EPORTFOLIO IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS. USING MAHARA TO ENHANCE REFLECTIVE LEARNING AND MOTIVATION

This paper aims to highlight how the use of a specific ePortfolio tool, Mahara, within a primary school has led students to a different perception of the subjects and the content of the lessons studied. Writings produced by 18 students during the last year of primary school will be investigated in order to show how the use of ePortfolios could support reflection and construction of a personal learning path in 11 years old students. In addition, this research will highlights how the use of ePortfolios could produce an improvement of learning through the stimulation of students\u2019 motivation. The analysis of the activities and comments shows how, starting from a partial reflective attitude, and from the perception of the single lesson as an isolated event, students learn to reflect on their learning pathways, generating views that try to grasp the meaning of the whole learning path and the relationship between their learning and the future development of their student career. Starting from a limited reflecting attitude through which students could only discuss their present time, the improvement of their reflective skills could support them to plan their future. Some features of the tool used, such as its friendly \u201clook and feel\u201d and its structure, similar to that of many social software, have acted as a powerful motivational factor in overcoming difficulties often associated with the use of ePortfolios

Collaborative strategies in on line communities of in-service teachers

Pubblicazione elettronica reperibile in http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-398/S6_GiannandreaEtAl.pd

The origins of the broadbrow: Hugh Walpole and Russian modernism in 1917

In 1914 the English writer Hugh Walpole travelled to Russia. His diaries, fragments of autobiography and two novels written at the time The Dark Forest and The Secret City vividly record a world of artistic as well as political tension in the theatre, the ballet, circus and wrestling matches he attended in Petrograd and Moscow and of the Eastern front in Galicia while serving in the Russian Red Cross. He went on to establish the Anglo-Russian bureau there to counter German propaganda. Guided by his friends Mikhail Lykiardopoulos and Konstantin Somov, Walpole socialised with some of the leading representatives of Russia’s new culture, such as Sologub, Glazunov, Scriabin and stars such as Tamara Karsavina and attended the famous Moscow Arts Theatre. Walpole’s exposure to the breadth of Russian culture was formative in his definition of the broadbrow and his attitude to cultural production. Firstly, the paper argues that the ‘battle of the brows’ between the lowbrow, highbrow, and middlebrow in periodical press in the 1920s belies the richer qualities of the term whose meaning had deeper resonances in the 19th century and early years of the 20th century. Secondly, it argues that in Walpole’s and H.G. Wells’ definition embraced an aspiration to be open to all experiences and to all knowledge which engendered a noble and broad view of life. Finally, it argues that the term became an important one for the emerging mediums of radio and film as way of engaging and enlightening audiences of every kind. Dedicated to the memory of Dr Giannandrea Poesio, this work is testament to his scholarship in Russian ballet and the arts. The article was completed for publication by Alexis Weedon following the authors’ collaboration on the research, writing and co-presentation of the paper at the Laughing and Coping: Entertainment in WW1 conference March 2016 and the Postgraduate symposium May 2016 University of Bedfordshire. Acknowledgements: Weedon’s archival research in The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations in 2016 was funded by Research Institute for Media, Art and Performance, University of Bedfordshire, with grateful thanks to Dr Giannandrea Poesio Director of the Institute. Hugh Walpole was one of ten authors identified for the AHRC funded project ‘Cross-media co-operation in Britain in 1920s and 1930s’ (AR 112216) and Weedon’s work here is a follow-on from this project

Laboratorio di cooperazione e apprendimento in rete

3openCACCIAMANI S; L. GIANNANDREA; ROSSI P.GCacciamani, Stefano; Giannandrea, Lorella; Rossi, Pier Giusepp

Technologies and trust

What is trust and how new technologies are changing or affecting the concept of trust? This publication offers insights from researchers working in educational technology and distance education, collected in the frame of the European FP-7 Marie-Curie People project “Stimulators and inhibitors of a culture of trust in educational interactions assisted by modern information and communication technology”, and provides examples of implications of trust for successful learning experiences in distance education. The research goal is to understand how trust has changed or is changing: this is related not only to the modification of the meaning, but also indicators upon which people built their judgements

Crossing boundaries: documentation of a teacher training course on design, robotics and coding

This article reports on the results of a teacher training course in which 41 teachers, working together with three university researchers, experienced a different way to engage in meaningful teaching and learning activities in design, coding and robotics. The course was run in an Italian school during the lock-down period of the Covid-19 pandemics. The training path had the objective to make the participants work differently, acting both as researchers and as teachers in training. The research reported in this article examined if and how an online teacher training course could act as a third space between school and academic cultures to achieve a negotiation of pedagogical practices. Findings from the study, collected through pre-post questionnaires and open-ended discussions, highlight an improvement in knowledge related to coding and robotics. Moreover, during the course, teachers experienced a new approach to space-time dimensions, first-hand experimentation and a collaborative approach, leading to greater perceived confidence in their skills and competences

Exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls and hexachlorobenzene, semen quality and testicular cancer risk

PURPOSE: We carried out a case-control study to investigate the possible role of occupational and environmental exposure to endocrine disruptors in the onset of testicular cancer (TC). METHODS: We evaluated 125 TC patients and 103 controls. Seminal fluid examination and organochlorine analysis were performed in all subjects. Cases and controls were also interviewed using a structured questionnaire to collect demographic information, residence, andrological medical history and dietary information. RESULTS: We found that a higher level of reproductive tract birth defects was associated with a higher risk of TC. With regard to diet, cases reported a higher consumption of milk and dairy products than controls. Overall, there was a statistically significant increase in TC risk in cases with detectable values of total polychlorinated organic compounds against controls (14.4 vs. 1.0 %; p < 0.001). TC patients with detectable levels of organochlorines had lower mean semen parameters than those with undetectable levels, although this difference was not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: The International Agency for Research on Cancer recently included dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in Group 1 of known human carcinogens. Our study confirmed and identified various risk factors for testicular cancer: cryptorchidism, consumption of milk and dairy products, parents' occupation and serum concentration of hexachlorobenzene and PCBs and, for the first time, we showed the correlation between semen quality and the serum concentration of these pollutants

Viscosity and Nonlocal Transport Effects in Hydrodynamic Simulation of Inertial Confinement Fusion Experiments

The research of alternative energy sources incites the scientific community to study the nuclear fusion process, in which the fusion of lighter atom creates a heavier one with release of energy. This research inspires both the construction of laboratories and facilities for the experimental study and the modelling of the basic physical process, analyzed with numerical simulations. This thesis work concerns one of the approaches for the achievement of a controlled fusion process: the Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF). This method forecasts the achievement of thermonuclear fusion by an implosionof the target driven by intense laser beams. Recently performed complex fusion experiments have shown a mismatch between the experimental and the numerical results. In order to understand such disagreement, several simpler experiments have been performed to undress important physical issues separately. In particular, implosion of tiny capsules filled with low density gas mixtures have been performed to study the effects of strong shock waves. It turned out that currently used models do not correctly predict gas temperature and fusion reaction numbers, particularly when initial gas density is lower. In this thesis, some corrections to an hydrodynamic model of ICF implosions were analyzed with the aim to include "microscopic" effects related to non-infinite collisionality (ion viscosity) and non-thermal particle distributions (non local electron transport) to find out the physical reasons of this mismatch. These theoretical models were compared with a series of experiments in which the initial densities of the target were modified. This analysis has shown that the ion viscosity and the non local electron transport reduced the efficiency of nuclear fusion processes giving numerical results closer to the experimental ones at high initial densities of the target. At low initial densities, however, the agreement remained unsatisfactory with the experimentally observed efficiency being significantly lower than the numerical value. These results show that the viscosity and non local effects influence the ICF processes. The mismatch between experiments and simulations at low initial densities moreover suggests to improve the theoretical study of the effects proposed, because the analysis of the ion mean free path has shown that at low initial densities it becomes larger than the typical spatial scale of the system. The low collisionality at low initial densities shown in this thesis suggests to improve more kinetic treatments of the ICF process because the hydrodynamic model was not adequate anymore in the low collisional regime

Androgen receptor polymorphisms and testicular cancer risk

Testicular cancer (TC) is currently the most common malignant solid tumour in Caucasian males aged 15-39 years. Epidemiological evidence suggests that its onset may be due to an imbalance in the action of steroidal sex hormones and their receptors. A faulty androgen receptor signalling pathway can, in fact, cause various male reproductive disorders. The androgen receptor (AR) gene has two polymorphic segments consisting of CAG and GGC repeats. The length of CAG repeats has been shown to affect the regulation of AR activity. In our study, we used fragment analysis to evaluate the AR gene repeats of 302 TC patients and 322 controls, to establish if there is any association between repeat number and TC. This study of the largest Italian caseload investigated to date highlighted three particularly significant aspects. First, a CAG repeat number of ≥25 may be considered a risk factor for the onset of TC, given its greater frequency in patients in comparison with controls. This difference became significant for the non-seminoma group. Second, men with CAG repeats below 21 or above 24 were found to have a, respectively, 50 and 76% higher risk of TC than those with CAG 21-24, suggesting that these too can be considered a risk factor for TC. Finally, stage II patients were more likely to have a CAG repeat number 24 than stage I patients. © 2014 American Society of Andrology and European Academy of Andrology