Beginning the day with the IWB in an early childhood classroom

There is a substantial demand in New Zealand for professional learning opportunities to help early years’ teachers to make use of ICT for teaching and learning (Harlow, Cowie and Jones, 2008), and where interactive whiteboards (IWBs) are increasingly being purchased by schools as instructional technologies. This paper reports on the findings of a researcher who was invited by a teacher in a small rural school in New Zealand to describe and understand the use of an IWB with young children aged five to six years. In this paper, the role of the IWB to enhance learning particularly in the use of language, symbols and texts is examined. The research involved collecting data from intensive classroom observation over a week using video and audio recordings as well as student and teacher interviews. Data were analysed using a framework developed by Kennewell and Beauchamp (2007), who identified how teachers used features of ICT/IWBs to enhance learning. The findings indicate that it was the way the teacher integrated the IWB into her pedagogy to improve the learning activities that made the IWB such an effective tool in this classroom

Game Engine Conventions and Games that Challenge them: Subverting Conventions as Metacommentary

Consumer-grade game engines such as Multimedia Fusion and RPG Maker have dramatically extended the reach of digital games as a medium. They have also spawned online communities, where conventions and canons of using these tools have evolved. These partly stem from the functional constraints of the game engines themselves and are institutionalized through manuals, examples, tutorials, and games made with them. However, some members of game engine communities actively seek to challenge these conventions by experimenting with the engines and finding ingenious ways to put them to unexpected uses. Such experiments can be regarded as a form of metacommentary on the engines’ capabilities and limitations. While arguably impractical and inefficient, they enrich the scope of what can be done with the engine and can contribute to its further development

Supporting Real-Time Contextual Inquiry Through Sensor Data

A key challenge in carrying out product design research is obtaining rich contextual information about use in the wild. We present a method that algorithmically mediates between participants, researchers, and objects in order to enable real-time collaborative sensemaking. It facilitates contextual inquiry, revealing behaviours and motivations that frame product use in the wild. In particular, we are interested in developing a practice of use driven design, where products become research tools that generate design insights grounded in user experiences. The value of this method was explored through the deployment of a collection of Bluetooth speakers that capture and stream live data to remote but co-present researchers about their movement and operation. Researchers monitored a visualisation of the real-time data to build up a picture of how the speakers were being used, responding to moments of activity within the data, initiating text conversations and prompting participants to capture photos and video. Based on the findings of this explorative study, we discuss the value of this method, how it compares to contemporary research practices, and the potential of machine learning to scale it up for use within industrial contexts. As greater agency is given to both objects and algorithms, we explore ways to empower ethnographers and participants to actively collaborate within remote real-time research

Embedding generic employability skills in an accounting degree: development and impediments

This paper explores and analyses the views of, and effects on, students of a project that integrated the development of employability skills within the small group classes of two compulsory courses in the first year of an accounting degree at a UK university. The project aimed to build, deliver and evaluate course materials designed to encourage the development of a broad range of employability skills: skills needed for life-long learning and a successful business career. By analysing students' opinions gathered from a series of focus groups spread throughout the year, three prominent skill areas of interest were identified: time management, modelling, and learning to learn. Further analysis highlighted the complex nature of skills development, and brought to light a range of impediments and barriers to both students' development of employability skills and their subject learning. The analysis suggests the need for accounting educators to see skills development as being an essential element of the path to providing a successful accounting education experience

Gambling and social gambling: an exploratory study of young people's perceptions and behavior

Background and aims: Gambling-type games that do not involve the spending of money (e.g., social and (demo) [demonstration] gambling games, gambling-like activities within video games) have been accused in both the legal and psychological literature of increasing minors’ propensity towards prohibited forms of gambling thus prompting calls for gambling regulation to capture address such games and subject them to age restrictions. However, there is still a shortage of empirical data that considers how young people experience monetary and non-monetary gambling, and whether they are sufficiently aware of the differences. Methods: Data was collected from 23 qualitative focus groups carried out with 200 young people aged between 14 and 19 years old in schools based in London and Kent. As the study was exploratory in nature, thematic analysis was adopted in order to capture how pupils categorise, construct, and react to gambling-like activities in comparison to monetary forms of gambling without the constrains of a predetermined theoretical framework

