O vídeo como incentivo da aprendizagem e de interacçoes comunicativas

[Resumo] Pretendendo-se estudar a importancia da utiliza9ao da tecnologia vídeo na interação comunicativa que se estabelece na sala de aula e nos resultados da aprendizagem, partiu-se da hipótese de que a utiliza~iio do vídeo, em diferentes modalidades, como estratégia de ensino-aprendizagem é um instrumento de promoção da interacção comunicativa e da aprendizagem. As modalidades vídeo utilizadas, que assumiram forma de estratégia de ensino/aprendizagem na sala de aula, foram: a vídeo-liçao, a sonorização de imagens vídeo, a produção de documentos vídeo pelos alunos e a preparação e emissao de um programa de "televisao escolar". A investigação foi desenvolvida em aulas e em diferentes temas numa turma do 10° ano de escolaridade na disciplina de Ciencias da Terra e da Vida. Como Instrumentos de recolha de dados foram utilizados questionários e registos de observação. Os resultados da investiga9ao apontam para um incremento da interac9ao na sala de aula, da aprendizagem de conteúdos, da prática de autonomia e de processos de investigação, do prazer de aprender e participar e da expressividade por parte dos alunos, como resultado da utilização do vídeo. Parece verificar-se, também, que as quatro modalidades utilizadas implicam valencias diferenciadas, aparecendo urnas mais directamente relacionadas com a aprendizagem de conteúdos e outras mais relacionadas com a interacção e a expressividad

The Art of Escape: Liquidity Mechanisms

Article published in RCCS 82 (September 2008)The idea of “liquidity” as a characteristic of the present phase of modernity, which features in the most recent work of Zygmunt Bauman, invites comparison with Keynes. In both Bauman and Keynes, liquidity is applied to relationships that are easily revertible (or revertible at low cost) and to systems that are unstable and precarious due to the precariousness of the bonds that unite their constituent elements. In both authors, liquidity and speculation appear as rational responses to uncertainty and, at the same time, as individual strategies that contribute to increased risk at the level of the system. The two approaches are complementary and coherent. This comparative reading suggests the existence of transversal liquidity mechanisms that cut across different institutional domains, as described in this paper

Simulating the prospects of technological catching up

Local increasing returns associated with static and dynamic scale effects, knowledge spillovers, polarisation effects and the distance that separates different regions are among the most important driving forces behind the dynamics of economic and technological convergence. This paper puts forward a computational simulation model that seeks to integrate these factors. The modelling exercise was designed to achieve a better understanding of the relationship between the aspects underlying the specific trajectories of regional technological accumulation and the aggregate convergence/divergence patterns stemming from these trajectories. Analysis of the simulation’s results allows us to draw several conclusions. Firstly, it is shown that the opportunities for interaction and the resulting knowledge spillovers are a necessary but not sufficient condition for convergence. Moreover, up to a certain point, an increase in the opportunities for interaction between regions may lead to further divergence. Secondly, when spatial friction in the interactions is either relatively low or high, regions which could be “losers” for a given initial distribution of technological capabilities may become “winners” for another one (“history matters”). Conversely, for intermediate levels of spatial friction leading to central polarisation, history is largely irrelevant – irrespective of the initial space distribution of technological capability and sequence of chance events, a polarised centre-periphery pattern emerges. Finally, when spatial distance imposes high friction on interactions between regions, and when they do not have to be very similar in their levels of technological capabilities in order to learn from each other, regions in the core of “continental masses” benefit in terms of increased technological capability (“space matters”).

Violencia de género: nuevas realidades u nuevos retos = Gender violence: new realities and new challenges

Bernard Honoré. Saint-Riquier, les fouilles de la Tour du Sauveur. In: Bulletin de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France, 1988, 1990. pp. 66-71