Weblogs: Learning in Public

Purpose – Seeks to exemplify and discuss how students’ use of weblogs can prepare them for a networked world where writing has consequences outside grades. Design/methodology/approach – Experiences using weblogs with university students are critically discussed with reference to related theoretical and practice-based work. Findings – While many students were wary at first, the experience of writing in public provided an important learning opportunity, and many of the most skeptical became enthusiastic and proficient webloggers during the course of the semester. Research limitations/implications – The empirical data are from a single course and therefore limited. Practical implications – Students should practice writing in public and on the network, yet ethical issues must be considered. Originality/value – An increasing number of teachers and professors are using weblogs with students. In addition to a critical discussion of the ethics and pedagogical value of weblogging, this paper gives educators specific advice on how to encourage students to use their weblogs actively and productively

Teaching grammar and testing grammar in the English primary school: The impact on teachers and teaching of the grammar element of the statutory test in Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) in England

In the academic year 2012-2013, Year 6 primary school pupils in England sat the first of a new statutory test in Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (‘SPaG’) as part of their end of primary school assessments in English. This UKLA funded research examines the impact on teachers and their teaching of the grammar element of the statutory SPaG test. The aim of the research has been to evaluate the nature and the extent of changes to the teaching of grammar and to wider literacy teaching since the introduction of SPaG. The research explores teachers’ responses to teaching grammar to a statutory test format, and how teachers have implemented rapid curriculum change in their classrooms. The research explores issues of teacher knowledge, understanding, skill and enjoyment in relation to grammar, at their own level and for teaching pupils. In this research, teachers also discuss their observations of how pupils have responded to explicit grammar teaching and the grammar test. As part of this research we accessed Department for Education data on pupils by gender, ethnicity, language and deprivation in relation to SPaG attainment in 2014, to examine SPaG attainment patterns nationally. The research also analysed SPaG attainment for groups of pupils in four Local Authorities (anonymised as Castlehaven, Longcliffe, Narrowgate and Norchester), specifically in relation to pupils’ ethnicity, languages, deprivation and special educational needs. Main findings: In English primary schools, since the introduction of the statutory SPaG test: • Time spent teaching decontextualized and contextualised grammar has increased significantly; • Grammar is now taught explicitly and formally as a classroom literacy routine; • The grammar test format influences teaching content and approaches; • Teachers observe that pupils enjoy learning grammar and taking the test; • Teachers disagree about the extent to which explicit grammar teaching and testing have a positive impact on pupils’ language and literacy skills; • Teachers feel more confident about teaching grammar. Additional desk-based research indicates: • Ethnic and linguistic minority pupils perform as well as, or better than, white and native English speaking pupils on the SPaG test; • Pupil socioeconomic deprivation is the strongest indicator of low performance on SPaG; • Socioeconomically disadvantaged pupils perform better on SPaG when they are learning in classrooms that are linguistically and ethnically diverse

Speculative Interfaces: How Electronic Literature Uses the Interface to Make Us Think about Technology

In a study that traverses more than half a century – going from e-lit precursor Christopher Strachey’s M.U.C. Love Letter Generator (1952) to Michael Joyce’s experimental hypertext afternoon: a story (1990) to Kate Pullinger’s data-driven touchscreen work Breathe (2018) – Rettberg situates experimentation with digital interfaces in a longer tradition of innovation in literary and scholarly production. She also argues for the central importance of such experimentation in the ongoing development of both electronic literature and the digital humanities, suggesting that speculation in the design of digital interfaces can help preserve and extend the interpretative and intuitive aspects of Western literary and scholarly traditions, while also bringing the limitations and exclusions of such knowledge systems into focus.publishedVersio

Aspects of magnetisation and iron loss characteristics in switched-reluctance and permanent-magnet machines

In the first section, the magnetisation characteristics of the switched-reluctance motor are examined. Measurements have been carried out using both static and dynamic test methods. The test data has been compared with simulation results from analytical design programs and finite element models. The effects of mutual coupling on the magnetisation characteristics are investigated through measurement and simulation. Results show that the degree of mutual coupling is strongly dependent on the winding arrangement of the machine. In the next section, the difficulties in measuring the properties of permanent-magnet machines are discussed in detail, and solutions to common problems proposed. The measurement and analysis methods used for the switched-reluctance motor are further developed for analysis of permanent magnet machines. Techniques for determining the variation in synchronous reactances and permanent magnet flux are presented. Finite element simulations are used to show the variation of magnet flux under loading, a condition ignored in classical analysis methods. The final section discusses the analysis of magnetisation characteristics of electrical sheet steels. Comparison is made between measurements carried out on single sheet tester and Epstein square test rigs. The iron losses of a typical non-grain-orientated steel are measured under both sinusoidal and nonsinusoidal flux density conditions. The iron losses are shown to increase significantly when higher harmonic components are introduced to the flux density waveform. The difficulties in modelling the nonlinear iron loss characteristics of electrical steels are considered

Diffusion of Innovations Theory Applied: The Adoption of Digital On-Demand Technology by Book Publishers and Printers

