On righteousness and dignity : two challenging issues since early modern times

Concepts such as righteousness, equality, tolerance and freedom are nowadays considered fundamental issues that should prevail in any society. Balance and righteousness thrive however on a very thin layer. We are, in fact, living in an era of duality and antithetical paradigms. This essay approaches two Renaissance authors who dealt with the same matters in their works, at a very different time and through different ways of reflection: Thomas More and Sir Walter Raleigh

A villain and a monster : the literary portrait of Richard III by Thomas More and William Shakespeare

The process of vilification of Richard III started at the end of the fifteenth century, when a well-planned policy of Tudor propaganda was set in motion by Henry VII himself, who commissioned a series of historiographical writings, mainly aiming at the solidification of the newly founded dynasty. One of the strategies, probably the major one, consisted in the definitive annihilation of the last Plantagenet king of England, whose defeat and death on the battlefield should not by any means transform him into the York victimised hero of the Wars of the Roses. Thus, various historiographers delineated Richard of Gloucester as a vile, wicked, monstrous creature. But the hyperbolic process of vilification undoubtedly reached its highest climax with two major early modern authors. The Life written by Thomas More – The History of King Richard the Third (ca. 1514) – and the play written by William Shakespeare – King Richard III (ca. 1591) – may be considered the epitomes of the tradition that has forever shaped the king as a monster. In this text, I focus on the way More and Shakespeare exploit and amplify the vituperative historiographical tradition, though mostly based on rumour, uncertainties and legendary elements. Within this widely accepted tradition, both authors manage to shape a solid portrait of Richard III, an exemplum not to be imitated or followed, but whose performance, built through a set of powerful rhetorical devices, is masterful, both in the Life and in the play

The road to rulership : Henry Tudor, King of England

At the close of the Wars of the Roses, a new dynasty was founded by a man lacking a prince’s education; moreover, his weak claim to the throne of England gave rise to a set of serious problems. These two crucial, interrelated elements are central in Francis Bacon’s biographical account of Henry VII. The literal road leading Richmond from exile to victory in Bosworth Field, in 1485, is eventually transformed into a metaphoric path that prefigures the long, deep process of learning undertaken during his 24-year reign. This fundamental process carried out by the king will be approached mainly through the passages focused on the Lambert Simnell/Perkin Warbeck affairs, the most difficult probelms the monarch had to face in a time and in a kingdom of many uncertainties. The Simnell/Warbeck menaces embodied Henry Tudor’s greatest dilemmas, continually emphasised in Bacon’s work – the essence of legitimacy and the essence of royalty

Beholding a ‘Brave New World’: Sir Walter Raleigh’s The Discovery of Guiana and William Shakespeare’s The Tempest

During the 15th and 16th centuries, the idea of the world was broadened on an unprecendented scale. The Portuguese and the Spaniards dominated a first stage in the maritime expansion and even divided the planet into two halves. Those times were primarily characterized by a need to overcome the fear of the unknown, to explore and cross the oceans, to reach coast after coast and to register in maps and charts the new found lands. In the wake of the first explorers and benefiting from the extraordinary advancements in the art of navigation, the English, the French and the Dutch, particularly motivated by mercantile interests, started dominating a second stage of sea voyages. Beyond circumstances and motivations, both moments involved unparalleled events in the field of mentality and worldview: fragile ships managed to cross the vast oceans and arrive in unknown lands inhabited by unimaginable human races, plants and animals. From then on, an immense variety of works on voyages, discoveries and adventures was produced. After a brief approach to the general context of the time, I explore the broad dichotomy ‘Civilization versus Nature’ in two Renaissance English texts that, in very different ways, tell of sea voyages and behold a ‘Brave New World’: Sir Walter Raleigh’s The Discovery of Guiana (1595) and William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1623).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Metaphors of opulence and power in the life of Thomas Wolsey, the King’s Cardinal

This essay approaches the display of power and rulership both through the art of writing and the art of painting by focusing on George Cavendish's biographical account of Thomas Wolsey

