Web 2.0 technologies for learning: the current landscape – opportunities, challenges and tensions: supplementary materials

These supplementary materials accompany the report ‘Web 2.0 technologies for learning: the current landscape – opportunities, challenges and tensions’, which is the first report from research commissioned by Becta into Web 2.0 technologies for learning at Key Stages 3 and 4. This report describes findings from the commissioned literature review of the then current landscape concerning learner use of Web 2.0 technologies and the implications for teachers, schools, local authorities and policy makers

Web 2.0 technologies for learning: the current landscape – opportunities, challenges and tensions

This is the first report from research commissioned by Becta into Web 2.0 technologies for learning at Key Stages 3 and 4. This report describes findings from an additional literature review of the then current landscape concerning learner use of Web 2.0 technologies and the implications for teachers, schools, local authorities and policy makers

Web 2.0 technologies for learning at Key Stages 3 and 4: summary report

The research project on Web 2.0 technologies for learning at Key Stages 3 and 4 was a major initiative funded by Becta to investigate the use and impact of such technologies in and out of school. The purpose of this research was to help shape Becta's own thinking and inform policy-makers, schools and local authorities on the potential benefits of Web 2.0 technologies and how their use can be effectively and safely realised. This document is he summary of the reports published for this project

The discourse of a ‘smart’ technology: implications for educational practice

The term ‘smart’ has become widely and sometimes carelessly employed in relation to contemporary design. However, in certain areas of cultural practice it also has acquired a more specialised and focussed meaning. One such area is education. The present paper explores the discourse of smart as it is emerging in relation to both educational technologies and educational spaces. The characteristics of smart learning tools and smart sites for learning with such tools are defined in terms of their capability for organising regulative interactions. However, it is argued that these artefacts and these spaces cannot be fully productive unless they are enveloped by a framework of human intelligence and judgement. This locates the teacher has having an important, novel, and distinctive role in the management of smart education. The range of such responsibilities is illustrated and related to contemporary themes in the psychology of learnin

Overcoming loneliness: first-generation Slavic immigrants\u27 experience with loneliness in the Inland Northwest

The plight of loneliness has caused devastation to many social and cultural groups’ well-being. Scholars have analyzed and documented its adverse health such as suicide (Stravynski and Boyer 2001), Alzheimer’s disease (Wilson et al. 2007), depression (Erzen and Çikrikci 2018), immune system complications (Hawkley and Cacioppo 2003), and cardiovascular complications (Hawley and Cacioppo 2003). Some compare its health impacts to smoking 15 cigarettes a day (Health Resources and Services Administration 2019), while others emphasize how loneliness compels people to internet addiction (Ayas and Horzum 2013) and alcohol abuse (Åkerlind and Hörnquist 1992). Among the most susceptible populations to loneliness are first-generation immigrants (Djundeva and Ellwardt 2010; Koelet and de Valk 2016), who often experience cultural alienation (Baolian 2006; Safipour et al. 2011). This thesis examined first-generation Slavic immigrants who have had a long history Inland Northwest. Social network theory and a phenomenological approach guided my question formation and qualitative data collection methods. I used participant observation, informal interviews, semi-structured interviews, and case studies to explore how loneliness was experienced. I specifically looked at sociometric variables like the context of reception, socioeconomic status, perceived discrimination, duration of stay, age, marital status, and gender in relation to social networks and loneliness. A unique identity was formed and became a central focus for this project. The significant findings showed how the context of departure, time of arrival, and ethnicity formed a Slavic-Christian identity and allowed its communities to flourish. Ultimately, Spokane’s first-generation Slavic immigrants were not significantly lonely and overcame loneliness using their strong social networks and shared identity. Future quantitative research and Russian language proficiency are needed to better understand first-generation Slavic immigrant loneliness among first-generation Slavic Christians and non-Christian populations

Novel approaches for metabolic engineering of yeast at multiple scales

Living systems contain enormous potential to solve many pressing engineering problems, including the production of usable energy, the synthesis and degradation of a variety of materials, and the treatment of disease. Metabolic engineering, as one approach to harness this potential, treats the behavior of a living system as the combined product of multiple interacting modules, each of which can be tuned to maximize performance. However, the scarcity of techniques for predictive or high-throughput engineering design of these modules, especially in eukaryotes, contributes to long strain development times and high research cost. In this work, we develop several new tools to expand our capabilities for predictive design and high-throughput engineering in yeast. At the transcriptional level, we develop a method which, for the first time, enables predictive strengthening endogenous yeast promoters and also the de novo design of strong synthetic promoters. At the translational level, we show that it is possible to exploit the context resulting from the arrangement of DNA parts in order to predictably increase or decrease gene expression. We also develop a powerful new approach for directed evolution of enzymes in yeast, termed in vivo continuous evolution, which enables the creation of library sizes orders of magnitude larger than can be obtained with the current state of the art using significantly less labor. Finally, we harness the programmatic inhibitory potential of RNA interference to optimize and demonstrate a system for rapid strain engineering with minimal genomic editing. Taken together, this work provides new techniques which enable a significant reduction in the development time of new yeast strains and informs future development of new tools for metabolic engineering.Chemical Engineerin

Learning networks and communication skills

The project work presented in this paper is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) January‐December 1999. Our task has been to identify effective communicative practices for different technologies, in relation to the contexts in which they occur, and to feed back information about such practices to the educational community in a context‐sensitive way. The technologies at issue are: video conferencing (one‐to‐one, one‐to‐many, many‐to‐many); text‐based communication (email, bulletin boards, conferencing,) and audio conferencing (telephone tutoring, shared workspace plus audio link). The teaching and learning sites that agreed to take part in this research project provide courses to a variety of learners ‐ undergraduate, postgraduate, professional, full‐ and part‐time — in a spread of subject disciplines. The breadth and range of learning environments represented should maximize the chances of teachers in further and higher education recognizing issues and circumstances that are similar to their own and provide a rich comparative framework. The lecturers from the various teaching sites are regarded as collaborators in this research, identifying their own issues and learning needs, and providing feedback to authenticate the interpretative process. This study approach bridges the practice‐theory gap. We have completed the field work and are midway through analysing and interpreting the data in collaboration with teachers and students involved in the study. This will lead to the production of a flexible resource for individual lecturing staff which can also underpin staff development courses in good practice within networked learning environments. Further details and progress updates can be gleaned from our project web site at http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/tls/ JISC/index.html

Children as inventors: orchestrating an informal pedagogic scenario with digital resources

A pedagogic scenario is described for providing primary school children with an understanding of the processes of invention while cultivating a sense of identity as ‘inventor’. This scenario is positioned at the boundary of in-class and out-of-class experiences. Our central aim was to illustrate how digital resources might function to orchestrate the experience of invention. To this end, we distinguish the role of such resources in terms of their contributions to the following elements of invention: inspiration, expression, reflection and production. This framework for addressing invention as a creative activity allows it to be experienced as authentic, collaborative and free of biases associated with gender or curricular disciplines. Examples of the inventions conceived in this workshop are presented and a taxonomy for describing them is offered