Cosmopolitan speakers and their cultural cartographies

Language learners' increased mobility and the ubiquity of virtual intercultural encounters has challenged traditional ideas of ‘cultures’. Moreover, representations of cultures as consumable life-choices has meant that learners are no longer locked into standard and static cultural identities. Language learners are better defined as cosmopolitan individuals with subjective and complex socio-political and historical identities. Such models push the boundaries of current concepts in language pedagogy to new understandings of who the language learner is and a refashioning of the cultural maps they inhabit. This article presents a model for cultural understanding that draws on the theoretical framework of Beck's Cosmopolitan Vision and its related concepts of ‘Banal Cosmopolitanism’ and ‘Cosmopolitan Empathy’. Narrative accounts are used to illustrate the experience of a group of students of Arabic and Serbian/Croatian and their use of the cultural resources at their disposal to construct their own subjective cosmopolitan life-worlds. Through the analysis of learners' everyday cultural practices inside and outside the educational environment, the scope of the intercultural experience is revisited and a new paradigm for the language learner is presented. The Cosmopolitan Speaker (CS) described in this article is a subject who adopts a flâneur-like disposition to reflect on and scrutinise the target culture. Armed with this highly personal interpretation of reality, CSs will be able to take part in their own cultural trajectories and imagine and ‘figure’ their own cartography of the world

Trayectorias: a new model for online task-based learning

This paper discusses a framework for designing online tasks that capitalizes on the possibilities that the Internet and the Web offer for language learning. To present such a framework, we draw from constructivist theories (Brooks and Brooks, 1993) and their application to educational technology (Newby, Stepich, Lehman and Russell, 1996; Jonassen, Mayes and McAleese, 1993); second language learning and learning autonomy (Benson and Voller, 1997); and distance education (Race, 1989; White, 1999). On the one hand our model balances the requirements of the need for control and learning autonomy by the independent language learner; and on the other, the possibilities that online task-based learning offer for new reading processes by taking into account new literacy models (Schetzer and Warschauer, 2000), and the effect that the new media have on students’ knowledge construction and understanding of texts. We explain how this model works in the design of reading tasks within the specific distance learning context of the Open University, UK. Trayectorias is a tool that consists of an open problem-solving Web-quest and provides students with ‘scaffolding’ that guides their navigation around the Web whilst modelling learning approaches and new learning paradigms triggered by the medium. We then discuss a small-scale trial with a cohort of students (n = 23). This trial had a double purpose: (a) to evaluate to what extent the writing task fulfilled the investigators’ intentions; and (b) to obtain some information about the students’ perceptions of the task

Adapting robot behavior to user's capabilities: a dance instruction study.

The ALIZ-E1 projects goal is to design a robot companion able to maintain affective interactions with young users over a period of time. One of these interactions consists in teaching a dance to hospitalized children according to their capabilities. We propose a methodology for adapting both, the movements used in the dance based on the users cognitive and physical capabilities through a set of metrics, and the robots interaction based on the users personality traits

Optimum estimate of delays and dispersive effects in low-frequency interferometric observations

Modern radio interferometers sensitive to low frequencies will make use of wide-band detectors. For such wide bandwidths, dispersive atmospheric effects introduce variations in the fringe delay which change through the band of the receivers. These undesired dispersive effects must be estimated and calibrated with the highest precision. We studied the achievable precision in the estimate of the ionospheric dispersion and the dynamic range of the correlated fringes for different distributions of sub-bands in low-frequency and wide-band interferometric observations. Our study is focused on the case of sub-bands with a bandwidth much narrower than that of the total covered spectrum (case of LOFAR). We computed the uncertainty of the ionospheric delay, the delay ambiguity, and the dynamic range of the fringes using four different kinds of sub-band distributions: constant spacing between sub-bands, random spacings, spacings based on a power-law distribution, and spacings based on Golomb rulers (sets of integers whose sets of differences have non-repeated elements). For a large number of sub-bands ($> 20$, depending on the delay window) spacings based on Golomb rulers give the most precise estimates of dispersive effects and the highest fringe dynamic ranges. Spacings based on the power-law distribution give similar results, although better than those with the Golomb rulers for smaller number of sub-bands. Random distributions result in large fringe dynamic ranges, but the estimate of dispersive effects is worse. A constant spacing of sub-bands results in very bad fringe dynamic ranges, but good estimates of ionospheric dispersion. Combining all the results, the power-law distribution gives the best compromise between homogeneity in the bandwidth sampling, precision in the estimate of ionospheric effects, dynamic range of the correlated fringes, and group-delay ambiguity.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in A&

