger database. For now, Wi-Fi will be our communication medium, with a prediction that our technology can eventually be extended to include radio signal

Discussion Analytics: Identifying Conversations and Social Learners in FutureLearn MOOCs

Discussion among learners in MOOCs has been hailed as beneficial for social constructive learning. To understand the pedagogical value of MOOC discussion forums, several researchers have utilized content analysis techniques to associate individual postings with differing levels of cognitive activity. However, this analysis typically ignores the turn taking among discussion postings, such as learners responding to others’ replies to their posts, learners receiving no reply for their posts, or learners just posting without conversing with others. This information is particularly important in understanding patterns of conversations that occur in MOOCs, and learners’ commenting behaviors. Therefore, in this paper we categorize comments in a FutureLearn MOOC based on their nature (post vs. reply to others’ post), classify learners based on their contributions for each type of post-ing, and identify conversations based on the types of comments composing them. This categorization quantifies the dynamics of conversations in the discussion activities, allowing monitoring of on-going discussion activities in FutureLearn and further analysis of identified conversations, social learners, and course steps with an unusually high number of a particular type of comment

Community tracking in a cMOOC and nomadic learner behavior identification on a connectivist rhizomatic learning network

This article contributes to the literature on connectivism, connectivist MOOCs (cMOOCs) and rhizomatic learning by examining participant interactions, community formation and nomadic learner behavior in a particular cMOOC, #rhizo15, facilitated for 6 weeks by Dave Cormier. It further focuses on what we can learn by observing Twitter interactions particularly. As an explanatory mixed research design, Social Network Analysis and content analysis were employed for the purposes of the research. SNA is used at the macro, meso and micro levels, and content analysis of one week of the MOOC was conducted using the Community of Inquiry framework. The macro level analysis demonstrates that communities in a rhizomatic connectivist networks have chaotic relationships with other communities in different dimensions (clarified by use of hashtags of concurrent, past and future events). A key finding at the meso level was that as #rhizo15 progressed and number of active participants decreased, interaction increased in overall network. The micro level analysis further reveals that, though completely online, the nature of open online ecosystems are very convenient to facilitate the formation of community. The content analysis of week 3 tweets demonstrated that cognitive presence was the most frequently observed, while teaching presence (teaching behaviors of both facilitator and participants) was the lowest. This research recognizes the limitations of looking only at Twitter when #rhizo15 conversations occurred over multiple platforms frequented by overlapping but not identical groups of people. However, it provides a valuable partial perspective at the macro meso and micro levels that contribute to our understanding of community-building in cMOOCs

Mitigating First Year Burnout: How Reimagined Partnerships Could Support Urban Middle Level Teachers

Given what we know about new teacher attrition—most teachers leave within their first five years in the field—specialized support during early years of teaching is critical. But should this support look different across different contexts and grade bands? What does supportive teacher education and induction look like for middle level educators preparing to teach in urban settings? This essay describes steps taken to design a cross-institutional, collaborative 3-year residency program for K-8 educators, and speaks to the importance of reimagined co-teaching, critical, and cross-institutional partnerships in middle grades teacher education. The authors urge readers to consider how to implement similar modifications in their own spaces to create powerful, collaborative middle grades teacher education and induction