The use of mobile phones by students at school : reasons and consequences

A sociedade contemporânea vivencia a era da conexão, mobilidade e ubiquidade na comunicação humana, desencadeando novas formas de interação e colaboração em redes e ambientes on-line. Neste contexto, há uma disseminação crescente e acelerada do uso de aparelhos móveis, e inevitavelmente esse uso começa a ocorrer com mais frequência na escola. O objetivo desta pesquisa foi compreender os motivos e desdobramentos do uso dos aparelhos celulares pelos estudantes na escola. A metodologia utilizada foi a Teoria Fundamentada (Glaser; Strauss, 1999) e os dados foram obtidos por meio de interações no Twitter, questionário e entrevistas on-line com estudantes que estivessem acessando a internet na escola por meio de um aparelho móvel. Com base nos dados coletados, foram elaboradas quatro categorias explanatórias do uso do celular na escola por estudantes: regras, uso didático, motivação e consequências. A partir da análise dos dados, nota-se que, em geral, as escolas tendem a proibir o uso, contudo, os estudantes costumam transgredir, utilizando seus celulares em virtude do tempo livre na escola ou do tédio nas aulas. Além disso, relata-se o uso com a finalidade de acesso às redes sociais, de distração e de pesquisa de conteúdo relacionado às disciplinas. Neste cenário, indica-se que a escola compreenda as questões sociais e culturais relativas à cibercultura dos jovens e perceba o fenômeno como uma oportunidade de aproximação e aprendizagem mútua.Contemporary society experiences the era of connection, mobility and ubiquity in human communication, unleashing new forms of interaction and collaboration in networks and online environments. In this context, there is a growing and rapid expansion of the use of mobile devices, which inevitably begins to occur more frequently in schools. The aim of this research was to understand the reasons and consequences of the use of cell phones by students in school. The methodology adopted was the Grounded Theory (Glaser; Strauss, 1999) and data were obtained through interactions on Twitter, online questionnaires and interviews with students who were using a mobile device at school to access the internet. Based on the collected data, four explanatory categories related to the use of cell phones by students at school were created: rules, didactic use, motivation, and consequences. Through the process of data analysis, it is noted that, in general, schools tend to prohibit cell phones' use, however; students often transgress this prohibition and utilize their phones due to having free time at school or to being bored in class. In addition, the need to access social networks for entertainment and to search for something related to the subjects is reported. In this scenario, it is pointed out that schools should try to comprehend the social and cultural issues related to the cyberculture and the youth, as well as realize the phenomenon as an opportunity of approaching students and of mutual learning

Pulse propagation in discrete systems of coupled excitable cells

Propagation of pulses in myelinated fibers may be described by appropriate solutions of spatially discrete FitzHugh-Nagumo systems. In these systems, propagation failure may occur if either the coupling between nodes is not strong enough or the recovery is too fast. We give an asymptotic construction of pulses for spatially discrete FitzHugh-Nagumo systems which agrees well with numerical simulations and discuss evolution of initial data into pulses and pulse generation at a boundary. Formulas for the speed and length of pulses are also obtained.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures, to appear in SIAM J. Appl. Mat