Level up learning: a national survey on teaching with digital games

Digital games have the potential to transform K-12 education as we know it. But what has been the real experience among teachers who use games in the classroom? In 2013, the Games and Learning Publishing Council conducted a national survey among nearly 700 K-8 teachers. The report reveals key findings from the survey, and looks at how often and why teachers use games in the classroom, as well as issues they encounter in their efforts to implement digital games into their practice

The Use of mobile phones for conducting acoustic surveys of calling amphibians

Although real-time acoustic surveys by human observers are the most common and widespread protocol in use for calling amphibian monitoring, new methods have surfaced with technological advancements; most notably automated recording. Automated recording can gather large amounts of survey data with minimal effort. Mobile phone technology has the potential to be used as a tool for calling amphibian monitoring. I conducted a study in 2006 to evaluate mobile phone capabilities in this regard. While conducting standard acoustic surveys of calling amphibians in the field, I made simultaneous recordings using a digital voice recorder and a mobile phone. I listened to the recordings made by both devices in random order as an expert observer, and identified the species as I heard them. Next, I trained volunteers and had them conduct surveys of the recordings as I had done. I found no differences in expert detection errors between recordings made using the digital recorder and those made using a mobile phone. However the same comparison of volunteer detection errors showed that there were significantly more under-detections found in recordings made with the mobile phone, and significantly more over-detections in recordings made using the digital recorder. After upgrading microphones and repeating the study in 2007, I found no differences in total detection errors for either expert or volunteers between recordings made using both devices

Mothers\u27 Cognitions and Structural Life Circumstances as Predictors of Infants\u27 and Toddlers\u27 Television and Video

Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics reaffirmed their official policy discouraging screen media use with children under two (AAP, 2011). Their statement counters the normative use of TV/ video products with infants and toddlers, as parent surveys indicate the majority of these children watch TV/videos regularly. This dissertation research was designed with the underlying premise that the majority of existing research links heavy infant/toddler television and video exposure to disadvantageous health and developmental outcomes and many clinicians and child advocates seek to reduce that exposure. As little is known about the factors associated with more or less screen media use with infants and toddlers, this study examines in-depth the maternal cognitive and structural life circumstance factors predictive of TV/video exposure rates among very young children. Guided by the Integrative Model of Behavioral Prediction (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010), this survey study examines the relationships between children\u27s estimated rates of foreground and background TV/video exposure and their mothers\u27 demographics (e.g., race/ethnicity), structural life circumstances (e.g., number of children in the home; employment), and cognitions (e.g., attitudes; norms). Thus, this study essentially tests two competing explanations for infants\u27 and toddlers\u27 TV/video exposure: (1) that mothers base their children\u27s TV/video exposure on their own psycho-social cognitions about that exposure; and (2) that mothers are more or less apt to allow their child to be exposed to TV/video based on unalterable realities of their lives, regardless of TV/video-related cognitions. The results suggest that mothers\u27 structural circumstances and cognitions (i.e., attitudes, normative pressure, and perceived behavioral control) respectively contribute independent explanatory power to the prediction of children\u27s background and foreground TV/video exposure, though demographic factors explain very little variance in each case. Mothers\u27 attitudes as well as their own TV/video viewing behavior were particularly strong predictors of each type of child media exposure. With regards to foreground TV/video exposure, mothers\u27 regulatory focus orientation and beliefs about early childhood brain development moderated relationships between discrete beliefs regarding infant/toddler TV/video exposure and broader integrative model constructs in notable ways. Implications of these findings for behavioral prediction theory and for future campaigns to reduce infant/toddler TV/video exposure are discussed

Can retail investors beat the market by using technical trading rules? Evidence from the Nordic countries

This thesis examines the performance of three simple technical trading rules in Nordic countries: Variable-length simple moving average (V-SMA), Fixed-length simple moving average (F-SMA), and Trading range break out (TRB). I find that technical trading rules have some predictive power. Overall, the strongest results are obtained at shorter time intervals using the V-SMA rule. Particularly the results for Iceland are strikingly strong: all the V-SMA rule tests are statistically significant. The average daily (annual) returns for conditional buy, sell and buy-sell difference are 0,093% (27%), -0,128% (-28%) and 0,221 (77%), respectively. These returns are enormous when compared to the unconditional buy-and-hold return of 0,021% (5,6%). Iceland’s break-even transaction cost percent, which would eliminate trading gains, ranges from 1,1% to 11,7%, indicating that retail investors are able to beat the market even after transaction costs. The results are confirmed using a bootstrap simulation, which indicates that the results cannot be explained by the random walk. However, the results for the other countries are more mixed

