Deconstructing Engagement: A First Generation Report on the ArtsSmarts Student Engagement Questionnaire

During the school year 2006-2007, ArtsSmarts representatives collaborated with Karen Hume to design a questionnaire to measure students' engagement before and after ArtsSmarts programs. The questionnaire was administered to a large number of students who were being taught by an ArtsSmarts team comprised of an artist and a teacher. ArtsSmarts uses an innovative approach to arts integration, by allowing the self construction of programming in classrooms; and by acting as a facilitator in providing resources for artists and teachers teams develop programming for students in their classrooms. This programming develops a context where student learning and engagement in tasks and activities can take place. ArtsSmarts does not dictate this creative process; rather, it plays a supportive role in acting as a reference point for the teacher-artist teams to rely on. This approach not only allows for the innovation to evolve organically from the generation of the artist-teacher teams to student interaction, but also excites the creative learning process within the classroom. This report is a summary of the results from this first administration of the ArtsSmarts Student Engagement Questionnaire (i.e., first generation). The overall purpose of this report is firstly to examine student engagement, and secondly to examine the quality of the questionnaire, for further refinements. This report has three areas of focus: 1. To summarize the responses of students who completed the questionnaire.2. To compare student engagement before and after intervention.3. To identify strengths and weakness in the questionnaire for further revisions

Building ArtsSmarts' Research Capacity: An Interim Report

In 2006, the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) created an initiative to build Canada's capacity to conduct research on learning, inviting not-for profit organizations to apply for Researcher in Residence grants. ArtsSmarts was one of the successful grant applicant organizations. Saad Chahine was hired by ArtsSmarts to take on the researcher-in-residence role. Several meetings resulted in the development of a work plan (Appendix A) and an outline of the various activities to be carried out by the researcher-in-residence. The work plan was approved by CCL, and the residency commenced in June 2007. What follows is an interim report on the residency, documenting what has been accomplished since June 2007, and providing direction for continuing to build ArtsSmarts' research capacity going forward

Sensor requirements for Earth and planetary observations

Future generations of Earth and planetary remote sensing instruments will require extensive developments of new long-wave and very long-wave infrared detectors. The upcoming NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) will carry a suite of instruments to monitor a wide range of atmospheric and surface parameters with an unprecedented degree of accuracy for a period of 10 to 15 years. These instruments will observe Earth over a wide spectral range extending from the visible to nearly 17 micrometers with a moderate to high spectral and spacial resolution. In addition to expected improvements in communication bandwidth and both ground and on-board computing power, these new sensor systems will need large two-dimensional detector arrays. Such arrays exist for visible wavelengths and, to a lesser extent, for short wavelength infrared systems. The most dramatic need is for new Long Wavelength Infrared (LWIR) and Very Long Wavelength Infrared (VLWIR) detector technologies that are compatible with area array readout devices and can operate in the temperature range supported by long life, low power refrigerators. A scientific need for radiometric and calibration accuracies approaching 1 percent translates into a requirement for detectors with excellent linearity, stability and insensitivity to operating conditions and space radiation. Current examples of the kind of scientific missions these new thermal IR detectors would enhance in the future include instruments for Earth science such as Orbital Volcanological Observations (OVO), Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS), and Spectroscopy in the Atmosphere using Far Infrared Emission (SAFIRE). Planetary exploration missions such as Cassini also provide examples of instrument concepts that could be enhanced by new IR detector technologies

Remote sensing of cloud distribution

Day and night mapping of the global distribution of the horizontal cloud-cover and the corresponding cloud-top pressure levels can be derived from the same infrared data used to derive clear column temperature profiles. Applications to the 15 micrometer VTPR data are given. Extension of this approach for the determination of the radiative transfer properties of clouds is presented and the possibility of using such information to infer cloud types is discussed

On the scaling of temperature fluctuations induced by frictional heating

The temperature fluctuations generated by viscous dissipation in an isotropic turbulent flow are studied using direct numerical simulation. It is shown that their scaling with Reynolds number is at odds with predictions from recent investigations. The origin of the discrepancy is traced back to the anomalous scaling of the dissipation rate fluctuations. Phenomenological arguments are presented which explain the observed results. The study shows that previously proposed models underpredict the variance of frictional temperature fluctuations by a factor proportional to the square of the Taylor-scale Reynolds number

Local Development and Sustainable Periurban Agriculture: New Models and Approaches for Agricultural Land Conservation

Periurban agricultural territories have had to confront many pressures over the last 70 years, ranging from land development pressures emanating from nearby large cities and metropolis to technological change, to the draw of the urban labour market on farmers’ families, to the consequences of climate change and variability. They are also increasingly expected to provide stable supplies of foodstuffs to the nearby urban markets as well as having the potential to respond to many other urban demands for other functions that these agricultural areas can support. Periurban agricultural areas can be considered as strategic components of urban and metropolitan regions. They have much more to offer to their regional economies and societies than simply food production because they are also support multiple functions, both market-based and non market function. Market-based functions include the production of foodstuffs for the urban market as well as functions related to both tourism and leisure activity. Non-market based functions include the conservation of landscape heritage, and water and biodiversity conservation; some of these can also be transformed into functions that generate supplementary income for the farming families. Some functions serve to strengthen the linkages between farming, farm families and nearby urban areas. For this strengthening to occur, it appears essential that: a) farmers and their families become involved in the development of their own multifunctional agriculture-based projects; and b) the significance of the non-agricultural functions must also be appropriated by non-agricultural actors, such as local government, nearby city governments, community and consumer organisations. These points are illustrated by examples drawn from several countries, including research-action projects involving the two authors neat Montréal. These latter projects, appropriated by the local farming communities, involve local development processes that can be modified to deal with periurban agricultural areas in any political and cultural context. These processes involve the development of new models of agricultural development and relatively new approaches to local and community development. These processes reinforce regional and national programs of agricultural land ‘protection’ which, it is argued, need such supportive local and community development processes in order to be effective.