Barriers to Technology Integration Perceived by Kindergarten through Second-Grade Teachers

A problem exists in southeastern United States where technology integration is limited in classrooms. Although researchers have found benefits for integrating technology, it was unknown why teachers were not integrating technology into instruction. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to explore the perceptions of teachers of kindergarten through second-grade students about the barriers for integrating technology into instruction and the support needed to effectively integrate technology. There have been studies about the barriers to technology integration experienced by teachers; however, it was uncertain what these barriers were for kindergarten through second-grade teachers. Bandura’s self-efficacy theory was the conceptual framework for this study. Interviews were used to collect data from 10 participants who taught in a kindergarten through second-grade classroom with access to technology they could integrate into instruction. Interview transcripts were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis with constant comparison. Findings showed several barriers to integrating technology perceived by teachers. The most reoccurring barrier theme was student related barriers. The results also revealed multiple types of support needed to effectively integrate technology. The technology related training/professional development and technology support personnel themes appeared most often in the findings. Potential implications for a positive social change include reducing the barriers to integrating technology for kindergarten through second-grade teachers, which could strengthen technology integration in their instruction as they support students with gaining skills needed in their future careers

Illinois Oil and Gas Update

In addition to legislative reform, Illinois oil and gas law has been further defined by two cases decided in the past year: Tri-Power Resources, Inc. v. City of Carlyle, which allows non-home-rule unit municipalities to prevent oil and gas drilling through zoning ordinances, and Nye v. Leavell, which confirms Illinois\u27 position on what constitutes production under a lease. The Tri-Power Resources decision leaves the industry in a rather precarious position moving forward

Urban Design of Bristol Waterfront, Lower Thames Street

The marketplace is going to be one of the highlights on Thames Street, serving as a destination for leisure, shopping and dining. The concept of the project is to have indoor space continue out to the water, providing an outdoor space for dining and leisure, but also giving the boardwalk a resting point. The building is planned as two floors, with the fish market and multipurpose area on the first and an eatery, sitting area, balcony and facilities on the second. The building will be made of a light metal frame with panels to enclose the space and is designed with a folded glass panel that can be opened up to the outside, yet decrease wind pressure in a storm

GENTLE: A Genre-Diverse Multilayer Challenge Set for English NLP and Linguistic Evaluation

We present GENTLE, a new mixed-genre English challenge corpus totaling 17K tokens and consisting of 8 unusual text types for out-of domain evaluation: dictionary entries, esports commentaries, legal documents, medical notes, poetry, mathematical proofs, syllabuses, and threat letters. GENTLE is manually annotated for a variety of popular NLP tasks, including syntactic dependency parsing, entity recognition, coreference resolution, and discourse parsing. We evaluate state-of-the-art NLP systems on GENTLE and find severe degradation for at least some genres in their performance on all tasks, which indicates GENTLE's utility as an evaluation dataset for NLP systems.Comment: Camera-ready for LAW-XVII collocated with ACL 202

Analysis of the Tribolium homeotic complex: insights into mechanisms constraining insect Hox clusters

The remarkable conservation of Hox clusters is an accepted but little understood principle of biology. Some organizational constraints have been identified for vertebrate Hox clusters, but most of these are thought to be recent innovations that may not apply to other organisms. Ironically, many model organisms have disrupted Hox clusters and may not be well-suited for studies of structural constraints. In contrast, the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, which has a long history in Hox gene research, is thought to have a more ancestral-type Hox cluster organization. Here, we demonstrate that the Tribolium homeotic complex (HOMC) is indeed intact, with the individual Hox genes in the expected colinear arrangement and transcribed from the same strand. There is no evidence that the cluster has been invaded by non-Hox protein-coding genes, although expressed sequence tag and genome tiling data suggest that noncoding transcripts are prevalent. Finally, our analysis of several mutations affecting the Tribolium HOMC suggests that intermingling of enhancer elements with neighboring transcription units may constrain the structure of at least one region of the Tribolium cluster. This work lays a foundation for future studies of the Tribolium HOMC that may provide insights into the reasons for Hox cluster conservation

Colloque québécois : « L'écologie routière et l’adaptation aux changements climatiques : de la recherche aux actions concrètes »

Le seul colloque francophone traitant de l’écologie routière présenté au Québec s’et déroulé il y a maintenant six ans. Ce nouveau colloque visera à partager les résultats des dernières recherches et autres projets de partenariats réalisés depuis 2011, dans le but d’atténuer l’impact des routes sur la faune (terrestre et aquatique) et la connectivité écologique, et de mieux s’adapter aux changements climatiques. Ce colloque comprendra des présentations, des ateliers, des kiosques et une sortie sur le terrain, tous disponibles en français

Colloque québécois : « Les routes, la faune et l’adaptation aux changements climatiques : de la recherche aux actions concrètes »

Le seul colloque francophone traitant de l’écologie routière présenté au Québec s’et déroulé il y a maintenant six ans. Ce nouveau colloque visera à partager les résultats des dernières recherches et autres projets de partenariats réalisés depuis 2011, dans le but d’atténuer l’impact des routes sur la faune (terrestre et aquatique) et la connectivité écologique, et de mieux s’adapter aux changements climatiques. Ce colloque comprendra des présentations, des ateliers, des kiosques et une sortie sur le terrain, tous disponibles en français

Quebec Conference: Roads, Wildlife & Adaptation to Climate Change: From Research to Action

The only road ecology conference in French in Quebec took place six years ago. This upcoming conference will share results from new research and various partnership projects initiated since 2011 to mitigate the impacts of roads on (terrestrial and aquatic) wildlife and habitat connectivity, and to better adapt to climate change. The conference will include presentations, workshops, kiosks and a fieldtrip, all available in French and English