From Play To Literacy: Implications For The Classroom

There are many perspectives on the connections between play and literacy. Writers and speakers concerned with this topic include professional educators in the area of literacy development, early childhood education specialists, and child development experts. My own interest evolved initially from my years as a first and second grade public school teacher. Later, as director of the Sarah Lawrence Early Childhood Center I wrote a book for parents called What You Need To Know When Your Child Is Learning To Read (1999), a book that focuses on variations in timing and domain among children as they seek different entry points into literacy: I wanted to emphasize the fact that parents and other good observers of young children can use the individual differences demonstrated by emergent readers and writers to facilitate literacy development. Most recently, my colleagues at the Sarah Lawrence Child Development Institute and I undertook the co-production of a public television documentary called When A Child Pretends (1999). The filming took place at our Early Childhood Center, and at Central Park East I Elementary School in East Harlem. All of these experiences have led me to consider the framework of this paper. To clarify, I define early childhood as spanning birth to age eight, and my definition of play extends past its pure form as exemplified by imaginative play to include active, child-initiated and adult-facilitated experiences characterized by playfulness and the disposition to investigate. I believe that there are five distinct literacy goals that can be reached by supporting children’s natural inclination towards playful endeavors. To illustrate how these goals may be achieved, I have identified five aspects of early childhood classrooms which value play and playful attitudes and are particularly relevant to fostering children’s literacy

PRECEPT:a framework for ethical digital forensics investigations

Purpose: Cyber-enabled crimes are on the increase, and law enforcement has had to expand many of their detecting activities into the digital domain. As such, the field of digital forensics has become far more sophisticated over the years and is now able to uncover even more evidence that can be used to support prosecution of cyber criminals in a court of law. Governments, too, have embraced the ability to track suspicious individuals in the online world. Forensics investigators are driven to gather data exhaustively, being under pressure to provide law enforcement with sufficient evidence to secure a conviction. Yet, there are concerns about the ethics and justice of untrammeled investigations on a number of levels. On an organizational level, unconstrained investigations could interfere with, and damage, the organization’s right to control the disclosure of their intellectual capital. On an individual level, those being investigated could easily have their legal privacy rights violated by forensics investigations. On a societal level, there might be a sense of injustice at the perceived inequality of current practice in this domain. This paper argues the need for a practical, ethically-grounded approach to digital forensic investigations, one that acknowledges and respects the privacy rights of individuals and the intellectual capital disclosure rights of organisations, as well as acknowledging the needs of law enforcement. We derive a set of ethical guidelines, then map these onto a forensics investigation framework. We subjected the framework to expert review in two stages, refining the framework after each stage. We conclude by proposing the refined ethically-grounded digital forensics investigation framework. Our treatise is primarily UK based, but the concepts presented here have international relevance and applicability.Design methodology: In this paper, the lens of justice theory is used to explore the tension that exists between the needs of digital forensic investigations into cybercrimes on the one hand, and, on the other, individuals’ rights to privacy and organizations’ rights to control intellectual capital disclosure.Findings: The investigation revealed a potential inequality between the practices of digital forensics investigators and the rights of other stakeholders. That being so, the need for a more ethically-informed approach to digital forensics investigations, as a remedy, is highlighted, and a framework proposed to provide this.Practical Implications: Our proposed ethically-informed framework for guiding digital forensics investigations suggest a way of re-establishing the equality of the stakeholders in this arena, and ensuring that the potential for a sense of injustice is reduced.Originality/value: Justice theory is used to highlight the difficulties in squaring the circle between the rights and expectations of all stakeholders in the digital forensics arena. The outcome is the forensics investigation guideline, PRECEpt: Privacy-Respecting EthiCal framEwork, which provides the basis for a re-aligning of the balance between the requirements and expectations of digital forensic investigators on the one hand, and individual and organizational expectations and rights, on the other

The Digital Network of Networks: Regulatory Risk and Policy Challenges of Vaccine Passports

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.The extensive disruption to and digital transformation of travel administration across borders largely due to COVID-19 mean that digital vaccine passports are being developed to resume international travel and kick-start the global economy. Currently, a wide range of actors are using a variety of different approaches and technologies to develop such a system. This paper considers the techno-ethical issues raised by the digital nature of vaccine passports and the application of leading-edge technologies such as blockchain in developing and deploying them. We briefly analyse four of the most advanced systems – IBM’s Digital Health Passport “Common Pass,” the International Air Transport Association’s Travel Pass, the Linux Foundation Public Health’s COVID-19 Credentials Initiative and the Vaccination Credential Initiative (Microsoft and Oracle) – and then consider the approach being taken for the EU Digital COVID Certificate. Each of these raises a range of issues, particularly relating to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the need for standards and due diligence in the application of innovative technologies (eg blockchain) that will directly challenge policymakers when attempting to regulate within the network of networks

Inovação responsável através de fronteiras: tensões, paradoxos e possibilidades

In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the UK met at the University of Campinas to participate in a workshop on ‘Responsible Innovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop

The limits of award incentives : the (non-)relationship between awards for quality and organisational performance

This paper examines whether there is a relationship between gaining an award for quality ( e. g. Beacon Council Scheme, Baldrige, EFQM) and high organisational performance. It considers whether gaining an award is encouraging excellence or if the self-assessment process is a more important driver towards organisational high performance. Further, it examines the proposition that awards may be limited to those organisations that are already high performers or those organisations that operate according to the criteria set by award-giving bodies ( Taylor & Parkinson 1998; Train & Williams, 2000; Eskildsen et al., 2001). This paper argues that gaining an award for quality indicates the ability of some organisations to fulfil the criteria set by the awards studied. As such, awards should not be seen as a panacea for organisational excellence

The Dark Side of Interpolated Testing: Frequent Switching Between Retrieval and Encoding Impairs New Learning

Practicing retrieval can improve the updating or modification of existing knowledge. When students need to update their existing knowledge, performing retrieval practice on the first set of materials often strengthens learning of the next set. However, Davis and Chan (2015)reported that interpolated testing can sometimes impair new learning. Here, we examined whether frequently switching between retrieval of previously learned material and encoding of new material can disrupt learning of the new material. In the current experiment, participants either switched between restudying originally learned items and new learning or between retrieving originally learned items and new learning, and we varied the frequency with which task switching occurred. We found that interpolating retrieval, but not restudy, with new learning impaired new learning. These results are consistent with the idea that retrieval practice and encoding rely on different cognitive processes, and intermixing them can exert a cost.This is an accepted manuscript of an article published as Davis, Sara D., Jason CK Chan, and Miko M. Wilford. "The Dark Side of Interpolated Testing: Frequent Switching Between Retrieval and Encoding Impairs New Learning." Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 6, no. 4 (2017): 434-441. doi: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.07.002. Posted with permission.</p