Transforming pre-service teacher curriculum: observation through a TPACK lens

This paper will discuss an international online collaborative learning experience through the lens of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. The teacher knowledge required to effectively provide transformative learning experiences for 21st century learners in a digital world is complex, situated and changing. The discussion looks beyond the opportunity for knowledge development of content, pedagogy and technology as components of TPACK towards the interaction between those three components. Implications for practice are also discussed. In today’s technology infused classrooms it is within the realms of teacher educators, practising teaching and pre-service teachers explore and address effective practices using technology to enhance learning

Working collaboratively on the digital global frontier

An international online collaborative learning experience was designed and implemented in preservice teacher education classes at the University of Calgary, Canada and the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. The project was designed to give preservice teachers an opportunity to live the experience of being online collaborators investigating real world teaching issues of diversity and inclusivity. Qualitative research was conducted to examine the complexity of the online collaborative experiences of participants. Redmond and Lock’s (2006) flexible online collaborative learning framework was used to explain the design and the implementation of the project. Henri’s (1992) content analysis model for computer-mediated communication was used for the online asynchronous postings and a constant comparative method of data analysis was used in the construction of themes. From the findings, the authors propose recommendations for designing and facilitating collaborative learning on the digital global frontier

Mediating Disconnected Communities with a Liberal Arts Education

2012 Topic: Mediating the Disconnect: Liberal Arts as Inspiration for Activism Virtually all news and media outlets frequently and urgently remind us that we are at a historic crossroads and that local and global societies and economies are facing extraordinary if not totally unprecedented challenges. Yet many of us tend to feel disconnected from these challenges, watching them as if they were a show that we are free to observe or ignore or as a set of problems others are responsible for solving, preferably without our involvement. In what ways has your experience at Butler moved you to and prepared you for a higher level of engagement with or response to these challenges? How has your liberal arts education encouraged or supported this change

Moving Histories

Moving Histories is an original and enlightening book which details the lives of women who left Ireland after independence. Drawing on a wide range of archival material, this book traces new narratives to bring original insights into the migration of thousands of Irish women in the twentieth century. Despite having a strong tendency to leave Ireland like men, women’s migration to Britain has been less well studied. Yet Irish women could be found in all walks of life in Britain, from the more familiar fields of nursing and domestic service to teaching, factory work and more. This fascinating study also considers the public commentary made about Irish women from the pulpit, press and politicians, who thought the women to be flighty, in need of guidance and prone to moral failures away from home. The repeated coverage of the ‘emigrant girl’ in government memos and journals gave the impression Irish women were leaving for reasons other than employment. Moving Histories argues that the continued focus on Irish unmarried mothers in Britain was based on genuine concerns and a real problem, but such women were not representative. They were, rather, an indictment of the conservative socio-cultural environment of an Ireland that suppressed open discourse of sexuality and forced women to ‘hide their shame’ in institutions at home and abroad

Modernist Women in Three Acts: The Stage for Political Protest

In this essay, I will draw upon Katherine Mansfield\u27s New Zealand Sh011stories, Bliss (1918), The Woman at the Store (1912), Je Ne Parle Pas Francais (1918), George Bernard Shaw\u27s play Mrs. Warren\u27s Profession (1893), and Virginia Woolf\u27s extended essay A Room of One \u27s Own (1929), to defend Jeffreys\u27s idea that lesbianism was, in many cases, nothing more than a bond of friendship between two women - a private experience that took on a different meaning in the public eye. Additionally, I wish to support Gubar\u27s notion that gender norms frequently existed secondarily to the importance of women gaining more liberty through their political achievements. While Newton identifies valid concerns about the influence of social and historical processes continuously altering the environment in which women lived, the more important aspect of her paper seems to suggest that the activities in which women participated to make themselves equal to men, namely cross-dressing, resulted in overly prescribed definitions of lesbianism, simply due to women\u27s behavior or appearance - their social not their self-identity. Additionally, in this essay, I will use Jeffreys and Gubar, Mansfield, Shaw, and Woolf, to demonstrate that the New Woman utilized the social, economic, and political constraints inherent to her environment to achieve her own political goals. In sum, I wish to argue that the categories of female identity that caused such controversies during the modernist era did not always reflect altered attitudes about sexuality or self-identity. Rather, these categories served 4 frequently as social and political statements about women seeking voice and empowerment through alternative means

Redefining Race in Saint Francis College v. Al-Khazraji and Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb: Using Dictionaries Instead of the Thirteenth Amendment

