Interaction, dialogue and a creative spirit of inquiry

The aim of technology and design is ‘to enable all pupils to become confident and responsible in solving real life problems, striving for creative solutions, independent learning, product excellence and social consciousness’ (NICC 1991: 15). A main aim of the present study was to create an environment and climate for learning that would enhance design capability and problem solving. To achieve this, pupils from two Year 7 classes (mean age 11 years-old) were organised into groups of four as creative learning communities. Working collaboratively and co-operatively pupils were able to discuss, clarify, brainstorm, think through their ideas, negotiate and arrive at a shared contextual understanding for their talking, thinking, planning and making. A local story was used as a stimulus for critical and creative thinking and as the platform for design and technology activity. Methodology included digital video and audio recordings, picture capture, classroom observation, pupil and teacher semi-structured interviews, teacher logs, researcher field notes, project evaluation. Findings, from the transcripts of classroom-based discussions, showed that active participation and careful scaffolding of the learning by the teachers, enabled pupils to achieve at a higher level than they would have done if left unassisted. Individual creativity and problem solving was enhanced, as evidenced by the high levels of pupil engagement in the process and diversity of pupil outcomes. Dialogue, interaction and a creative spirit of inquiry were significant in the teaching-learning process. As technologists, pupils were learning how to learn and thinking how to think within a context that was real and of interest to them

Enhancing learning through dialogue and reasoning within collaborative problem solving

A co-constructivist view of learning places a significant emphasis on classroom interaction and social learning. ‘Students prefer an active to a passive role; they prefer transaction to transmission; and they want to learn through a range of activities’ (Morgan and Morris, 1999). Technology and design has the potential to provide opportunities for students to be active in their learning: to discuss, to think, to plan, to make decisions, to reflect and apply. Consequently, teachers need to provide classroom learning environments that will promote learner empowerment through collaboration, interdependence and problem solving dialogue. The present study focuses on the use of dialogue as a tool for thinking and reasoning within collaborative problem solving. Two groups of students were involved: a PGCE group of student teachers (Case Study 1) and a group of eleven-year-old primary school pupils (Case Study 2). Each group was operating within the context of a normal classroom setting. Stories were used to provide a context or ‘natural setting’ for practical problem solving. In both case studies the role of the tutor was to encourage learner centred dialogue, experimentation and active engagement with the problem(s). PGCE students were asked to complete two questionnaires, one prior to the activity and one upon completion. Primary school children completed only one evaluative questionnaire at the end of their activity. Video and audio recordings of both groups were used to provide transcripts that enabled a more detailed conversation analysis to be undertaken. This analysis showed the importance of interaction in learning and the kind of talk and collaboration that is needed to facilitate such learning. The extent to which the PGCE student teachers were able to identify and use the range of higher order thinking skills embedded within technology and design, problem solving activity was also investigated. Analysis of the data revealed significant changes in PGCE student perceptions of the contribution of technology and design to the development of children’s thinking. The post-task questionnaire indicated heightened awareness of the qualitative nature of the task, especially the value of collaborative learning and dialogue within problem solving. The primary school pupils identified fully with the story context, and it was this that fuelled their high levels of interaction and collaboration. Through a careful use of language, at critical incidents in the problem solving process, the teacher was able to scaffold pupil learning and provide the kind of assistance that enabled the pupils to achieve at much higher levels than they would have done unaided. The importance of learning through active engagement, using a problem solving dialogue, was highlighted in both case studie

Nonholonomic Ricci Flows, Exact Solutions in Gravity, and Symmetric and Nonsymmetric Metrics

We provide a proof that nonholonomically constrained Ricci flows of (pseudo) Riemannian metrics positively result into nonsymmetric metrics (as explicit examples, we consider flows of some physically valuable exact solutions in general relativity). There are constructed and analyzed three classes of solutions of Ricci flow evolution equations defining nonholonomic deformations of Taub NUT, Schwarzschild, solitonic and pp--wave symmetric metrics into nonsymmetric ones.Comment: latex2e, 12pt, 40 pages, version 2 with minor modifications, to be published in Int. J. Theor. Phy