Desktop publishing rose in popularity during the late 1980s, allowing whole documents—books, journals, reports, etc.—to be created on computers. The printing industry had to develop compatible technology to accommodate the changes in document creation. In response to desktop publishing, digital printing appeared in 1990 with the invention of computer-to-plate technology. In its earliest days, it was limited to specific commercial applications such as check and business-form printing. An amalgam of several technologies, digital printing has evolved and on-demand printing has matured into a book-printing technology that starts with the creation of a document and ends with the shipping of the final product. Digital on-demand technology is especially applicable to the printing of non-fiction, educational, reference and scholarly books—books with a limited or small audience—and out-of-print books. With the development and application of digital prepress and ondemand printing, publishers are no longer forced to print hundreds of thousands of books in one run—many of which are heavily discounted, returned and recycled. Small presses can prosper and expand by adding new authors to their lists of books in print. Digital on-demand printing opens a new future for books, which were the first media—a link that people in most cultures had to other cultures—and ensures that they will not b rendered obsolete by the digital and electronic media. This study used an interview inquiry tool to acquire information regarding technology acquisition choices made by six representative printers and publishers. Designed around the components of diffusion of innovations theory as propounded by Everett M. Rogers, it goes beyond the the traditional answers—economics and status—and ferrets out the deeper issues and motivations involved in the adoption of new technology. Responses to interview questions also provided insight into the media methods used for disseminating information about new technologies to selected book publishers, printers and publisher-printers. This aspect of the study focused on the role of trade magazines as sources of information through articles, marketing campaigns and advertising

“Nobody Is Ever Alone”: The Use of Social Media Narrative to Include the Viewer in SKAM

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Ways of knowing with data visualizations

Data visualizations combine numeric data with visual representation, and these modes allow them to express certain kinds of knowledge more easily than others. This chapter uses examples of historical data visualizations in order to examine what ways of knowing they privilege. What is the difference between the spatial organization of tools in prehistoric homes and a photograph or bar chart showing information about the same tools, in terms of the kinds of knowledge they enable? How do the systems for gathering and visualizing data during the 18th and 19th centuries shape our understanding of the world? How do data visualizations make us feel that they are objective? How do they shape our ideas of what is possible?publishedVersio

Machine Vision: How Algorithms are Changing the Way We See the World

Humans have used technology to expand our limited vision for millennia, from the invention of the stone mirror 8,000 years ago to the latest developments in facial recognition and augmented reality. We imagine that technologies will allow us to see more, to see differently and even to see everything. But each of these new ways of seeing carries its own blind spots. In this illuminating book, Jill Walker Rettberg examines the long history of machine vision. Providing an overview of the historical and contemporary uses of machine vision, she unpacks how technologies such as smart surveillance cameras and TikTok filters are changing the way we see the world and one another. By analysing fictional and real-world examples, including art, video games and science fiction, the book shows how machine vision can have very different cultural impacts, fostering both sympathy and community as well as anxiety and fear. Combining ethnographic and critical media studies approaches alongside personal reflections, Machine Vision is an engaging and eye-opening read. It is suitable for students and scholars of digital media studies, science and technology studies, visual studies, digital art and science fiction, as well as for general readers interested in the impact of new technologies on society.publishedVersio

Algorithmic failure as a humanities methodology: Machine learning’s mispredictions identify rich cases for qualitative analysis

This commentary tests a methodology proposed by Munk et al. (2022) for using failed predictions in machine learning as a method to identify ambiguous and rich cases for qualitative analysis. Using a dataset describing actions performed by fictional characters interacting with machine vision technologies in 500 artworks, movies, novels and videogames, I trained a simple machine learning algorithm (using the kNN algorithm in R) to predict whether or not an action was active or passive using only information about the fictional characters. Predictable actions were generally unemotional and unambiguous activities where machine vision technologies were treated as simple tools. Unpredictable actions, that is, actions that the algorithm could not correctly predict, were more ambivalent and emotionally loaded, with more complex power relationships between characters and technologies. The results thus support Munk et al.'s theory that failed predictions can be productively used to identify rich cases for qualitative analysis. This test goes beyond simply replicating Munk et al.'s results by demonstrating that the method can be applied to a broader humanities domain, and that it does not require complex neural networks but can also work with a simpler machine learning algorithm. Further research is needed to develop an understanding of what kinds of data the method is useful for and which kinds of machine learning are most generative. To support this, the R code required to produce the results is included so the test can be replicated. The code can also be reused or adapted to test the method on other datasets.publishedVersio

New Zealand’s Migrant Asian Nurses: Recent Trends, Future Plans

Nurses make up the largest component of the health workforce. New Zealand currently has around 47 thousand registered and enrolled nurses, of whom, about a quarter originally trained overseas. For the last six consecutive years, new overseas registrations have approximately equalled or exceeded the number of New Zealand trained new registrations, with 19 per cent of all new registrations in 2013 coming from India, China and South East Asia. The average age of nurses in New Zealand is now 48, and attracting and retaining younger nurses (both New Zealand and overseas educated) will be essential if the predicted increase in demand for nurses due to an ageing population coincides with peak retirement of older nurses in approximately fifteen years. Using multiple data sources, this paper summarises these changes and reports the findings related to career plans reported by Asian respondents from a recent New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) survey (the New 2 NZNO study) that have potentially serious implications for the sustainability of New Zealand’s nursing workforce. Foremost among these is that modelling assumptions currently proposed to ensure an adequate nursing workforce are likely to severely overestimate the effectiveness of relying on internationally trained nurses to fill a predicted skill shortage long term