Como avaliar as aprendizagens das práticas musicais em Educação Musical

É do conhecimento geral que muitos professores ensinam os alunos a ouvir, cantar e compor, mas usam testes escritos para avaliar as aprendizagens. Este facto revela que, por um lado, há quem tenha a ideia que os testes escritos estão mesmo a avaliar as práticas musicais e, por outro lado, também há quem considere que é muito difícil e inconsistente avaliar as práticas musicais porque a Música tem um carácter transitório, efémero, imaterial. Além do problema ser interessante, ele é abrangente porque existe tanto entre os professores especialistas de Música como entre os professores generalistas de Educação de Infância e de 1º Ciclo. A experiência levada a cabo nos últimos três anos no Mestrado em Ensino de Educação Musical no Ensino Básico sobre a forma de avaliar as aprendizagens dos alunos em Educação Musical mantém os testes escritos para avaliar os conhecimentos teóricos, mas introduz um instrumento de avaliação das práticas musicais, as grelhas de descritores de desempenho. Estas grelhas, ainda que mantendo princípios orientadores comuns, são sempre feitas à medida para cada situação específica de obra, atividade musical, alunos e são aplicadas não só em observação direta, mas também sobre registos áudio/vídeo. Estes instrumentos são construídos pelos docentes e não em conjunto com os alunos, mas são-lhes apresentados e explicados desde o início de cada unidade didática, usados regulamente para autoavaliação formativa e nas apresentações finais para avaliação sumativa. Desta forma os alunos sabem desde o início onde se espera que cheguem e sabem em cada momento do processo em que ponto se encontram e que problemas/dificuldades musicais devem ser ultrapassados. Em cada atividade comparámos a autoavaliação dos alunos com a avaliação dos professores e verificámos em todas as situações uma elevada correlação positiva (r > 0,9). Teremos ainda que consolidar os dados já obtidos pelo que esperamos o envolvimento de mais professores. A possibilidade de divulgar a solução aqui apresentada, nomeadamente, através de ações de formação contínua, permitirá um evidente aumento da consistência e fiabilidade da avaliação das práticas musicais em Educação Musical.ABSTRACT: Is commun knowledge that many teachers teach students to perform, compose, and appraise, but tend to assess music learning through written tests. This fact shows that some teachers believe that they are really assessing the music making processes, and also that other teachers think it is very difficult to assess musical making because of the immaterial nature of music. It is not only a very interesting problem, but also a generalized one, that affects specialist music teachers and non-specialists like kindergarten and primary school teachers. The experiments conducted during the last three years in the Master of Arts in Teaching Music for General Schools kept the written tests to assess theoretical knowledge, but introduced a new assessment device, rubrics with progression descriptors. These rubrics, although sharing common principles, are tailored for each musical activity, piece of music, and class, and applied both on live and on audio/video recordings. Rubrics are written by teachers, not by students, but are used by the later as a formative self-assessment tool to devise and overcome musical problems. In each activity we compared the assessment by the teachers with students’ self-assessment and obtained a very high positive co-relation. We still need to confirm these results by conducting a new research involving a larger group of teachers. The music making assessment rubrics will be part of the next continuous professional development programme at the higher education institution previously mentioned

música para todos

Fazer MÚSICA caracteriza-nos como espécie, faz parte da nossa essência. Gostamos de a fazer porque ela nos permite partilhar algo com os outros, fortalecendo e estabilizando a nossa personalidade. E todos somos capazes de a fazer. É verdade que quando nos comparamos com os instrumentistas poucos nos consideraremos músicos ou sequer “musicais”, no entanto todos já nos envolvemos em muitas e variadas atividades musicais. Na Escola, o debate sobre o que se deve aprender e a hierarquia dos saberes vem desde Platão, mas hoje sabemos que a MÚSICA dá contributos essenciais e únicos: o seu potencial criativo; é uma forma de comunicação emocional; as suas funções nas comunidades. Assim, o entendimento atual em vários Sistemas Educativos Ocidentais é o de ensinar MÚSICA a todos, de desenvolver as capacidades musicais de todas as crianças, numa perspetiva do desenvolvimento global das capacidades inatas do ser humano. Para isto, quem melhor que o professor da turma para integrar a MÚSICA com as outras áreas do saber

e-learning in the classroom?

As teachers, we are challenged everyday to solve pedagogical problems and we have to fight for our students’ attention in a media rich world. I will talk about how we use ICT in Initial Teacher Training and give you some insight on what we are doing. The most important benefit of using ICT in education is that it makes us reflect on our practice. There is no doubt that our classrooms need to be updated, but we need to be critical about every peace of hardware, software or service that we bring into them. It is not only because our budgets are short, but also because e‐learning is primarily about learning, not technology. Therefore, we need to have the knowledge and skills required to act in different situations, and choose the best tool for the job. Not all subjects are suitable for e‐learning, nor do all students have the skills to organize themselves their own study times. Also not all teachers want to spend time programming or learning about instructional design and metadata. The promised land of easy use of authoring tools (e.g. eXe and Reload) that will lead to all teachers become Learning Objects authors and share these LO in Repositories, all this failed, like previously HyperCard, Toolbook and others. We need to know a little bit of many different technologies so we can mobilize this knowledge when a situation requires it: integrate e‐learning technologies in the classroom, not a flipped classroom, just simple tools. Lecture capture, mobile phones and smartphones, pocket size camcorders, VoIP, VLE, live video broadcast, screen sharing, free services for collaborative work, save, share and sync your files. Do not feel stressed to use everything, every time. Just because we have a whiteboard does not mean we have to make it the centre of the classroom. Start from where you are, with your preferred subject and the tools you master. Them go slowly and try some new tool in a non‐formal situation and with just one or two students. And you don’t need to be alone: subscribe a mailing list and share your thoughts with other teachers in a dedicated forum, even better if both are part of a community of practice, and share resources. We did that for music teachers and it was a success, in two years arriving at 1.000 members. Just do it

