Da escrita do nome à escrita de textos: estratégias de abordagem à escrita na educação Pré-Escolar e 1º ciclo do Ensino Básico

Mestrado (PES II), Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico, 27 de Junho de 2014, Universidade dos Açores.O presente relatório de estágio é o culminar do trabalho realizado nas disciplinas de Prática Educativa Supervisionada I e II, do Mestrado em Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico, ministrado na Universidade dos Açores, pelo Departamento de Ciências da Educação. Nas disciplinas foram realizados estágios no contexto da Educação Pré-Escolar e do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico. Na definição daquilo que seria este Relatório de Estágio, a prática pedagógica realizada em contexto pré-escolar foi decisiva. Optar por aprofundar no âmbito da linguagem escrita, para além do interesse e curiosidade da estagiária, procurou, em primeiro lugar, colmatar uma lacuna observada neste nível de ensino, onde as crianças não tinham hábitos de escrita, nem apresentavam interesse pela mesma. Sendo assim, este foi o ponto de partida para apostar nesta área, com vista a contribuir, através da conceção e implementação de estratégias diversificadas, mas significativas, para o desenvolvimento e aprendizagem da linguagem escrita nos dois contextos educativos de estágio. O trabalho no âmbito da escrita abrangeu várias estratégias que se consideram fundamentais para a aprendizagem da linguagem escrita mas, destacam-se a aposta no trabalho a partir da escrita do nome e, progressivamente, de outras palavras, para chegar à escrita de textos, com a finalidade de promover a evolução de conhecimentos nesta área por parte das crianças. A partir das diferentes estratégias utilizadas verificou-se uma mudança de comportamento das crianças face ao trabalho de escrita, pois, para além de explorarem esta área sem medos, também se verificou um crescimento significativo nas suas aprendizagens. Para aproximar as estratégias de trabalho aos conhecimentos e níveis de desenvolvimento das crianças e para analisar possíveis resultados das intervenções implementadas, foram realizadas avaliações, no início e no fim dos períodos de intervenção pedagógica, no âmbito da escrita e nos dois contextos educativos. De forma a alargar os conhecimentos sobre o trabalho no âmbito da linguagem escrita que se desenvolve nos contextos Pré-Escolar e do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico, foram realizadas entrevistas aos profissionais desta área, tendo-se verificado que estes realizam a abordagem à leitura e à escrita, quer numa perspetiva de preparação ou prontidão para a leitura, quer numa perspetiva de literacia emergente. Finalmente, cabe referir que esta caminhada, decorrente da experiência pedagógica realizada na Prática Educativa Supervisionada I e II, bem como a redação deste relatório de estágio, foi fundamental para o crescimento pessoal e profissional da estagiária.ABSTRACT: The present internship report is a culmination of work accomplished in the subjects of Supervised Educational Practice I and II, of a Master’s in Pre-School and Elementary School Education, ministered at the University of the Azores, by the Educational Sciences Department. Internships in these areas were conducted in the context of pre-school and elementary school education. In defining what this internship report should be, the pedagogical practice acquired in a pre-school context was decisive. By choosing to enhance in the scope of written language, beyond the interest and curiosity of the intern, sought to, in the first place, bridge a gap observed at this level of education, where the children did not have writing habits, nor did they present interest in this. Thus, this was the starting point to invest in this area, with the intent of contributing, through the design and implementation of diversified strategies, but significant to the development and learning of written language in the two educational contexts of the internship. The work in the scope of writing covered various strategies that are considered fundamental to learning written language but, focusing on the emphasis of the work on name writing and, progressively, of other words, to get to writing texts, with the purpose of promoting the evolution of knowledge in this subject by the children. From the different strategies utilized a change in the children’s behavior was verified with regards to written work, because, besides exploring this area without fear, a significant growth in their learning was verified. To approximate the work strategies to the knowledge and levels of the children’s development and to analyze possible results of the interventions that were implemented, evaluations were done, in the beginning and the end of the periods of pedagogical intervention, in the scope of writing and in the two educational contexts. In order to increase the knowledge gained on the work on written language that is developed in the pre-school and elementary contexts, interviews were done with professionals in this area, leading to verification that they approach reading and writing, either in a perspective of preparation or readiness for reading, or in an emergent literacy perspective. To finalize, it should be noted that this journey, arising from the pedagogical experience gained in the Supervised Educational Practice I and II, as well as the elaboration of this internship report, was fundamental to the personal and professional growth of the intern

Dissolved organic nitrogen behaviour during denitrification with suspended and attached biomass

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia do Ambiente, perfil Engenharia SanitáriaIn a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) represents an important fraction of N in the final effluent. The purpose of this study was to analyze DON changes along denitrification with suspended and attached biomass. Denitrification batch experiments were carried out with activated sludge and biological (kaldnes) carriers. In the batch tests with kaldnes it was used two different mixing velocities to evaluate its influence in DON concentrations. For the batch tests were evaluated COD and DOC concentrations. A comparison of the fate of DON during a denitrification process and the original effluent DON concentration was made. DON determinations oscillate in a range from 0.1 to 1.9 mg/l during a denitrification test. The comparison between DON determinations and the original effluent confirm that DON has a significant portion (about 20%) of the effluent N. The results obtained indicate that DON has a constant behavior along the denitrification process

Dynamic OSINT System Sourcing from Social Networks

In the past, it was humanly impossible to observe and extract large amounts of textual information from web platforms in short periods of time, but the trend has changed and in recent years several surveillance, selection, and extraction of textual information systems have emerged, based on Open­Source Intelligence (OSINT). These platforms became popular among computer security professionals, allowing them to detect new threats and respond in a timely manner by locating, collecting and analysing information made available to the public through social networks, blogs, newspapers, television, etc., proving to be a great advantage in terms of information gathering and a good help with regards to preventing problems, especially in the area of information security. This dissertation focuses on the development of a platform based on OSINT, and has two main objectives. First, to continue the work previously developed in another technology ­ Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), in which formulas and algorithms were developed to classify posts from Twitter. And second, to present a new platform (using Node JS technology), by applying the formulas from the previous work, evaluating the new platform with users, and improving the user experience (UX). During the development process two versions were provided to the users and hosted on a virtual machine, based on cloud services of Microsoft Azure. The platform architecture is composed by three processes developed in Node JS (one that provides the page, the web server, one that collects the posts, and another one that does the classification of each post). The posts are collected through an API provided by Twitter, and stored and managed in PHPMyAdmin a platform based on MySql database. The User­Centered Design (UCD) was applied during the development process, a process that is focused on the user and his experience. The participation of users has contributed to define new features and to improve the presented layout. Users were included in the testing phase, being called to fill forms, one form for each version. Based on the collected feedback, the following improvements were implemented: the possibility of searching for several topics at the same time, the possibility of havving header monitors by ranges of time, and the possibility of applying filters, such as the number of minutes the posts are available on the screen, and the order by which they are presented.No passado, era humanamente impossível observar e extrair grandes quantidades de informações textuais de plataformas da web em curtos espaços de tempo, mas a tendência mudou e nos últimos anos surgiram diversos sistemas de vigilância baseados na seleção e extração de informação textual proveniente de fontes de informação abertas, denominadas Open­Source Intelligence (OSINT), que se têm tornado populares principalmente entre os profissionais de segurança informática, permitindo a deteção de novas ameaças, a localização e recolha de informação disponível para o público em geral através das redes sociais, blogs, jornais, televisão, etc., revelando­se uma grande vantagem em termos de recolha de informação e uma boa ajuda no que diz respeito à prevenção de problemas principalmente na área de segurança da informação. Esta dissertação foca­se no desenvolvimento de uma plataforma com base em informação open source, dando continuidade a um trabalho anteriormente desenvolvido numa outra tecnologia ­ Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), onde se apresentaram fórmulas e algoritmos para classificação de posts do Twitter sobre o tema da segurança da informação. Focandose este trabalho no desenvolvimento de novas versões da plataforma com base na tecnologia Node JS, na implementação das fórmulas apresentadas, na melhoria da experiência do utilizador (UX) e na avaliação da plataforma desenvolvida com utilizadores. Durante o desenvolvimento do trabalho foram apresentadas duas versões da plataforma, e hospedadas numa máquina virtual, tornando­as acessíveis aos utilizadores, que na fase final contribuíram com o seu feedback sobre as mesmas. Essa máquina virtual baseia­se em serviços cloud da Microsoft Azure, onde estão instalados três processos desenvolvidos em Node JS (um que disponibiliza a página, um que classifica, e outro que recolhe posts), os posts são recolhidos através de uma API disponibilizada pelo Twitter, e guardados numa base de dados MySql, baseada na plataforma de administração de base de dados PHPMyAdmin, disponibilizando à comunidade as notícias mais recentes e relevantes sobre vários temas. Durante o processo de desenvolvimento teve­se em conta o modelo User­Centered Design (UCD), um processo focado no utilizador e na experiência de utilização. A participação de utilizadores foi assim a chave para a definição das características, e da forma como é apresentado o front­end da plataforma, sendo estes incluídos na fase de testes, com o preenchimento de formulários visando recolher feedback sobre os protótipos desenvolvidos. Com base no feedback recolhido foram implementadas novas melhorias. De todas as mais relevantes foram: a possibilidade de pesquisa por vários temas em simultâneo, a inserção de monitores, e a possibilidade de aplicar filtros, como o número de minutos em que os posts ficam disponíveis no ecrã, e a ordem com que os mesmos devem ser apresentados

