Using Participatory Media and Public Voice to Encourage Civic Engagement

Part of the Volume on Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth. Teaching young people how to use digital media to convey their public voices could connect youthful interest in identity exploration and social interaction with direct experiences of civic engagement. Learning to use blogs ("web logs," web pages that are regularly updated with links and opinion), wikis (web pages that non-programmers can edit easily), podcasts (digital radio productions distributed through the Internet), and digital video as media of self-expression, with an emphasis on "public voice," should be considered a pillar -- not just a component -- of twenty-first-century civic curriculum. Participatory media that enable young people to create as well as consume media are popular among high school and college students. Introducing the use of these media in the context of the public sphere is an appropriate intervention for educators because the rhetoric of democratic participation is not necessarily learnable by self-guided point-and-click experimentation. The participatory characteristics of online digital media are described, examples briefly cited, the connection between individual expression and public opinion discussed, and specific exercises for developing a public voice through blogs, wikis, and podcasts are suggested. A companion wiki provides an open-ended collection of resources for educators: https://www.socialtext.net/medialiteracy

Mass Torts—Maturation of Law and Practice

Mass tort litigation has been with us for about fifty years. This is dating the start from the MER/29 litigation in 1964. This field of law and practice has grown year after year, and it shows no sign of abating. At the same time, it can be said that this area of law and procedure has reached a mature stage; the practice is fairly standardized and earlier experiments have either become the model or have been abandoned. The term “mass tort litigation” (MTL), as used in this article, confines itself to product liability personal injury cases involving similar injuries from exposure to the same product and resulting in multiple claimants. “Multiple” may be as small as a hundred, but may also amount to 50,000, 100,000, or more. Thus, excluded from direct examination in this paper are consumer economic suits, often commenced in a class action format, and toxic tort lawsuits dealing with localized pollution. Mass tort litigation is as much a procedural topic as a substantive one. While there are some law issues specific to mass tort litigation, the greater area of development has been in the adaptation or invention of procedural mechanisms to the management of the cases in their organization, their development, and their disposition. The three phases just listed—organization, development, and disposition–form the three main sections of this article

The use value of real-world projects: Children and community-based experts connecting through school work

In this paper we discuss how the products of student work during long-term, interdisciplinary curricular units at King Middle School, a grades 6-8 public school in Portland, Maine, through their aesthetic qualities, transformed people’s understanding of what children were capable of. We argue that, to effectively understand student work of this type, ‘cognitive’ and ‘practical’ criteria for evaluation – i.e., as a supposed indicator of what students need to know and be able to do – fail to convey the actual, substantive value of the work, rendering it relatively static and meaningless like much conventional schoolwork. Instead, we argue that aesthetic criteria can help to adequately understand and assess community-based, project work. Moreover, focusing only on student learning throughout the production process occludes the importance of collaboration, communication, and dialogue with an audience: in this case, community experts whose goals and interests must be accommodated as students do their work. The aim of the article is twofold: 1) to present a coherent picture of student project work that adequately captures its complexity both in the process of its production, and in its use-value upon completion; and 2) to argue for the importance of aesthetic criteria in planning and assessing student projects

Influence of Maternal Care on Behavioural Development of Domestic Dogs (Canis Familiaris) Living in a Home Environment

Maternal care has been shown to affect the development of the brain, behaviour, social skills and emotional systems of the young of many mammalian species including dogs. The aim of the present study was to determine the effects of maternal care on the behavioural responses of family dog puppies towards environmental and social stimuli. In order to do this, maternal care (licking puppy’s ano-genital area, licking the puppy, nursing and mother-puppy contact) during the first three weeks after birth was assessed in 12 litters of domestic dog puppies reared in home environments (total = 72 puppies). The behavioural responses of puppies were assessed in an arena and an isolation test, which were performed when the puppies were two-month old. Data were analysed using principal components analysis and projection to latent structures regression. A systematic relationship was found between maternal care and behaviour in both tests. In the arena test, maternal care was found to be positively associated with approach to the stranger, attention oriented to the stranger, time spent near the enclosure, yawning, whining and yelping (R2Y = 0.613, p = 8.2 × 10−9). Amount of maternal care was negatively associated with the number of squares crossed and the time spent individually playing with the rope. In the isolation test, the amount of maternal care was positively associated with standing posture, paw lifting, and howling, and it was negatively associated with yawning, lying down and nose licking (R2Y = 0.507, p = 0.000626). These results suggest that the amount of maternal care received during early life influences the pattern of behavioural responses and coping strategies of puppies at two-months of age. On the basis of these findings it could be speculated that early maternal care contributes to adaption to the environment in which family puppies are developing, with particular regard to social relationships with people

Crystal structure of bis-[4-(1H-pyrrol-1-yl)phen-yl] ferrocene-1,1'-di-carboxyl-ate: a potential chemotherapeutic drug.

The title iron(II) complex, [Fe(C16H12NO2)2], crystallizes in the ortho-rhom-bic space group Pbca with the Fe(2+) cation positioned on an inversion center. The cyclo-penta-dienyl (Cp) rings adopt an anti conformation in contrast with other substituted ferrocenes in which the Cp rings appear in a nearly eclipsed conformation. The Cp and the aromatic rings are positioned out of the plane, with a twist angle of 70.20 (12)°, and the C(Cp)-C(CO) bond length is shorter than a typical C-C single bond, which suggests a partial double-bond character and delocalization with the Cp π system. The structure of the complex is compared to other functionalized ferrocenes synthesized in our laboratory

Digging Deep: The Clean Water Act\u27s Applicability to Groundwater Discharges

In its 2018 decision, Upstate Forever v. Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, L.P., the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found liability under the Clear Water Act (“CWA”) for point source pollutant discharges that travel through hydrologically connected groundwater on their way to a navigable waterway. This decision aligned the court with precedent from the United States Courts of Appeals for the Second and Ninth Circuits, but later decisions from the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit resulted in a clear circuit split on the issue of CWA applicability to discharges that travel through groundwater. The Fourth Circuit also split from several other circuits in its subsidiary finding that liability could be found where there is a continued migration of pollution despite the point source itself ceasing to pollute. This Comment argues that the Fourth Circuit’s decision adhered to the CWA’s intentionally broad purpose and will improve the ability of citizen groups and government entities to hold polluters accountable

Unalienated Recognition as a Feature of Democratic Schooling

The current era of standards and accountability in U.S. public schooling narrows recognition and assessment to an almost exclusive focus on the production of test scores as legitimate markers of student achievement. This climate prevents rather than encourages democratic forms of exchange within and across social worlds. Via a case study of one student’s experience in a project on the civil rights movement, I present the concept of unalienated recognition to describe a form of democratic exchange that centers on what students produce through community-based projects

Using academic notebooks to support achievement and promote positive environments in differentiated classrooms

Authors Examine How the Use of Academic Notebooks Impacts Collaborative Learning Experiences of Young Adolescent