Mobilising teacher education: a study of a professional learning community

This paper reports on a study of a community of university educators that investigated the introduction of mobile technologies into their learning and teaching. The study was conducted by a subgroup of that community. Given the ubiquity of mobile devices, members of the community felt they needed to develop expertise in mobile learning so that they could incorporate it into their teaching. They studied their own learning, supported by a critical friend who evaluated the community's functioning and activities, providing valuable feedback. Activities of this group were informed by and focused on: development of awareness of the potential of mobile devices for learning; construction of action plans within the community; and implementation of these plans. They also included investigating best-practice approaches by interviewing experts in the field, exploring the literature on mobile learning and then initiating and testing some mobile learning pedagogies in the context of their own teacher education subjects. The community met regularly to discuss emerging issues and applications. The paper shares some of the findings gained from studying the community, and discusses the challenges and constraints that were experienced. The authors conclude with recommendations for professional learning communities aiming to learn about technology-mediated teaching practices

Autobiography of William Marvin

Sixty-five years ago, a venerable man in Skaneateles, New York, set himself to the task of recording the events of his life. What William Marvin wrote between the pages of a lined composition notebook was more than an autobiography. It was a chapter in American history. What is even more significant is that much of what Marvin recounted pertained to the history of Florida during the critical years 1835-1866, a period which found the nation challenged with the issues of union, disunion, and reunion. The story which follows, then, is the story of a man who served Florida during the territorial period and in its first years as a fledgling state. From his vantage point, as United States district attorney and judge of the Southern District of Florida at Key West from 1835 to 1863; as a representative of Monroe County in the territorial council; as a delegate to the first constitutional convention at Saint Joseph in 1838-9; as provisional governor of Florida in 1865; and as Florida’s senator-elect in 1866, Marvin was able to view at first hand the panorama of a period of Florida’s history as it unfolded before him. The student of Florida history can be grateful that he recorded what he saw. New York may claim him as her native son, but Florida can honor him by preserving the autobiography of one of her distinguished leaders

Introduction

It might seem strange to devote a collection of essays to Shakespeare and Phenomenology in the second decade of the twenty-first century. After all, phenomenology as a philosophical movement had its heyday in the middle of the twentieth century. But phenomenology\u27s demise as a major philosophical movement has enabled it to live on as the approach or method shorn of dogma that its earliest practitioners promised. Far from being a single school of thought, phenomenology now looks more like an intellectual diaspora, a galaxy of related but discreet propositions that share basic assumptions while pursuing different philosophical projects. In early modern and Shakespeare studies, we have seen a particularly robust variant of phenomenology in the past ten years in the practice of historical phenomenology. In this special issue, we attempt to build on the successes of historical phenomenology by pursuing a variety of phenomenological approaches and practices in relation to Shakespeare and the early modern. By embracing phenomenology\u27s remarkable intellectual diaspora, we hope to offer a new critical agenda for phenomenologically inflected reading of Shakespeare. We propose that phenomenology offers a language of speculation and inquiry dynamic enough to accommodate both historicism and theory, a common language that can speak as compellingly to questions of law, ethics, performance, and hospitality as it can to questions about feeling and sensation. Accordingly, Shakespeare and Phenomenology is not invested in carving out yet another subfield of Shakespeare studies. On the contrary, in this collection we are committed to opening up conversations among subfields and to imagining a common critical future

Viewing mobile learning from a pedagogical perspective

Mobile learning is a relatively new phenomenon and the theoretical basis is currently under development. The paper presents a pedagogical perspective of mobile learning which highlights three central features of mobile learning: authenticity, collaboration and personalisation, embedded in the unique timespace contexts of mobile learning. A pedagogical framework was developed and tested through activities in two mobile learning projects located in teacher education communities: Mobagogy, a project in which faculty staff in an Australian university developed understanding of mobile learning; and The Bird in the Hand Project, which explored the use of smartphones by student teachers and their mentors in the United Kingdom. The framework is used to critique the pedagogy in a selection of reported mobile learning scenarios, enabling an assessment of mobile activities and pedagogical approaches, and consideration of their contributions to learning from a socio-cultural perspective

The diagnosis of an outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis clinical mastitis in a multi-farm North Otago farming operation : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Veterinary Science at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

Mycoplasma bovis (M. bovis) causes a multitude of disease syndromes in dairy cattle including clinical mastitis (CM), arthritis and pneumonia. The detection in July 2017 of M. bovis, for the first time in New Zealand (NZ), on a South Island dairy farm, prompted a national animal disease response. This descriptive study aims to describe the clinical and diagnostic test findings of an outbreak of M. bovis CM, on a large multi-farm dairy enterprise where there was a single hypothesised infection source and date. Samples were collected as part of surveillance activities on-farm and at slaughter, together with farmer-selected CM cows, to provide results from real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) tests of bulk tank milk (BTM), individual cow serum ELISA tests, quarter milk samples (QMS), and palatine tonsils qPCR tests. Post-mortem sampling of the mammary glands of M. bovis CM cases was also performed. Positive BTM PCR, supported by BTM ELISA, confirmed infection in two of the four dairy herds in the enterprise and herd-level serology (serum ELISA) confirmed infection in a third herd. There was a common clinical presentation in infected herds of an unusually high incidence of apparent treatment failure (ATF) of non-systemically ill, multiple quarter CM cases, from some of which M. bovis was detected. Individual CM cases were found in the main to be QMS M. bovis qPCR positive, serum ELISA positive and palatine tonsil qPCR positive. In approximately 70% of M. bovis CM cases, M. bovis was found to be the sole pathogen. A smoothed function model between serum ELISA and time from first diagnosis of CM, from which M. bovis was detected, predicted that the average interval between clinical diagnosis and a serum ELISA test positive result was five days. The higher observed agreement between the serum ELISA and palatine tonsil qPCR, was for M. bovis CM cows sampled on-farm compared with cows sampled at slaughter. Gross lesions of fibrosis, caseous necrosis and cystic dilation in the udders of M. bovis positive CM cows were seen together with granulomatous and suppurative inflammatory patterns histologically. High immunoreactivity in immunohistochemistry for the M. bovis antigen was also present. From the key diagnostic test findings, M. bovis was likely to have been one of several pathogens which caused individual cases of CM on the farming enterprise, and in many cases may have been the sole cause of CM cases. The results of this study can raise awareness of and provide information to aid dairy farmers and veterinarians determine if M. bovis has a role in CM outbreaks with unexpectedly increased numbers of treatment failures and can inform the regulatory response for surveillance and testing of herds and individual cattle for M. bovis

Exposure Control and Process Safety Of Monomers in Selected Plastics and Rubber Industries

A review of the literature of monomers was conducted that incorporates polymer science and contemporary toxicology and epidemiology studies associated with their exposures. This review, supplemented with a history of monomer exposure control technologies and protocols, helped establish the basis for a questionnaire created to ascertain and examine best practices in process safety. This questionnaire, in the form of interviews, open discussions, and detailed entries, was employed to identify common themes applicable for consensus guidelines in the chemical industry. Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) professionals, including safety engineers and industrial hygienists, were recruited from a range of chemical companies that use monomers to produce plastics and rubbers. Among the observations by these professionals was the recognition of professional discipline as a key motivator of EHS best practices, especially during routine evaluation and implementation of safety programs. Another main observation was the importance of advancing worker and contactor training, in tandem with the retention of highly qualified workers. Results of this study suggested that progress in EHS may be inhibited by redundancies in safety programs, challenges in achieving zero incident targets, and requirements for third-party stewardship programs. Additionally, the commercial availability and support of state-of-the-art engineering controls and cooperation of experts within professional and trade associations were found to be major drivers in process safety. It is therefore crucial that regulatory directives and standards concerning polymer production are reevaluated, updated, and repurposed to provide flexibility in achieving compliance and risk prioritization