The Effect of Play on the Literacy Development of Students with Severe Disabilities

The purpose of this six week study was to better determine how my students with severe disabilities and I could use play-based literacy activities to achieve their literacy goals and support their literacy development. I designed this study specifically to target three students\u27 individual needs and interests to see how play activities might help them advance in their learning. Conducting this study has helped me notice the positive effects that play-based literacy activities can have on student learning and literacy development. The experience of researching a topic that is relevant to my teaching practices and one that I find directly interesting and relevant, helped me improve and build upon my teaching skills. Conducting this study has enabled me to significantly refine my skills as a researcher. This research enabled me to work with familiar and unfamiliar colleagues in my school, and it has brought me closer to them. The process has expanded the ways in which I view my students and their abilities, and opened my eyes to new ways of teaching that I will implement into my work with my future student

An exploration of sports rehabilitators and athletic rehabilitation therapists' views on fear of re-injury following Anterior Cruciate Ligament reconstruction.

Date of Acceptance: 08/12/2014 The article appears here in its accepted, peer-reviewed form, as it was provided by the submitting author. It has not been copyedited, proofed, or formatted by the publisherAim: The aim of the study was to gain a greater understanding of the views of sports rehabilitators and athletic rehabilitation therapists on recognition of fear of re-injury in clients following anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR). Background: Research involving long term follow up of patients following successful ALCR rehabilitation has shown return to sport rates are not as good as would be expected despite many patients having normal functional knee scores. The psychological component, specifically fear of re-injury plays a critical role in determining patients returning to play, and is frequently underestimated. Little is known about the recognition and intervention from the therapists’ perspective.Peer reviewe

Teacher and child talk in active learning and whole-class contexts : some implications for children from economically less advantaged home backgrounds

This paper reports the experiences of 150 children and six primary teachers when active learning pedagogies were introduced into the first year of primary schools. Although active learning increased the amount of talk between children, those from socio-economically advantaged homes talked more than those from less advantaged homes. Also, individual children experienced very little time engaged in high-quality talk with the teacher, despite the teachers spending over one-third of their time responding to children's needs and interests. Contextual differences, such as the different staffing ratios in schools and pre-schools,may affect how well the benefits of active learning transfer from preschool contexts into primary schools. Policy-makers and teachers should pay particular attention to the implications of this for the education of children from economically less advantaged home backgrounds

Year one children\u27s literacy behaviours and perceptions of literacy learning in the classroom and reading recovery contexts

This study investigates the ways in which four Year One children engage in the literacy events of their regular and Reading Recovery classrooms. It explores how these children perceived their beginning reading instruction and possible relationships between the children\u27s perceptions and the ways in which they ‘did\u27 literacy in each setting. The study draws on research in beginning reading instruction from both a psychological and socio-cultural perspective, as well as research into withdrawal programs for children experiencing difficulty in learning to read and the Reading Recovery program itself. A case study approach was used in this study and data collection methods included videoetaped observations of the children in their two classrooms, interviews and examination of artefacts. Observation data was categorised into two main groups of reading and writing behaviours and literacy related behaviours. Results showed similarities in the children\u27s reading and writing behaviours across the two settings, with some differences noted in their literacy-related behaviours from one setting to the other. The differences were particularly marked in the children\u27s dispositions to literacy learning, with two of the children showing a more active learning stance in Reading Recovery than in the classroom setting. These results are interpreted in light of previous research literature on classroom learning, continuities and discontinuities between classroom and withdrawal settings, and the effectiveness of the Reading Recovery program. It is suggested that while the withdrawal reading program may assist children to develop their reading and writing skills it may not necessarily develop in children an active learning stance and a positive disposition for literacy learning. The study points towards the need for both classroom and withdrawal teachers to work collaboratively to carefully monitor the individual reading and writing behaviours, literacy learning behaviours and learning stances of at-risk Year One children