Education Context Report: Dona Ana County, 2020

The SUCCESS Partnership is a prenatal-to-career education initiative committed totransforming education outcomes in Doña Ana County so that all children have a foundationfrom which to thrive in school and life. As a partnership, we embrace the idea that"education is a shared responsibility." The Partnership is composed of residents, parents,students, teachers, elected officials, businesses, school administrators, faith-basedrepresentatives, professors, nonprofits, and community leaders.Here in the SUCCESS Partnership, we are committed to data-informed decision-making as a primary strategy for our work. Good data tells us important things about our community, like what we are doing well, where we need to improve, and what kinds of changes are happening over time. The numbers give us a baseline so we know where we are starting from when we talk about our focus areas. Finally, this information helps us keep our eyes on the big picture - why we do the work that we do.The purpose of this Education Context Report is to provide our partners and community with data across the education spectrum in Doña Ana Count

LEADERSHIP IN A DIGITAL ERA - IS “DIGITAL LEADERSHIP” A BUZZWORD OR A SIGNIFICANT PHENOMENON?

Digitalisation, digital transformation, digital workplace, data-driven organisations, big data, artificial intelligence – the discourse on different facets of digitalisation is present, powerful and sometimes convincing and seductive. “Digital leadership” is another, related phenomenon that has emerged in the digital era. Talking about leadership and using digital as a prefix: what is this all about? Is it a phenomenon of scientific and conceptual interest? Does it have a substantial practical significance or is it just another buzzword? This paper will investigate and reflect upon those questions with the aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of leadership in a digital era. The basis of this paper is consti- tuted by a hermeneutic literature review of related research on leadership, digitalization and digital transformation. Thereto, five interviews with senior executives working with leadership in a digital era have been conducted. As a theoretical lens we applied the concepts of transactional versus transform- ative leadership. The analysis conclude that the transactional form of leadership seems to prevail. However, when practitioners talk about leadership in a digital era they emphasise the need for char- acteristics related to more transformative leadership. In this sense, we have identified an ongoing transition of leadership itself. Another conclusion is that leadership in a digital era is based on para- doxes and also about handling them. Finally, talking about “digital” leadership does not really con- tribute to the understanding or characteristics of leadership. Thus, we suggest skipping the prefix and instead talk about leadership in a digital era

Syntactic presentations for glued toposes and for crystalline toposes

We regard a geometric theory classified by a topos as a syntactic presentation for the topos and develop tools for finding such presentations. Extensions (or expansions) of geometric theories, which can not only add axioms but also symbols and sorts, are treated as objects in their own right, to be able to build up complex theories from parts. The role of equivalence extensions, which leave the theory the same up to Morita equivalence, is investigated. Motivated by the question what the big Zariski topos of a non-affine scheme classifies, we show how to construct a syntactic presentation for a topos if syntactic presentations for a covering family of open subtoposes are given. For this, we introduce a transformation of theory extensions such that when the result, dubbed a conditional extension, is added to a theory, it requires part of the data a model is made of only under some condition given in the form of a closed geometric formula. We also give a general definition for systems of interdependent theory extensions, to be able to talk about compatible syntactic presentations not only for the open subtoposes in a given cover but also for their finite intersections. An important concept for finding classified theories of toposes in concrete situations is that of theories of presheaf type. We develop several techniques for extending a theory while preserving the presheaf type property, and give a list of examples of simple extensions which can destroy it. Finally, we determine a syntactic presentation of the big crystalline topos of a scheme. In the case of an affine scheme, this is accomplished by showing that the biggest part of the classified theory is of presheaf type and transforming the site defining the crystalline topos into the canonical presheaf site for this theory, while the remaining axioms induce the Zariski topology. Then we can apply our results on gluing classifying toposes to obtain a classified theory even in the non-affine case

Wittgenstein and Communication Technology : A conversation between Richard Harper and Constantine Sandis

Special Issue: PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH WITTGENSTEIN SOCIETY 10TH ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE: WITTGENSTEIN IN THE 21ST CENTURY © 2018 John Wiley & Sons LtdThis paper documents a conversation between a philosopher and a human computer interaction researcher whose research has been enormously influenced by Wittgenstein. In particular, the in vivo use of categories in the design of communications and AI technologies are discussed, and how this meaning needs to evolve to allow creative design to flourish. The paper will be of interest to anyone concerned with philosophical tools in everyday action.Non peer reviewe