The Evolution of Anti-Bat Sensory Illusions in Moths

Prey transmit sensory illusions to redirect predatory strikes, creating a discrepancy between what a predator perceives and reality. We use the acoustic arms race between bats and moths to investigate the evolution and function of a sensory illusion. The spinning hindwing tails of silk moths (Saturniidae) divert bat attack by reflecting sonar to create a misleading echoic target. We characterized geometric morphometrics of moth hindwings across silk moths, mapped these traits onto a new, robust phylogeny, and found that elaborated hindwing structures have converged on four adaptive shape peaks. To test the mechanism underlying these anti-bat traits, we pit bats against three species of silk moths with experimentally altered hindwings that created a representative gradient of ancestral and extant hindwing shapes. High-speed videography of battles reveals that moths with longer hindwings and tails more successfully divert bat attack. We postulate that sensory illusions are widespread and are underappreciated drivers of diversity across systems

Dirichlet sigma models and mean curvature flow

The mean curvature flow describes the parabolic deformation of embedded branes in Riemannian geometry driven by their extrinsic mean curvature vector, which is typically associated to surface tension forces. It is the gradient flow of the area functional, and, as such, it is naturally identified with the boundary renormalization group equation of Dirichlet sigma models away from conformality, to lowest order in perturbation theory. D-branes appear as fixed points of this flow having conformally invariant boundary conditions. Simple running solutions include the paper-clip and the hair-pin (or grim-reaper) models on the plane, as well as scaling solutions associated to rational (p, q) closed curves and the decay of two intersecting lines. Stability analysis is performed in several cases while searching for transitions among different brane configurations. The combination of Ricci with the mean curvature flow is examined in detail together with several explicit examples of deforming curves on curved backgrounds. Some general aspects of the mean curvature flow in higher dimensional ambient spaces are also discussed and obtain consistent truncations to lower dimensional systems. Selected physical applications are mentioned in the text, including tachyon condensation in open string theory and the resistive diffusion of force-free fields in magneto-hydrodynamics.Comment: 77 pages, 21 figure

Incorporating Precipitation-Induced Variation in Annual Forage Production Into Economic Analyses of Range Improvement Practices.

20 p

Sexual signalling in an artificial population: When does the handicap principle work?

Males may use sexual displays to signal their quality to females; the handicap principle provides a mechanism that could enforce honesty in such cases. Iwasa et al. model the signalling of inherited male quality, and distinguish between three variants of the handicap principle: pure epistasis, conditional, and revealing They argue that only the second and third will work. An evolutionary simulation is presented in which all three variants function under certain conditions; the assumptions made by Iwasa et al. are questioned

Exotic smooth structures on 4-manifolds with zero signature

For every integer $k\geq 2$, we construct infinite families of mutually nondiffeomorphic irreducible smooth structures on the topological $4$-manifolds $(2k-1)(S^2\times S^2)$ and (2k-1)(\CP#\CPb), the connected sums of $2k-1$ copies of $S^2\times S^2$ and \CP#\CPb.Comment: 6 page

Consistent Anisotropic Repulsions for Simple Molecules

We extract atom-atom potentials from the effective spherical potentials that suc cessfully model Hugoniot experiments on molecular fluids, e.g., $O_2$ and $N_2$. In the case of $O_2$ the resulting potentials compare very well with the atom-atom potentials used in studies of solid-state propertie s, while for $N_2$ they are considerably softer at short distances. Ground state (T=0K) and room temperatu re calculations performed with the new $N-N$ potential resolve the previous discrepancy between experimental and theoretical results.Comment: RevTeX, 5 figure

Integrated Brush Management Systems for South Texas: Development and Implementation.

76 p