Integrating ICT through multimodal discourse in a primary classroom

Most children talk to their parents about what they learned at school. Parents hear about books read, pictures drawn, stories written and games played. But how often do parents hear of children using ICT to make multimedia stories with a mathematical focus? In this paper the term “multimodality” will be used to describe such activities. Kress (2004) states that multimodality “deals with all the means we have for making meanings – the modes of representation – and considers their specific way of configuring the world.”Although digital technology is now available in most Australian schools, classroom use of such technology is not always creative and meaningful for learners. Recent state and federal government initiatives provide teachers with opportunities to integrate various digital technology applications into their classroom practice. In late 2011 a small research project was conducted with a class of Grade 4 students from an outer suburban Melbourne government school. As part of the project students planned and produced a multimedia artefact that explained some aspect of mathematics they had learned during the year.This paper outlines the planning and production of the multimedia artefacts created by the students, together with a brief discussion of some impediments to teacher use of technology that were identified by teachers at the school. Other issues considered include assessment and reporting in multiple subject areas based on one piece of student work, and the balancing of the relative importance of subject areas in integrated projects and tasks. The authors argue for the development and deliberate inclusion of integrated multimodal activities throughout the primary school curriculum

A Vessel to Navigate a Terrifying World. Rilke’s «Stunden-Buch»

This essay is a reading of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Stunden-Buch, particularly the first book, «Das Buch vom mönchischem Leben» from 1905. Throughout the essay, I develop the question of what prayer means in this cycle of poems, and the relationship of prayer to poetry in general. I argue that Rilke surpasses the usual limitations of language, using poetic tech­niques that instead of merely indicating objects in the world, have the ability to speak things into being. Furthermore, I argue that Rilke uses language as a protective layer that allows one to transform oneself and face a world that is increasingly hostile to poetic sensibility

Influence of neuromuscular fatigue on the reliability of gait variability measures

Walking in healthy young adults displays an optimal pattern of variability from one stride to the next. This level ensures that each step taken is not stereotyped but also not completely unpredictable. Previous studies have investigated differences in stride-to-stride characteristics comparing groups of young to groups of elderly. The consistency of gait variability measures on an individual level remains to be determined. The first aim of this study is to determine the between day and between trial consistency of gait variability measures in healthy young adults. We hypothesize that there will be a high level of consistency from day-to-day and within day measure of gait variability. If confirmed, our results would suggest any changes in variability observed for a given individual would likely be the result of experimental constraints, not an artifact from the measurement. While a decrease of optimal gait variability is evident with aging, the origins of this are unclear. It is possible that impairments of the muscular systems increasing fatigue causes the inherent decrease in optimal gait variability. Fatigue can be defined as any reduction in the force-generating capacity of a muscle due to recent activation and can be attributed to peripheral and central nervous system failure. How localized fatigue affects the gait of individuals is not well known due to fatigue being such a complex phenomenon. The second aim of this study is to determine how neuromuscular fatigue will affect stride-to-stride variability

Never Too Late: How Not to Climb a Glaciated Peak

A historian in his early 60s revisits an old dream of climbing a glaciated peak in the Pacific Northwest: Mount Baker in North Cascades National Park in Washington state

Echoes of the Absolute. Rainer Maria Rilke’s «Buch der Bilder»

In this article I examine some of the key poems in Rilke’s Book of Images in an attempt to elucidate its somewhat elusive order. Moving away from the tendency to interpret this cycle of poems biographically, I use the iconography of Rilke’s prose, as well as his other poetry, to uncover a gesture that is the source of the persona’s ability to create. Following de Man, I offer that this gesture and its subsequent formulation into poetic language is akin to Hölderlin’s distinction between the ontological status of a flower and the becoming of the poetic word that sings it

A spectroscopic study of phase transitions in polymers/

In this study three examples of solid-solid phase transitions in polymers have been investigated with vibrational spectroscopy. The effects of a high strength electric field on the microstructure of piezoelectric copolymers of vinylidene fluoride and trifluoroethylene has been studied. The application of an electric field is found to produce changes in dipolar orientation and also changes in chain conformation, and these are measured by infrared spectroscopy below and above the Curie transition temperature. Electrical poling behavior is examined for two copolymer compositions which show substantial differences in structure and Curie temperature, and infrared analysis provides a means to determine the differences in dipole orientation and chain conformation distribution for these two copolymers. Infrared spectroscopy is employed to determine the content of $\alpha$ and $\beta$ phases of PVDF for two highly drawn blends and also for PVDF homopolymer. The effects of annealing on the phase content and segmental orientation are measured. Highly drawn PVDF samples are used for determination of the transition dipole moment directions of selected vibrational bands. The microstructure of different phases of syndiotactic polystyrene has also been studied. A normal coordinate analysis is performed for the all trans conformation of syndiotactic polystyrene using nonredundant coordinates and force constants for the phenyl ring. Force constants for the chain have been obtained from studies of saturated hydrocarbons. Assignment of the infrared and Raman bands and their polarization characteristics is made upon comparison of the calculated results with the observed spectra obtained from coextruded films. Annealing the coextruded films increases the overall segmental orientation as the crystallinity increases. The theoretical modulus of a single chain has been calculated from the dispersion curive of the longitudinal acoustic branch near the Brillouin zone center. The kinetics of the irreversible phase transition in syndiotactic polystyrene has been measured as a function of temperature and annealing history, in order to determine the effect of thermal history on the transition behavior. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.

The Paper Trail of Knowledge Spillovers: Evidence from Patent Interferences

We show evidence of localized knowledge spillovers using a new database of US patent interferences terminated between 1998 and 2014. Interferences resulted when two or more independent parties submitted identical claims of invention nearly simultaneously. Following the idea that inventors of identical inventions share common knowledge inputs, interferences provide a new method for measuring knowledge spillovers. Interfering inventors are 1.4 to 4.0 times more likely to live in the same local area than matched control pairs of inventors. They are also more geographically concentrated than citation-linked inventors. Our results emphasize geographic distance as a barrier to tacit knowledge flows