Families' uses of the Internet

Abstract This thesis explores how families explain and justify their uses of the internet within the home. It focuses on three key purposes for which the internet is used - education, work and leisure - and discusses these in the context of power relations within families. Whilst previous research exists in relation to children's and adults' internet use, there is little which investigates use embedded within the context of everyday family life. An added dimension of this research is in its exploration of how internet use changes over time. The findings are drawn from qualitative data based on longitudinal research carried out with 17 UK families. The data collection consisted of in-depth interviews, diaries and observation carried out over a two year period. The study challenges the rhetoric, rife within the public domain, that the internet is transforming our daily lives, revolutionizing leisure, education, learning and working at home. Instead, families view the internet with ambivalence, and incorporate it into the pre-existing routines of their lives in mostly rather banal and narrow ways. Furthermore, not only are some family members struggling to learn the functional, critical and creative skills and competencies to be able to use the internet in the first place, but parents' regulation strategies may also be preventing children from developing abilities to use the internet safely. A further concern addressed here is that inequalities in access persist between families and within families connected to the internet. Whilst the changes within the sample families are more related to employment and education than family breakdown, these changes prompt shifts in families' uses incrementally at key points in addition to the day-to-day fluctuations that occur. This, therefore, reflects the dialectical relationship between the medium and the individual through which use is configured; and it is ultimately this relationship that determines what the internet can become

Disabled children and young people’s uses and experiences of digital technologies for learning

This report presents findings from a participatory, in-depth qualitative study to explore disabled children and young people’s formal and informal learning practices. Interviews and observations in classrooms took place with seven disabled young people and nine teachers to gain their perspectives about disabled young people’s uses of digital technologies at school. Visually impaired children and young people were chosen as an illustrative case for the project and to overcome claims that treating disabled children as a homogenous group was unhelpful for understanding the differences between disabled children. The findings showed that children and young people use and are positive about digital technologies to support formal and informal learning. Digital literacy skills were well developed and enabled the young people to use digital technologies effectively and safely. Mobile devices such as tablets were found to be particularly useful both for learning generally and for accessibility in order to access the curriculum. Nevertheless, digital technologies could sometimes make young people feel self-conscious and stigmatised. Some subject teachers were more on-board than others in supporting disabled young people and this meant that there was sometimes a lack of inclusive pedagogical design which resulted in an extra workload for disabled children. Follow-up interviews carried out two-three years after initial data collection showed that changes were minimal despite the introduction of policy change such as the introduction of Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans

Disabled children and young people’s uses and experiences of digital technologies for learning

This report presents findings from a participatory, in-depth qualitative study to explore disabled children and young people’s formal and informal learning practices. Interviews and observations in classrooms took place with seven disabled young people and nine teachers to gain their perspectives about disabled young people’s uses of digital technologies at school. Visually impaired children and young people were chosen as an illustrative case for the project and to overcome claims that treating disabled children as a homogenous group was unhelpful for understanding the differences between disabled children. The findings showed that children and young people use and are positive about digital technologies to support formal and informal learning. Digital literacy skills were well developed and enabled the young people to use digital technologies effectively and safely. Mobile devices such as tablets were found to be particularly useful both for learning generally and for accessibility in order to access the curriculum. Nevertheless, digital technologies could sometimes make young people feel self-conscious and stigmatised. Some subject teachers were more on-board than others in supporting disabled young people and this meant that there was sometimes a lack of inclusive pedagogical design which resulted in an extra workload for disabled children. Follow-up interviews carried out two-three years after initial data collection showed that changes were minimal despite the introduction of policy change such as the introduction of Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans

iTEC:conceptualising, realising and recognising pedagogical and technological innovation in European classrooms

Innovation, a complex concept, underpinned a four-year pan-European research project designed to increase the effective use of technology in school classrooms. This article revisits evaluation data collected during the project and explores the challenges of conceptualising, realising and researching ‘innovation’. The authors describe how innovation was conceptualised, highlighting key issues, not all of which could be resolved in the project. The development of an approach to support teachers to change their practices facilitated the realisation of innovation in the classroom. This approach, through which researchers and national pedagogical coordinators worked with teachers to develop their teaching and learning practices with technology in potentially innovative ways, is outlined. Case study data are then used to exemplify how teachers and other stakeholders applied this approach and how they perceived innovation in practice within their own countries. Through a discussion of these cases, the article highlights the challenge of defining innovation in different country settings and, in turn, the complexity of identifying its occurrence. It concludes by proposing the next steps for similar research endeavours

Expressions 1986

https://openspace.dmacc.edu/expressions/1007/thumbnail.jp

The diversity and evolution of pollination systems in large plant clades: Apocynaceae as a case study

Background and Aims Large clades of angiosperms are often characterized by diverse interactions with pollinators, but how these pollination systems are structured phylogenetically and biogeographically is still uncertain for most families. Apocynaceae is a clade of >5300 species with a worldwide distribution. A database representing >10 % of species in the family was used to explore the diversity of pollinators and evolutionary shifts in pollination systems across major clades and regions. Methods The database was compiled from published and unpublished reports. Plants were categorized into broad pollination systems and then subdivided to include bimodal systems. These were mapped against the five major divisions of the family, and against the smaller clades. Finally, pollination systems were mapped onto a phylogenetic reconstruction that included those species for which sequence data are available, and transition rates between pollination systems were calculated. Key Results Most Apocynaceae are insect pollinated with few records of bird pollination. Almost three-quarters of species are pollinated by a single higher taxon (e.g. flies or moths); 7 % have bimodal pollination systems, whilst the remaining approx. 20 % are insect generalists. The less phenotypically specialized flowers of the Rauvolfioids are pollinated by a more restricted set of pollinators than are more complex flowers within the Apocynoids + Periplocoideae + Secamonoideae + Asclepiadoideae (APSA) clade. Certain combinations of bimodal pollination systems are more common than others. Some pollination systems are missing from particular regions, whilst others are over-represented. Conclusions Within Apocynaceae, interactions with pollinators are highly structured both phylogenetically and biogeographically. Variation in transition rates between pollination systems suggest constraints on their evolution, whereas regional differences point to environmental effects such as filtering of certain pollinators from habitats. This is the most extensive analysis of its type so far attempted and gives important insights into the diversity and evolution of pollination systems in large clades

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements