Using Simulations as a Starting Point for Constructing Meaningful Learning Games

For many school administrators and decision makers, the term “video games” holds numerous cultural associations which make their adoption in the education space challenging. Additionally, the term is so broad that it can sometimes be difficult to communicate explicitly a desire to build learning experiences that go beyond the Drill and Kill edutainment titles that currently dominate most people’s perceptions of educational games. By contrast, the term “simulations” is often well respected among educators, particularly in the natural sciences. With “simulation” already being a full genre of video games, it would seem natural that researchers are beginning to explore the overlaps between simulation games and pedagogical goals that go beyond those found in Drill and Kill games. In this chapter, we survey some of the relevant research concerning both simulations and video games and outline practical pathways through which we can leverage the interest and frameworks designed for simulation construction to facilitate the introduction of video game concepts and experiences into the classroom environment. In particular, we report on the use of Starlogo TNG, a graphical programming environment in which kids themselves can create simulation-based video games, for deepening children’s understanding of scientific concepts

The socioecohydrology of rainwater harvesting in India: understanding water storage and release dynamics across spatial scales

Rainwater harvesting (RWH), the small-scale collection and storage of runoff for irrigated agriculture, is recognized as a sustainable strategy for ensuring food security, especially in monsoonal landscapes in the developing world. In south India, these strategies have been used for millennia to mitigate problems of water scarcity. However, in the past 100 years many traditional RWH systems have fallen into disrepair due to increasing dependence on groundwater. This dependence has contributed to accelerated decline in groundwater resources, which has in turn led to increased efforts at the state and national levels to revive older RWH systems. Critical to the success of such efforts is an improved understanding of how these ancient systems function in contemporary landscapes with extensive groundwater pumping and shifted climatic regimes. Knowledge is especially lacking regarding the water-exchange dynamics of these RWH tanks at tank and catchment scales, and how these exchanges regulate tank performance and catchment water balances. Here, we use fine-scale, water-level variation to quantify daily fluxes of groundwater, evapotranspiration (ET), and sluice outflows in four tanks over the 2013 northeast monsoon season in a tank cascade that covers a catchment area of 28 km². At the tank scale, our results indicate that groundwater recharge and irrigation outflows comprise the largest fractions of the tank water budget, with ET accounting for only 13–22 % of the outflows. At the scale of the cascade, we observe a distinct spatial pattern in groundwater-exchange dynamics, with the frequency and magnitude of groundwater inflows increasing down the cascade of tanks. The significant magnitude of return flows along the tank cascade leads to the most downgradient tank in the cascade having an outflow-to-capacity ratio greater than 2. At the catchment scale, the presence of tanks in the landscape dramatically alters the catchment water balance, with runoff decreasing by nearly 75 %, and recharge increasing by more than 40 %. Finally, while water from the tanks directly satisfies  ∼ 40 % of the crop water requirement across the northeast monsoon season via surface water irrigation, a large fraction of the tank water is "wasted", and more efficient management of sluice outflows could lead to tanks meeting a higher fraction of crop water requirements

Vermeidung von Gefahrstofftransporten Abschlussbericht

SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: F95B1257+a / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekBundesministerium fuer Forschung und Technologie (BMFT), Bonn (Germany)DEGerman

Où va la recherche publicitaire ? Enquête

Cahiers de la publicité (Les), Touati Émile, Bessis Pierre, Zurfluh Jean, Péninou Georges, Brichambaut J.P., de, Plettener L., Pillet Antoine, Marcus-Steiff Joachim, Jousse M., Vidal , Vibert P. Où va la recherche publicitaire ? Enquête. In: Les Cahiers de la publicité, n°9, Prospective et publicité. pp. 44-67