Long-Term Preservation of Digital Records, Part I: A Theoretical Basis

The Information Revolution is making preservation of digital records an urgent issue. Archivists have grappled with the question of how to achieve this for about 15 years. We focus on limitations to preservation, identifying precisely what can be preserved and what cannot. Our answer comes from the philosophical theory of knowledge, especially its discussion about the limits of what can be communicated. Philosophers have taught that answers to critical questions have been obscured by "failure to understand the logic of our language". We can clarify difficulties by paying extremely close attention to the meaning of words such as 'knowledge', 'information', 'the original', and 'dynamic'. What is valuable in transmitted and stored messages, and what should be preserved, is an abstraction, the pattern inherent in each transmitted and stored digital record. This answer has, in fact, been lurking just below the surface of archival literature. To make progress, archivists must collaborate with software engineers. Understanding perspectives across disciplinary boundaries will be needed.

Understanding Mathematics and Science Advice Networks of Middle School Teachers

We report findings from a research project designed to examine the mathematics and science advice networks of teachers who participated in professional development under the auspices of the NSF-funded Rocky Mountain-Middle School Math and Science Partnership. We provide descriptive statistics of results. Additionally, we reflect on the research process and discuss some of the practical challenges involved

The Bahá’í Sense of Human Unity

This paper for a conference on Faith, Feelings and Identity at Roehampton University in 2003 is an investigation conducted with members of the Bahá’í Faith community in the UK. The contributor is not a Bahá’í but has researched Bahá’í literature and practice over the past decade and has close links with Bahá’í groups. It explores social, political and global issues as seen through Bahá’í eyes. The Bahá’í Faith is small but worldwide and internationalist in theology, with central beliefs about nurturing global peace and prosperity through the concept of human unity. The theology of the unity of spiritual revelation gives multi-faith dialogue a high profile in Bahá’í activities. The research instrument is a qualitative structured interview schedule. The data in this paper are based on the responses of Bahá’ís to this. Overall their responses build a picture of the Bahá’í sense of international and civic responsibility

Communicator, May 2007

Volume 19, Issue

A war for principle? Shifting memories of the Union cause in Iowa, 1865-1916

No description supplie

A Call To Combine Rhetorical Theory and Practice in the Legal Writing Classroom

The theory and practice of law have been separated in legal education to their detriment since the turn of the twentieth century. As history teaches us and even the 2007 Carnegie Report perhaps suggests, teaching practice without theory is as inadequate as teaching theory without practice. Just as law students should learn how to draft a simple contract from taking Contracts, they should learn the theory of persuasion from taking a legal writing course. In an economy where law apprenticeship has reverted from employer to educator, legal writing courses should do more than teach analysis, conventional documents, and the social context in which lawyers write. The legal writing professor\u27s task is to impart to her students the intellectual ballast necessary to navigate complex analytical challenges in the workplace. By combining rhetorical theory and practice in the legal writing classroom, the professor can pique students\u27 interest, hasten their learning, and help them develop transferable skills better than teaching by imitation alone. In addition, teaching the rhetorical nature of law in a legal writing course helps students debunk sooner the myth of black letter law in their doctrinal courses. Finally, as the Carnegie Report indicates, a more holistic approach to teaching can best blend the analytical and practical habits of mind that professional practice demands.... This Article begins with a brief history of the separation of theory and practice in the law classroom and the impact that it has had on the quality and reputation of writing as its own subject. The Article argues that despite a wave of pedagogical advances, legal writing as its own subject has ample room to grow. For legal writing courses to achieve intellectual maturity, they must incorporate rhetorical theory. To ignore it is to confirm Plato\u27s suspicion that rhetoric is a discipline without a subject matter and to enable the insidious undervaluing of our profession. As detailed below, there are several advantages to teaching legal writing as rhetoric. Although not the focus of this Article, a corollary advantage may be to help legal writing faculty achieve academic equality, which benefits teacher and student alike. For a variety of reasons, this Article concludes that legal writing professors are responsible for teaching both practical skills as well as the theories that inform them

Student transitions to blended learning: an institutional case study

This paper examines the experiences of students transitioning to blended learning in the University of Glasgow as part of the QAA Enhancement Themes work on Student Transitions. We draw here on exploratory, qualitative research to examine the benefits, challenges and skills developed by students during transitions to blended learning as a means of advancing understanding, and informing future curriculum design. Data from home undergraduate and international postgraduate students were collected over two years through focus groups, individual interviews and end-of-course quality assurance surveys. We found that while home/undergraduate and international/postgraduate students have similar transition experiences, international taught postgraduates encounter additional challenges in terms of acclimatising to UK higher education (HE), especially within shorter programmes of study and where pedagogical and language differences exist. The findings are integrated in a conceptual framework highlighting the importance of access, acculturation (attitudes) and attributes (skills) to enable learner autonomy to engage effectively in blended learning. The findings have implications for institutional infrastructure, curriculum design and learner development. Further research is required to collect a larger data set as a means of developing the study’s conceptual framework, in order to better understand and support diverse student transitions to blended learning

Impetus to geography teaching in 19th century elementary schools in Malta

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Elementary School curriculum in Malta was a very narrow one. In 1850 when Canon Paolo Pullicino, the newly appointed Director of Education on his return from Dublin, where he had gone to study the Irish Education system, initiated the first attempts towards reform, he was so disappointed with the existing system of education in Malta, that he devoted a great part of his First Report (1850)1 to expounding its main defects. He criticised the quality of instruction being imparted in the twelve primary schools in Malta and the two schools in Gozo, and complained that the instruction given was inadequate.peer-reviewe