Cannabis og rehabilitering : avhengighet, sosial identitet og attribusjon

Masteroppgave pedagogikk - Universitetet i Agder 2016Hensikt og mål med denne studien er å kartlegge faktorer som kan gjøre seg gjeldende i rehabiliteringsprosessen, og hvor målet er å avslutte rusatferd i forhold til cannabis. For å legge til rette for en best mulig rehabiliteringsprosess kan det være vesentlig å imøtekomme de ulike utfordringer og behov som gjør seg gjeldende hos den enkelte som utøver rusatferd. Med utgangspunkt i aktuell forskning innen rehabiliteringsfeltet er fenomenene avhengighet, sosial identitet og attribusjon utvalgt som aktuelle rammefaktorer for videre analyse. Studien er gjennomført med utgangspunkt i kvalitativ metode, og hvor fem deltakere som har vært-, skal- eller er i et individuelt hasjavvenningsprogram er intervjuet. For et par av deltakerne har avhengighet vært knyttet opp mot manglende kontroll over egen atferd, mens det for andre har omhandlet motivasjonskonflikt. Dette støttes ved både studien til Skog (2003) og Miller; Gold & Pottash (1989), og som har to ulike tilnærminger til fenomenet avhengighet. Når det gjelder rammefaktoren sosial identitet så har det også her fremkommet ulike perspektiver, og som også i likhet med avhengighet på ulike måter støtter opp om det utvalgte teorigrunnlaget. For eksempel så har den sosiale identiteten og selvkategoriseringen som er knyttet opp mot tilhørighet inn mot rusmiljøet vært en viktig- og til dels et positiv element ved utøvelsen av rusatferden hos deltakerne ( Tajfel & Billig, 1973; Turner, Tajfel & Brown, 1979; Turner, 1985; Smith & Mackie, 1995 m.fl.). Disse elementer gjør seg også gjeldende inn mot rehabiliteringen, men skifter da til å omhandle etablering av ny sosial identitet inn mot rusfrie nettverk og relasjoner, eller ved gjenopptagelse av nettverkene den enkelte hadde før rusatferden startet (Buckingham, Frings & Albery, 2013). Gjenopptagelse av konvensjonelle roller som for eksempel student, arbeidstaker og familiemedlemskap har også vært viktige elementer for deltakerne i rehabiliteringsprosessen. Disse elementer støttes også ved de teoretiske tilnærmingene som for eksempel hos Dingle, Cruwys & Frings (2015); Buckingham et.al.,2013 med flere. Til sist så har også bevissthet og refleksjoner omkring attribusjoner når det gjelder både starten-, vedvarelsen- og avslutningen på rusatferden gitt ulike funn som støttes ved ulike tilnærminger og perspektiver (Kelley, 1973; Weiner, 2010; Martinko & Thomson, 2010, m.fl). De ulike perspektiver som er fremkommet i denne studien kan være aktuelle i utformingen av et rehabiliteringsinnhold som i størst mulig grad er tilpasset aktuelle utfordringer og beho

Large-scale dynamic observation planning for unmanned surface vessels

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 129-134).With recent advances in research and technology, autonomous surface vessel capabilities have steadily increased. These autonomous surface vessel technologies enable missions and tasks to be performed without the direction of human operators, and have changed the way scientists and engineers approach problems. Because these robotic devices can work without manned guidance, they can execute missions that are too difficult, dangerous, expensive, or tedious for human operators to attempt. The United States government is currently expanding the use of autonomous surface vessel technologies through the United States Navy's Spartan Scout unmanned surface vessel (USV) and NASA's Ocean-Atmosphere Sensor Integration System (OASIS) USV. These USVs are well-suited to complete monotonous, dangerous, and time-consuming missions. The USVs provide better performance, lower cost, and reduced risk to human life than manned systems. In this thesis, we explore how to plan multiple USV observation schedules for two significant notional observation scenarios, collecting water temperatures ahead of the path of a hurricane, and collecting fluorometer readings to observe and track a harmful algal bloom.(cont.) A control system must be in place that coordinates a fleet of USVs to targets in an efficient manner. We develop three algorithms to solve the unmanned surface vehicle observation-planning problem. A greedy construction heuristic runs fastest, but produces suboptimal plans; a 3-phase algorithm which combines a greedy construction heuristic with an improvement phase and an insertion phase, requires more execution time, but generates significantly better plans; an optimal mixed integer programming algorithm produces optimal plans, but can only solve small problem instances.by John V. Miller.S.M

What are we downloading for our children? Best-selling children’s apps in four European countries

The present article provides an overview of the best-selling apps for the age range of 0–8 years under various categories, including ‘Kids’, ‘Books’, ‘Educational games’, ‘Family games’ and ‘Word games’ in the two major application stores (Google Play and iTunes App Store) in four economically diverse European countries: Hungary, Turkey, Greece and the Netherlands. As tablets seem to be a substantial part of children’s leisure activities, and thus apps might play an important role in their development, we conducted a content analysis to highlight two issues: the educational value of the most popular children’s apps and the fine-tuning of apps to the local culture and language of non-English speaking countries. There is a large overlap between the best-selling apps in the four countries; in fact, half of the apps appear among the most popular lists in more than one country. Consequently, most children’s apps do not include any oral language and, if they do, they are not available in the local language. Furthermore, the results show that a substantial part of the apps supported early literacy skills. In the majority of apps teaching literacy, although advertised for the youngest, the focus of instruction was more suited for school-age children