Active music

We are a group of eleven young people with intellectual disability and three music therapists. We did action research at a university. We wanted to find out how a music group might be helpful for young people with intellectual disabilities. We wanted to tell our own story and use our own words because we have a lot to say. We wanted people to read our story and to use our ideas to help young people with intellectual disabilities to have good lives. We went to twenty sessions of music research, and five more sessions of research analysis. We also did a lot of research work in between sessions. We found out that music groups can be fun. They can also be hard work. They help us develop skills like listening and waiting. They are places where we can be independent. But music groups are also good places to practice working as a team. They can be safe places for people to express emotions. Music helps us to know people. It brings us together. Playing musical instruments can also help physical development. A good life for us would include having the chance to play music with others or to have music lessons. But it is not always easy for us to go to ordinary lessons or music groups. It might be important for young people with intellectual disability to have support from people who understand them at first. We want to be independent but we need help to develop our dreams in practical ways. We found that doing research is fun and interesting. We were all researchers but we had different things to do. The adults had to be the organisers, setting up the research. We knew from the start the research would be about what young people think about music. The adults had done their reading and had written the literature review. The young people decided on other questions, and gathered data in lots of different ways. They also did some of the analysis, and decided on the findings of each cycle. The findings of each cycle, with more of the young people’s words, are in the appendices. Later, the adults wrote the main findings, the discussion and conclusion. We all discussed the things we wrote along the way and at the end of the research. The adults have tried to help the young people understand what has been written. The research took a lot of time and it was hard work for everybody. To be a good researcher you need to learn research skills. It is important that young people with intellectual disabilities are not exhausted by research. They need to be able to enjoy the things they are doing. We all liked being involved in research even though it was hard work. We think that research is important and helpful. Young people should be involved in research that is about them. We learnt that young people with intellectual disabilities can go to university. Going to university was scary at first but we got used to it and we started to enjoy it. We need to do more research to make sure universities are ready to welcome students with intellectual disabilities. We can use our research to show universities that it can be a good idea to support people with intellectual disabilities to go to university. We can also use our research show people what we can do; what we like to do; and what we want to do in the future. Most of us would like to do more music and research in future

What we talk about when we talk about (big) data

In common with much contemporary discourse around big data, recent discussion of datafication in the Journal of Strategic Information Systems has focused on its effects on individuals, organisations and society. Generally missing from such analysis, however, is any consideration of data themselves. What is it that is having these effects? In this Viewpoint article I therefore present a critical analysis of a number of widely-held assumptions about data in general and big data in particular. Rather than being a referential, natural, foundational, objective and equal representation of the world, it will be argued, data are partial and contingent and are brought into being through situated practices of conceptualization, recording and use. Big data are also not as revolutionary voluminous, universal or exhaustive as they are often presented. Some initial implications of this reconceptualization of data are explored. A distinction is made between “data in principle” as they are recorded, and the “data in practice” as they are used. It is only the latter, typically a small and not necessarily representative subset of the former, that will contribute directly to the effects of datafication.Health Foundatio

Poofy Dresses and Big Guns: A poststructuralist analysis of gendered positioning through talk amongst friends

This article uses data collected from a class of eight to nine year-olds to show the specific ways children are defining their gendered positions within the context of their same-sex friendship groups. Children‘s subjectivities are described as both actively formed but also positioned within the surrounding (gendered) discourses. This article will show specific ways that structure and agency is played out through talk amongst friends. Importantly, the analysis of the talk indicates that children are able to both align themselves as well as challenge dominant gendered discourses. The article argues that informal talk amongst friends is an important space for children to make sense of masculinities and femininities and to develop their identities, particularly in the context of schools

The Second Law and Cosmology

I use cosmology examples to illustrate that the second law of thermodynamics is not old and tired, but alive and kicking, continuing to stimulate interesting research on really big puzzles. The question "Why is the entropy so low?" (despite the second law) suggests that our observable universe is merely a small and rather uniform patch in a vastly larger space stretched out by cosmological inflation. The question "Why is the entropy so high" (compared to the complexity required to describe many candidate "theories of everything") independently suggests that physical reality is much larger than the part we can observe.Comment: Transcript of talk at the MIT Keenan Symposium; video available at http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/513, including slides and animation

Strange Quark Matter Theory

Theoretical approaches to strange and other types of quark matter accounted for at the SQM2003 Meeting are reviewed. They range from simple statistical models through perturbative QCD supported mico-dynamical simulations til lattice gauge theory and astrophysics results. Finally some ideas for future research in this field are outlined.Comment: Theory summary talk given at Strange Quark Matter 2003 Conference, March 12-17, 2003, Atlantic Beach, NC, USA. (LateX 19 pages, 15 postscript figures.