Supporting Narratives in News Stories through Visualization

O uso de histórias para transmitir mensagens tem sido uma constante desde os primórdios dos tempos, o que prova a importância do storytelling. Uma técnica particularmente interessante para contar histórias é o uso de narrativas visuais (NV). Utilizando elementos visuais como complemento da narrativa, podemos enriquecer uma história "tradicional" e facilitar a sua leitura e compreensão. Ao longo deste projeto, comprometemo-nos a estudar o campo das narrativas visuais a um nível académico, jornalístico e artístico, bem como a tentar compreender como nos podemos servir de elementos visuais, com particular destaque para o multimédia, para atrair o leitor e manter o interesse do mesmo em histórias que se prolonguem ao longo de vários meses ou anos. Servindo-nos de uma metodologia de investigação mista, após completarmos a investigação bibliográfica, realizamos entrevistas a cinco jornalistas, tendo mais tarde complementado este estudo com um inquérito feito a leitores sobre a temática das NV. De acordo com os entrevistados, o futuro do jornalismo digital prende-se com a utilização do long-form, multimédia e interatividade, lado a lado com narrativas visuais para contar uma história. Contudo, nunca dispensando a utilização do texto, uma vez que é parte essencial das NV. Não obstante, é necessário encontrar opções cativantes que ajudem a combater o cada vez menor tempo de atenção do leitor. Tendo em mente que atenção não pode ser vista como sinónimo de compreensão, é necessário repensar a noção que temos de boas formas de transmitir informação e lembrar que as opções mais simples são geralmente as mais eficazes. A realização de um inquérito a leitores permitiu aprofundar a questão da transmissão de informação auxiliada por elementos visuais. Os resultados mostraram que a timeline permanece como o formato ideal de NV e que as pessoas preferem divisões claras de informação, em lugar de formatos mais compactos, como o wordcloud e fotomosaico. Tornou-se claro que as NV em jornalismo são vistas como uma vantagem pela maioria de estudiosos, leitores e profissionais da área. Com base nas informações recolhidas, criou-se uma primeira versão de um protótipo não funcional para contar uma história ao longo de seis meses, que, mais tarde, foi testado em focus group com cinco estudantes de Mestrado. Ao aplicarmos o conceito da pirâmide deitada de Canavilhas para contar histórias online, oferecemos ao leitor um maior controlo da história e abrimos a possibilidade de leitura da informação a partir de mais do que um eixo, facilitando a captação e manutenção do seu foco. Aplicamos ainda o conceito de curiosity gap, dando ao leitor apenas a informação necessária a uma primeira vista, esperando incitar nele a vontade de explorar mais a fundo o protótipo. Uma segunda versão foi posteriormente criada e testada com leitores por meio de um segundo inquérito, de modo a percebermos quais as limitações que ainda possuía. Os resultados finais demonstraram que, apesar de ainda existir espaço para melhorias, o protótipo desenvolvido não só é um método eficaz de transmissão de informação, como também é preferido pela grande maioria das pessoas inquiridas, relativamente à leitura tradicional de notícias.The human being has been using stories to pass on messages since the dawn of time, which proves the importance of storytelling. A particularly interesting technique for telling stories is the use of visual narratives (VN). By making use of visual elements to complement the narrative, we can enrich a "traditional" story and make it easier to read and comprehend. Throughout this project, we have done our best to study the field of visual narratives on an academic, journalistic and artistic level, as well as trying to understand how we can use visual elements, with particular emphasis on multimedia, to attract the reader and maintain their interest in stories that span over several months or years. Using a mixed method methodology, after completing the bibliographic research, we conducted interviews with five journalists, having later complemented this study with a survey made to readers on the subject of VN. According to the interviewees, the future of digital journalism's storytelling is linked to the use of the long-form, multimedia and interactivity, side by side with visual narratives. However, since text is an essential part of a VN, one must never forget to use it, as a visual narrative cannot exist without it. Nevertheless, it is necessary to find captivating options that help to combat the reader's diminishing attention span. Bearing in mind that attention cannot be seen as synonymous with comprehension, it is necessary to rethink our notion of proper ways to convey information and remember that the simplest options are usually the most effective. A narrative visualization survey done to readers allowed us to deepen the issue of information transmission aided by visual elements. The results showed that the timeline remains as the ideal VN format and that people prefer clear divisions of information over more compact formats, such as the wordcloud and photomosaic. It became clear that VN in journalism are seen as an advantage by most scholars, readers and professionals of the field. Based on the gathered information, a first version of a non-functional prototype was created to tell a story over six months, which was later tested in a focus group with five Master's degree students. By applying Canavilhas' Tumbled Pyramid concept to online storytelling, we offer the reader greater control over the story and open up the possibility of reading information from more than one axis, thus facilitating the capture and maintenance of their focus. We also applied the concept of curiosity gap, providing the reader with nothing but the necessary information at first glance, hoping to incite them to further explore the prototype. A second version was later created and tested with readers through a second survey, in order to understand the limitations it still had. The final results showed that, although there is still room for improvement, the developed prototype is not only an effective method of transmitting information, but it is also preferred by the vast majority of surveyed people over traditional news reading

Correction to: Northerly wind trends along the Portuguese marine coast since 1950

All figure captions are not accurate. Also, there is a repeated error in most figures because the vertical scales incorrectly show Wind Strenght instead of Wind Strength and in Fig. 4 (mid-panel) 2003 instead of 2004.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio