Enhancing children's educational television with design rationales and justifications

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 57-60).This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.This research involves creating a system that provides parents with tools and information to help children learn from television. Children who converse with their parents during television viewing are better able to evaluate and make sense of content. However, children might learn more if they are encouraged to go from simply understanding content to generating questions and problem solving strategies. To do this, we need to deliver teaching and learning strategies to parents so they can initiate dialogues with their children around television. This research describes a system, called the Parent Trap, which sends messages to parents about the television shows that their children watch. The information in the messages tries to model dialogues that promote more frequent and longer conversations, which include inquiry and explanation. These conversations might facilitate additional learning from television and encourage further discourse between parents and children around other programs and activities. In the thesis, I suggest ways that television shows can be augmented with additional, digital information to help parents learn strategies for conversing with their children. I also present preliminary evaluations to show that developing these strategies may help television producers change the ways that they think about the educational value of their content.Tamara M. Lackner.S.M

Montanan, Winter 1995

This is the magazine of the University of Montana with news about the University for UM alumni as well as current faculty, students, staff, and administrators. This is volume 12, number 2.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/montanan/1119/thumbnail.jp

KNOWING THE NATURAL WORLD: THE CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT EVOLUTION IN AND OUT OF THE CLASSROOM

Evolution is a central underlying concept to a significant number of discourses in civilized society, but the complexity of understanding basic tenets of this important theory is just now coming to light. Knowledge about evolution is constructed from both formal and free-choice opportunities, like television. Nature programs are commonly considered educational by definition, but research indicates the narratives often promote creationist ideas about this important process in biology. I explored how nature programs influenced knowledge construction about evolutionary theory using a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Because misconceptions about evolution are common, I examined how students` conceptual ecologies changed in response to information presented in an example of a particularly poor nature film narrative. Students` held a diversity of misconceptions, proximate conceptions, and evolutionary conceptions simultaneously, and many of their responses were direct reflections of the nature program. As a result, I incorporated the same nature program into an experiment designed to examine the effects of narrative and imagery on evolution understanding. After completing an extensive pre-assessment that addressed attitudes and beliefs about science knowledge, students viewed one of four versions of the nature program that varied in the quality of science and imagery presented. The effect of watching different versions was only vaguely apparent in students with a moderate understanding of evolution. The relationship was much more complex among students with a poor understanding of evolution but suggested a negative effect that was more influenced by public discourses about this controversial subject than conceptual understanding. The relationships warranted examining learning from the perspective of the consumers of these programs. I surveyed audience beliefs about the educational value of nature programs and found that an overwhelming majority believed the programs were educational and designed to teach about nature. The results were particularly alarming because beliefs about the educational value may strongly impact learning outcomes. An informal survey of nature programs aired during a sweeps month indicated that poor presentation of science, and specifically evolutionary theory, was indeed the norm. Indeed, nature programs may be contributing to the deconstruction of knowledge about evolution both in and out of the classroom

Multiple Sacralities: Rethinking Sacralizations in European History. Ein Europa der Differenzen, Band 3

We live in a present of multiple and conflicting sacralities. How do we account for the persistence and remarkable adaptability of traditional forms of the Christian sacred? How do we explain the ongoing allure of instrumentalizing the sacred for political purposes? And what do we make of the spread of nature spiritualities that have been so pertinent over the last half century? This volume seeks to reflect upon how these multiple sacralizations can be studied and understood in historical and cross-disciplinary perspective

Field Museum of Natural History bulletin.

v. 58 (1987

2004 Xavier University Summer Sessions Class Schedule Course Catalog

https://www.exhibit.xavier.edu/coursecatalog/1161/thumbnail.jp

Voices of USU: An Anthology of Student Essays, 2014

This collection of student writing represents the voices of over 2,000 students who enroll each academic year in Utah State University’s second-year composition course, Intermediate Writing: Research Writing in a Persuasive Mode. Voices of USU celebrates excellence in writing by providing undergraduate students of diverse backgrounds and disciplines the opportunity to have their work published.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/voicesofusu/1005/thumbnail.jp

Rollins Alumni Record, Summer 2005

Issue Title: Honoring The Heritage, Celebrating The Futur