Using Project Based Learning to Engage Third -Fifth Grade Students in Robotics Education

Includes bibliographical references (pages 36-40)The purpose of this graduate project was to examine the engagement of third through fifth grade students using Lego?? robotics as the catalyst in project based learning. Robotics educations has been on the rise in the last 10 years, but in the elementary schools it has been the driving force for many teachers on how to engage students in todays??? technological advances. Using project based learning and Lego?? robotics creates an engaging environment for students and teachers to cover Common Core States Standards along with the Next Generation Science Standards. This project was created to help guide teachers, administrators and after school counselors with the materials and resources needed in order to start a robotics program at their own location

Multiple Intelligences and the Gifted Identification of African-American Students

There have been three national reports addressing giftedness: Education of the Gifted and Talented: Report to the Congress of the United States by the U.S. Commissioner of Education (1972) AKA the Marland Report; The National Report on Identification: Assessment and Recommendations for Comprehensive Identification of Gifted and Talented Youth (1982) AKA the National Report on Identification; and National Excellence: A Case for Developing America\u27s Talent (1993) AKA National Excellence. All have documented the underrepresentation of African-American students in programs for the gifted and talented and the disproportionate reliance on standardized intelligence and achievenent tests for gifted and talented program selection. Traditionally, African-American students have not performed well on standardized tests and, as a consequence, have not been selected to participate in gifted and talented programs proportionate to their representation in the student population. This exacerbates and perpetuates the underrepresentation of African-American students in gifted and talented programs. Pluralistic assessment (PA), in which criteria in addition to standardized intelligence and achievement tests (portfolios, inventories, product evaluation, norming for subpopulations, case studies, etc.) are used to identify gifted students, has been advocated as a possible supplement to, or alternative to standardized tests. An assessment instrument based on Howard Gardner\u27s multiple intelligences (MI) theory, the Teele Inventory of Multiple Intelligences (TIMI) may assist in meeting PA goals and may be a possible alternative to traditional intelligence and achievement tests for identifying gifted African-American students. Generally, this study addressed the use of standardized tests to identify African-American urban fourth grade students who may possess the potential to participate in gifted and talented programs. Specifically, it sought to determine, through cross-validation of a multiple intelligences instrument, whether the subscales of a MI instrument could identify a statistically significant greater number of potentially gifted African-American urban fourth grade students than the subscales of a general intelligence (g) instrument. The TIMI was the MI instrument used in this study. And, the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test (OLSAT) was the (g) factor instrument used in this study. This study found that there was no statistically significant difference in the ability of the TIMI or OLSAT to identify gifted students in general. However, the TIMI consistently identified more gifted students than the OLSAT. Also, there was a statistically significant difference in the ability of the TIMI\u27s TIMI 3 subscale (intrapersonal intelligence) and the OLSAT to identify gifted African-American students and to identify gifted students as a function of race. Because of the small subject size, caution should be utilized in interpreting these results. There was a statistically significant difference in the ability of the TIMI\u27s TIMI 4 (spatial intelligence) and TIMI 6 (bodily-kinesthetic intelligence) subscales and the OLSAT to identify gifted students as a function of sex

Institutionally Speaking: Speech Departments and the Making of a Philippine Eloquent Modernity

This essay initiates a historiographical account of speech departments in the University of the Philippines (UP) and Silliman University. Founded in 1959 and 1965, respectively, these academic formations are the two existing bastions for the comprehensive and disciplinary study and practice of speech/speech communication in the country and the rest of Asia. This essay explores a) the use of speech as the organizing principle of scholarly inquiry in the Philippine modern university, b) the pedagogies composing Philippine speech curricula, c) the performances enacted by speech programs in UP and Silliman University, d) the speaking subjects that speech departments seek to develop, and, finally, e) the relationship of these institutions to what may be termed as an eloquent modernity. Some pertinent questions concerning the nature and the future of the discipline of speech/speech communication in a postcolonial nation like the Philippines comprise the essay’s conclusion

Melodrama of Migration: Suffering, Performance, and Stardom in Ricardo Lee’s DH: Domestic Helper

This essay revisits DH: Domestic Helper, a 1992 play from the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) that explores how Philippine labor out-migration ensnares female migrant subjects in states of perennial leave-takings and tentative resettlements abroad. The discussion comprehends the suffering that overseas Filipina workers experience, as well as the agency that they demonstrate through performance in everyday life outside their source country. This essay concludes with an inter-subjective analysis of the very star and ultimate persuasion of PETA’s phenomenal theater production, Nora Aunor, the melodramatic mode of theater making, and the topic of labor out-migration. By putting these issues side by side, this essay discursively intertwines stardom, theater, the domestic, and the diasporic