Oral Traditions Under Threat: The Australian Aboriginal Experience

Many writers in Australia have written about the economic and social effects of the written tradition upon the various oral traditions of Australia, but few have addressed the inappropriateness of replacing the oral tradition with a written one. It is wrong to assume that the written word is a means of cultural preservation. What, in fact, is occurring is that the oral tradition in Australia is being supplanted by the written tradition

Meeting the Earthworks Builders: A flash-based video game

We propose to create a video game about Earthwork Builder Culture for school-age children in grades 4 through 8. In the past, the Earthwork Builder Culture has been poorly addressed in student learning materials. Current understanding and portrayal of American Indians remains largely stereotypical. This game will be developed using content generated by scientists, academics, educators, and American Indians. This approach will ensure that the native voice will be incorporated into the subject content areas, interface, game mechanics and artwork. Educational video games are a multimodal form of student engagement using visual images, animation, sound, text, and navigation/ interface design elements that engage students and allow them to make decisions and choices, developing problem solving skills and systems thinking. This medium will allow us to communicate profound aspects of American Indian thought through player interaction and the juxtaposition of graphical information

Paulo Freire: Community Based Arts Education

This paper is about Paulo Freire and his influence on the perspective and application of literacy programming and interdisciplinary education through the arts. Portraiture, as used in this paper, is a collection of stories that illuminate historical, social, and cultural influences that connect Freire to a community and to the world. Freire’s pedagogical theory requires educators and students to examine self, culture, and community. It also addresses issues of power, voice, conflict, class, gender, and race. Freire’s philosophy and application illustrates the value he placed on education through life experiences/knowledge, the arts, and cultures of the people. In this paper, I present excerpts from Freire’s 1996 conference presentation at Diaderma interviews with Freire, Francisco Brennand, a Brazil artist and co-worker of Freire, and Ana Mae Barbosa, past president of International Society of Education through Art, a professor at The University of São Paulo, and a student of Freire

A Mountain Cultural Curriculum: Telling Our Story

Jim Wayne Miller, professor of English at Western Kentucky University, declared that school children in West Virginia have more exposure to other cultures than they do to their own. His concern was that, “Lack of knowledge about the area’s history helps perpetuate negative stereotypes about the region’s mountain people” (Associated Press, 1994). If the Mountain Culture, to which many of the students belong, is not reflected in the curriculum, their identity, voice, heritage, history, and arts are censored and the Mountain Cultural youth are rendered invisible in their own state. Results from a survey of three elementary schools located in three counties in West Virginia served as the impetus to develop and implement curricular changes to include Mountain Culture. In this paper, I describe a case study of one elementary school’s use of social reconstruction pedagogy. The project, “Telling Our Story,” was implemented in 1995 and 1996 at a rural school in a small West Virginia strip mining community. My husband, David, and I served as Mountain Cultural artists in residence. My role in this project was a participant-observer. My husband and I are from the Mountain Culture and learned our art forms from our elders in the home and/ or community. The project utilized issues of the community, Mountain Cultural arts, and labor history

Games, Pedagogy and Art Education

In 1848, under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, Squier and Davis documented what is now referred to as the Newark Earthworks, Ohio (USA). Built over two thousand years ago by indigenous peoples, understanding the earthworks has been ongoing. The Octagon Earthwork in Newark, Ohio was named one of the seventy wonders of the ancient world (Scarre, 1999), and yet this American Indian spiritual space is occupied by a private country club whose golf course winds around the mound. This article provides an introduction to earthworks, the approach to designing interactive curricula, including games and a pedagogy of educational games, which can virtually bring an important site such as the Octagon Earthwork into the classroom

The Relationship Between State Fiscal Effort and State Graduation Rates: A Longitudinal Study

In recent decades, the United States has been criticized for failing to produce citizens who can compete in a global society. Legislation, such as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, has been implemented with the intention of improving the U.S. education system. Under the guidelines of NCLB, states are tasked with meeting Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) objectives in order to receive federal monies. In addition to testing requirements, one AYP indicator used to measure academic proficiency for high school students is graduation rates. The fiscal and societal impact of students not graduating from high school can be seen when comparing unemployment rates, annual income, and tax contributions to those of graduates. With budget shortfalls at an all-time high, it is imperative that educational leaders and policymakers make well informed decisions about how to invest fiscal resources in order to yield the best results. The current study utilizes a production function model to examine the relationship between state fiscal effort and graduation rates over time. The use of fiscal effort provides a unique perspective by identifying how high a priority education is for states based on their wealth, not simply as a function of per pupil expenditures. A 2 (fiscal effort categories) x 8 (years) repeated measures analysis of variance was used to determine the relationship between sustained increases and decreases in fiscal effort over time on graduation rates for the years post-NCLB (2002 to 2009). The categories of states were determined using a linear regression analysis to identify the 10 states with the most sustained increasing fiscal effort and the 10 states with the most sustained decreasing fiscal effort. The results of this study did not support the interaction effect of fiscal effort categories and time on graduation rates, nor did it support the main effect of fiscal effort categories on graduation rates. The major findings from this study did show a statistically significant relationship between time and graduation rates for both increasing and decreasing fiscal effort categories. This finding suggests NCLB legislation has had a significant impact on graduation rates. Furthermore, these results refute previous research which reports high-stakes testing, commonly associated with NCLB legislation, negatively impacts graduation rates

Experiencing ritual: Shamanic elements in Minoan religion

Selected papers and discussions from the Tenth Anniversary Symposion of the Norwegian Institute at Athens, 12-16 May 199

Scanning and Transmission Electron Microscopy of Bacterial Attachment to Mucosal Surfaces with Particular Reference to the Human Fallopian Tube

Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Chlamydia trachomatis are the common bacteria isolated from bacterial cervicitis and are the leading etiological agents for pelvic inflammatory disease. Neisseria gonorrhoeae cause infection of the mucosa of fallopian tubes in organ culture by (a) attaching to microvilli of nonciliated cells, (b) phagocytosis by these cells, (c) transport across and exocytosis from the epithelial cells. In contrast the Chlamydia attach to the epithelial surface without apparent ligand binding and are taken into the cytoplasm of the epithelial cell. Exocytosis of Chlamydia is into the tubal lumen and not into the subepithelial spaces. The ciliated epithelial cells of the fallopian tube are damaged by a gonococcal toxin but chlamydia do not exhibit such activity. These observations suggest that the mechanism of attachment to and invasion of the mucosal epithelium by gonococci and chlamydia are quite different and their potential for disease production occurs by different methods

Source attribution of ozone in Southeast Texas before and after the Deepwater Horizon accident using satellite, sonde, surface monitor, and air mass trajectory data

Since the summer of 2004, over 300 ozonesondes have been launched from Rice University (29.7 N, 95.4 W) or the University of Houston (29.7 N, 95.3 W), each \u3c 5 km from downtown Houston. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality maintains a large database of hourly surface ozone observations in Southeast Texas. In this study, we identify the contributions to surface ozone pollution levels from natural and anthropogenic sources, both local and remote in nature. This source identification is performed two ways: 1) through an analysis of sonde data, including ozone concentrations, wind speed and direction, and relative humidity data, and 2) through an analysis that combines trajectory calculations with surface monitor data. We also examine regional changes in Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) measurements of formaldehyde and ozone from 2004 – 2010. In particular, we compare the 2010 sonde, surface monitor, and satellite data after the Deepwater Horizon accident with data from previous years to determine the impact, if any, of the large source of hydrocarbons in the Gulf of Mexico on air quality in Southeast Texas