In 1987 the Supreme Court unanimously extended the protections of 42 U.S.C. sections 19811 and 19822 to ethnic groups, citing Runyon v. McCrary. Runyon reinterpreted the legislative history of section 1981 to create a cause of action for blacks against both public and private discrimination in the making and enforcement of contracts. One year later a sharply divided Supreme Court ordered the parties in Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, a case in which the Court already had heard argument, to brief the Court anew and make arguments on an issue that none of the parties had raised--whether to overrule Runyonv. McCrary.\u27The Supreme Court\u27s request reminded the legal community that the constitutional authority for Runyon is and always has been in dispute. Yet Justice White, who with Justice Rehnquist wrote the vehement and widely cited dissent to Runyon, authored the unanimous opinions for the Court in Saint Francis College v. Al-Khazraji and Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb, which permit ethnic groups to employ sections 1981 and 1982 in order to reach private acts of discrimination. The justices of the Supreme Court accomplished this expansion of Runyon without examining precedent or establishing a constitutional foundation. Rather, the Court defined the term race to include ethnic minorities for the purposes of sections 1981 and 1982. The American media overwhelmingly endorsed the Supreme Court\u27s decision, believing it to be a significant expansion of civil rights--a reflection of the modern belief that all ethnic minorities equally deserve freedom from discrimination. The New York Times declared that the decisions created an opportunity for many Americans to fight ethnic discrimination. If the decisions, however, are as significant an expansion of civil rights as the press perceived them to be, the Supreme Court should have based its analysis on the United States Constitution

Moving Histories

Moving Histories is an original and enlightening book which details the lives of women who left Ireland after independence. Drawing on a wide range of archival material, this book traces new narratives to bring original insights into the migration of thousands of Irish women in the twentieth century. Despite having a strong tendency to leave Ireland like men, women’s migration to Britain has been less well studied. Yet Irish women could be found in all walks of life in Britain, from the more familiar fields of nursing and domestic service to teaching, factory work and more. This fascinating study also considers the public commentary made about Irish women from the pulpit, press and politicians, who thought the women to be flighty, in need of guidance and prone to moral failures away from home. The repeated coverage of the ‘emigrant girl’ in government memos and journals gave the impression Irish women were leaving for reasons other than employment. Moving Histories argues that the continued focus on Irish unmarried mothers in Britain was based on genuine concerns and a real problem, but such women were not representative. They were, rather, an indictment of the conservative socio-cultural environment of an Ireland that suppressed open discourse of sexuality and forced women to ‘hide their shame’ in institutions at home and abroad

Medical applications of in-line laser absorption spectroscopy

The recent development of the molecular flow sensor (MFS), a device which employs laser absorption spectroscopy to make in-line real-time measurements of gas exchange rates in humans, offers multiple exciting clinical applications. The concentration of O2 is measured every 10 ms using cavity enhanced absorption spectroscopy alongside CO2 and H2O concentration measurements via direct laser absorption spectroscopy. This allows dynamic recalibration of the flow sensing system which provides simultaneous measurements of flow from which highly accurate gas exchange rates can be determined. This thesis aims to demonstrate the clinical utility of the device across multiple previously untested patient groups. The work presented involves building and calibrating two custom-made MFS instruments, as well as instigating several modifications to optimise device performance. Both devices demonstrate excellent performance in terms of nitrogen balance over tens of minutes and are shown to work reliably across multiple clinical settings. One of the potentially most impactful applications of the device lies in monitoring O2 consumption rates in critical care, where many patients display impaired oxygen utilisation. As a first example, the device is shown to perform well in the first study of its use in this setting, with intriguing observations about patient responses to interventions such as the adjustment of ventilator settings and the administration of vasoactive drugs. A second major application of this technology involves using it in combination with another recent development, the lognormal lung model, a mathematical model of the lung which can be used to obtain parameters assessing lung inhomogeneity. This thesis describes the use of this technique in three groups, namely young smokers and patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cystic fibrosis (CF). The thesis provides early evidence that this novel method of determining lung inhomogeneity may provide a more sensitive assessment of lung abnormalities than conventional techniques. In particular, the inhomogeneity parameter σCL can differentiate between controls and CF patients with preserved FEV1. In the case of CF, patients undergo lifelong monitoring of their lung function. To that end, a miniaturised device suitable for use in the paediatric population was designed and early data of its use in a clinical setting is also presented