Influencia de la autoestima en la mejora de la resistencia en adolescentes

El objetivo de este estudio fue establecer la posible influencia que el autoconcepto ejerce en adolescentes de 2º de E.S.O. para progresar en una capacidad física como es la resistencia, y en concreto contemplando cuatro tipos diferentes de autoconcepto: académico, social, emocional y familiar. Se valoró en cada sujeto dichos ítems a través del AFA Autoconcepto y una prueba de 1000 metros lisos. Se tuvo en cuenta la variable sexo. El 80% de los alumnos con un coeficiente de autoconcepto emocional bajo (percentil 40 y menores) mejoraron sus marcas , por un 60% de los alumnos con un autoconcepto considerado medio o alto (percentil 50 y superiores). Este progreso puede deberse a que los alumnos con un autoconcepto emocional bajo tuvieron unos registros iniciales peores respecto al otro grupo. Los sujetos que mejoraron en sus pruebas de resistencia tienen un promedio mayor de autoconcepto académico, pero estas diferencias no son significativas, por lo que no se puede hablar de correlación directa

Learning strategies with video games from the Neuroeducation

[Resumen] La neurociencia está colaborando de modo eficaz a descubrir las claves del aprendizaje a través del conocimiento de las funciones del cerebro determinando qué partes del mismo hay que estimular para la consecución de qué aprendizajes se pretenda conseguir. Nuestro ensayo pretende aproximarse a determinar las funciones que los videojuegos pueden aportar para conseguir aprendizajes en función de los estímulos que éstos sean capaces de desarrollar en el cerebro. En este sentido intentaremos relacionar las aportaciones de la taxonomía de Bloom a la práctica de videojugar con las características del cerebro que nos descubre la Neurociencia y la Neuroeducación.[Abstract] Neuroscience is working effectively to discover the keys to learning through knowledge of brain functions determining which parts of it should be encouraged to achieve what it is intended to achieve learning mode. Our test approach aims to determine the functions that video games can provide for learning based on stimuli that they are able to develop in the brain. In this sense we will try to relate the contributions of Bloom's taxonomy videojugar to practice with the characteristics of the brain that reveals Neuroscience and Neuroeducation

Absolute kinematics of radio source components in the complete S5 polar cap sample. III. First wide-field high-precision astrometry at 15.4 GHz

We report on the first wide-field, high-precision astrometric analysis of the 13 extragalactic radio sources of the complete S5 polar cap sample at 15.4 GHz. We describe new algorithms developed to enable the use of differenced phase delays in wide-field astrometric observations and discuss the impact of using differenced phase delays on the precision of the wide-field astrometric analysis. From this global fit, we obtained estimates of the relative source positions with precisions ranging from 14 to 200 $\mu$as at 15.4 GHz, depending on the angular separation of the sources (from $\sim$1.6 to $\sim$20.8 degrees). These precisions are $\sim$10 times higher than the achievable precisions using the phase-reference mapping technique.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

N. ABERCROMBIE: Clase, estructura y conocimiento, Ediciones Península, Barcelona 1982

Obra ressenyada: N. ABERCROMBIE: Clase, estructura y conocimiento. Barcelona: Ediciones Península, 1982