Telling Stories Together: A collaborative technology-based curriculum project for an endangered language community

Language revitalization efforts are enhanced not only when the language is brought to new users, but also when it is brought into new domains of use. This project creates a template for computer-assisted language learning that aims to maximize L2 learning through task-based, constructivist uses of free Web 2.0 tools. This template includes two sets of parallel activities. For each set, students work together to brainstorm, illustrate, write, edit, and publish a story, conducting all activities in the L2. One set directs students to record native speakers retelling stories they know in their language, while the second develops a new story from the students’ own life experiences or imaginations. Each step of the writing process will be completed using a specific open-access online tool: • Stage 1: Pre-write – This stage uses SoundCloud, a free web-based audio recording and streaming tool which can upload files from a computer, or record directly into the website. • Stage 2: Story development and illustrations – This stage uses Flickr, a free photography and image hosting site, to find images that illustrate or relate to the stories. • Stage 3: Collaborative writing – This stage uses Google Docs. The first team transcribes a known story recorded from an elder while the second develops and elaborates its new story. • Stage 4: Editing and revising – This stage employs Google Tasks to complete revising and editing. • Stage 5: Publishing – This final stage uses Lulu, an internet-based self-publishing service. These tools accommodate special circumstances faced by many indigenous communities. Many communities who fit this intended design have a very small pool of potential language learners, and such small numbers make it difficult to teach separate classes for students at varying proficiency levels; this template accommodates this by employing activities in which learners at every level (beginning, intermediate, advanced, and native speakers) can take leading roles. Additionally, having the entire story-building process take place via low cost web tools means that students can participate and collaborate remotely, if geography or other factors make a physical language classroom impractical. At the end of this project, the learners will have potentially produced two new texts, one based on a traditional story and one based on in-language creative writing. This project, therefore, empowers young learners to be active language revitalizers, not just through their own language acquisition, but also through development of materials that contribute to the literary corpus of their community

Recording to revitalize: Language teachers and documentation design

As language communities lose their last first-language speakers, many turn to language teachers to carry on the important work of language maintenance and revival. How can we design documentation projects that will be useful for these future language users? This paper outlines findings from interviews conducted with ten teachers of Native languages of the Pacific Northwest. These teachers identified specific, concrete areas where language documentation has helped them in their revitalization work, and areas where there are noticeable and often frustrating gaps. Their reflections and observations lead to several concrete suggestions for what linguists can add to their documentation efforts, and also underscore the potential richness of a project designed with teachers in mind. Collaboration with future language revitalizers could be greatly beneficial both to language communities and to linguists.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Performance Pressure and Resource Allocation in Washington

Based on interviews with state, district, and school officials, explores how performance pressures have changed resource allocation decisions. Examines reform goals and how Washington's finance system impedes efforts to link resources to student learning

The KnotLink Game

Recently, several new games have been introduced that can be played on knot and link diagrams. One of the first such games, played on knot diagrams, is called the Knotting-Unknotting Game. In this game, one player aims to create an unknot while their opponent tries to produce a nontrivial knot. The Linking-Unlinking Game is similar, but is played on link diagrams. In this game, one player's goal is to produce an unlink while the other player aims to create any nontrivial link. In our paper, we introduce a hybrid of these two games, called the KnotLink game, that can be played on either a knot or a link diagram. Moves and players' goals are similar to those of the previous two games, with one key difference that allows the game board to be transformed from a knot to a link or vice versa during game play. We describe this new game, provide a sample game, and prove several results regarding winning strategies for infinite families of rational knots and links

A 0-dimensional counter-example to rooting?

We provide an example of a 0-dimensional field theory where rooting does not work.Comment: 3 pages; Physics Letters B (2010

Does sub-cluster merging accelerate mass segregation in local star formation?

The nearest site of massive star formation in Orion is dominated by the Trapezium subsystem, with its four OB stars and numerous companions. The question of how these stars came to be in such close proximity has implications for our understanding of massive star formation and early cluster evolution. A promising route toward rapid mass segregation was proposed by McMillan et al. (2007), who showed that the merger product of faster-evolving sub clusters can inherit their apparent dynamical age from their progenitors. In this paper we briefly consider this process at a size and time scale more suited for local and perhaps more typical star formation, with stellar numbers from the hundreds to thousands. We find that for reasonable ages and cluster sizes, the merger of sub-clusters can indeed lead to compact configurations of the most massive stars, a signal seen both in Nature and in large-scale hydrodynamic simulations of star formation from collapsing molecular clouds, and that sub-virial initial conditions can make an un-merged cluster display a similar type of mass segregation. Additionally, we discuss a variation of the minimum spanning tree mass-segregation technique introduced by Allison et al. (2009).Comment: 9 pages, submitted to MNRA

Development of a Disaster Response Plan for the North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve

The North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve (NCNERR) is a network of four protected coastal sites, covering over 10,500 acres, which was established for long‐term research, education, and stewardship. Following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, five Gulf of Mexico NERRs created comprehensive disaster response plans (DRP) and were the first reserves in the nationwide system to initiate disaster planning. NCNERR deemed that its own DRP was needed to guide emergency management efforts, build better partnerships between NCNERR managers and emergency managers, and position NCNERR as a partner to support area response efforts. Site‐specific hazards were identified and ranked in collaboration with NCNERR managers. Facilitated stakeholder workshops brought together all relevant local, state, and federal emergency response personnel and garnered input on potential hazards, impacts, and preparation needs of each NCNERR site. The input from site managers and stakeholders informed the creation of the DRP, which will be included in NCNERR’s 2016‐2021 Management Plan

The Spin Temperature of Warm Interstellar H I

Collisional excitation of the 21cm HI hyperfine transition is not strong enough to thermalize it in warm neutral (``intercloud'') interstellar gas, which we show by simultaneously solving the equations of ionization and collisional equilibrium under typical conditions. Coupling of the 21cm excitation temperature and local gas motions may be established by the Ly-alpha radiation field, but only if strong Galactic Ly-alpha radiation permeates the gas in question. The Ly-alpha radiation tends to impart to the gas its own characteristic temperature, which is determined by the range of gas motions that occur on the spatial scale of the Ly-alpha scattering. In general, the calculation of H I spin temperatures is a more difficult and interesting problem than might have been expected, as is any interpretation of H I spin temperature measurements.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted for A&