Can advergames boost children’s healthier eating habits?: a comparison between healthy and non-healthy food

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and EconomicsThis research aims to investigate the effects of food advergaming on children’s eating habits. A total of 231 elementary school-age children were randomly assigned to one of the following two conditions: (i) play the healthy advergame; (ii) play the less healthy advergame. A pos-treatment pictured questionnaire was used to assess their behavior in terms of immediate food choice, food liking, and nutritional knowledge. Results showed that children tend to choose a snack accordingly to what was being advertised in the game. In terms of food liking, children who played the less healthy version of the game reported a higher preference for some of the less healthy options. Regarding nutritional knowledge no differences were registered which leads us to conclude that they already have a solid understanding of what are “good” and “bad” foods for their health. These findings have important legal, educational, management and social marketing contributions

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Analysis of Mocoffee’s Single-Serve Coffee Capsule System

The aim of this work was to apply computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis to Mocoffee’s single-serve coffee capsule system in order to predict the hydrodynamics of water inside the extraction chamber, as well as to determine the impact of certain model parameters and design features on the fluid flow and, consequently, on the efficiency of the extraction. The geometries of the extraction chamber of the coffee machine were built using the software Solidworks 2016, while the computational mesh and 3D numeric calculations were done using the software Ansys Fluent 16.0. The experimental data used to validate the CFD model was obtained through a set of extractions of different coffee blends, all of them performed in a custom made machine that replicated the very same extraction process as seen in a Mocoffee patented espresso machine (Bossa). Different turbulence models and near-wall treatments were tested to capture the significant features of the fluid flow, such as mixing and the formation of eddies in the more unstable regions of the domain. The CFD results and measured data from the experiments were compared, with a reasonable agreement found with the experimental data for pressure and mass flow rate, but only for a coffee bed resistance that was higher than its predicted theoretical value

Casais em processo de adoção e qualidade de sono

Mestrado em Psicologia Clínica e da SaúdeA adoção tem vindo a aumentar ao longo dos tempos, proporcionando qualidade de vida não só aos adotados como às famílias adotantes. Os futuros pais manifestam sérias preocupações e receios antes, durante e mesmo após o processo de adoção estar concluído, o que pode levar a uma menor qualidade de sono. O presente estudo procura compreender se os sujeitos de casais que estão em processo de adoção apresentam uma qualidade de sono mais pobre comparativamente com sujeitos de casais que não se encontram no mesmo processo. No entanto, parece não existirem estudos sobre a presente temática e devido a isso não será possível comparar os resultados segundo a formulação de uma hipótese específica. Ainda assim, esperava-se que os participantes do grupo de casais em processo de adoção apresentassem pior qualidade de sono, avaliada pelo Índice de Qualidade de Sono de Pittsburg (IQSP), do que os grupos de sujeitos com filhos e sujeitos que não têm e não pretendem ter filhos num futuro próximo. Esperava-se ainda que os participantes do sexo feminino tivessem qualidade de sono mais pobre que os do sexo masculino, nos três grupos. A amostra ficou constituída por 88 participantes com idades compreendidas entre 24 e 51 anos, distribuídos em três grupos: grupo Casais com filhos; grupo Casais sem filhos, e grupo Casais em adoção. Constatou-se que os três grupos não se distinguem entre si de modo estatisticamente significativo, em nenhuma das pontuações extraídas do IQSP nomeadamente quanto à eficiência do sono, duração do sono, perturbação do sono, latência do sono, disfunção diária devida ao sono, qualidade global do sono, necessidade de medicação para o sono e valor total da escala. Apesar disso, houve diferenças clinicamente relevantes, nomeadamente quanto ao facto de entre os grupos em processo de adoção, encontrarmos das mais elevadas percentagens de pessoas com sono de pobre qualidade, tendo em conta uma pontuação total no IQSP > 5. Tal como era esperado, os dados sugerem uma tendência para a qualidade de sono ser pior nas mulheres do que nos homens. Apesar da ausência de significância estatística para as diferenças encontradas, o que é certo, é que entre os participantes em processo de adoção encontram-se das mais elevadas percentagens de pessoas com qualidade de sono pobre. Apontando para o futuro, discutem-se não só sugestões para futuros trabalhos e limitações encontradas, como também sugestões a ter em conta em setting clínico.Adoption has been increasing over time, providing quality of life both to the adopted child and to their adopting parents.. Future Parents express serious concern and fears before, during and even after the adoption process has been completed, which can lead to a poorer quality of sleep. This study seeks to screen whether couples who are in the adoption process have poorer sleep than couples who are not in the same process. However, no studies were found on this theme. Still, it is expected that participants in the group of couples in the adoption process have lower sleep quality assessed by Sleep Quality Index of Pittsburg, than groups of couples with children and couples who do not have and not intend to have children in the near future. It is also expected that female participants have poorer quality of sleep than males in all three groups. The sample consisted of 88 participants aged between 24 and 51 years divided into three groups: couples with children group, couples without children group, and couples in adoption group. It was found that the differences between the three groups were not statistically significant for any of the scores of the PSQI, namely sleep efficiency, sleep duration, sleep disorder, sleep latency, daytime dysfunction due to sleep disorder , overall quality of Sleep, needing sleep medication and the total score.Even dough not significant, clinically relevant percentages of men and women reporting poor sleep quality (total PSQI > 5) were found amongst the adoption groups. Pointing to the future, we discuss limitations and suggestions both for future studies and suggestions to be considered in clinical settings

A non-local perturbation of the logistic equation in IR N

A logistic equation in the whole space is considered. In this problem, a non-local perturbation is included. We establish a new sub-supersolution method forgeneral nonlocal elliptic equations and, consequently, we obtain the existence ofpositive solutions of a nonlocal logistic equation.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO). EspañaEuropean Commission (EC). Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico. BrasilCoordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior. Brasi

Evidence for reduced magnetic braking in polars from binary population models

We present the first population synthesis of synchronous magnetic cataclysmic variables, called polars, taking into account the effect of the white dwarf (WD) magnetic field on angular momentum loss. We implemented the reduced magnetic braking (MB) model proposed by Li, Wu & Wickramasinghe into the Binary Stellar Evolution (BSE) code recently calibrated for cataclysmic variable (CV) evolution. We then compared separately our predictions for polars and non-magnetic CVs with a large and homogeneous sample of observed CVs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We found that the predicted orbital period distributions and space densities agree with the observations if period bouncers are excluded. For polars, we also find agreement between predicted and observed mass transfer rates, while the mass transfer rates of non-magnetic CVs with periods ≳3 h drastically disagree with those derived from observations. Our results provide strong evidence that the reduced MB model for the evolution of highly magnetized accreting WDs can explain the observed properties of polars. The remaining main issues in our understanding of CV evolution are the origin of the large number of highly magnetic WDs, the large scatter of the observed mass transfer rates for non-magnetic systems with periods ≳3 h, and the absence of period bouncers in observed samples

Book review: Media and Participation, by Nico Carpentier

In Media and Participation, work divided in two parts, Nico Carpentier discusses participation as a structuraly unstable concept and as an object of ideological debate between two kinds of participation: the minimalist and the maximalist. In the first part, Carpentier uses a set of theoretical reflections to discuss the concept of participation and its role in the media in five different fields (democracy, art and museums, development, spatial planning and communication). Through them he presents the various forms of articulation of participation and shows the common citizen’s need of the to participate, despite the structuring and limitations to which he is subject. In the second part, the author demonstrates the applicability of these theories with several case studies that attest to the different forms of participation adopted by society, using five keywords: the power operations exercised by media professionals on television are exposed in the talk show Jan Publiek and in Barometer; the question of identity and subject positions in the media sphere is debated also resorting to Jan Publiek and the reality show Temptation Island; organization is evidenced in the Video Nation show and in Radio Swap; the influence of technology on citizen participation is exemplified in the world's first interactive film, Kinoautomat; and the importance of quality as a discursive tool is illustrated again with Barometer and the social network 16plus

Book review: Journalism with a future, by Iván Puentes-Rivera; Francisco Campos-Freire; Xosé López-García

Journalism with a Future studies the changes provoked by the digital revolution in communication and information which called into question the survival of traditional media and traditional business models. Technological development allowed information to be instantaneous. It is no longer scarce, on the contrary, it is superabundant to a point that produces an excess of stimuli, making it harder and more overwhelming for consumers to understand facts. This ease of access to contents put a stress on many newspapers, forcing the closure of historic titles and the unemployment of great professionals. For the past few years, the Internet has brought a new narrative into communication with search engines, links and social networks that broadened interests, making the production of journalistic pieces quite complex