scholarly journals Reconceptualising the Role of the Visiting Lecturer: Using Educational Technology to Enable Practicum Placements In The ‘New Normal’

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Sarah Probine ◽  
Jo Perry

The international pandemic and the national lockdown during semester one of 2020 meant the Manukau Institute of Technology Early Childhood teams needed to revisit the existing requirements of their programmes and particularly in terms of practicum. In response, the teams developed ‘virtual’ meetings to replace the usual observation visit by a visiting lecturer. In this revised approach, the students and lecturers engaged in weekly conversations and in these meetings the role of the Visiting Lecturer was significantly changed.  By using communication software (Microsoft Teams with cell phone back up) the student and Visiting Lecturer engaged in critically reflective conversations that mentored the student in thinking about their practice, setting goals to work on and articulating their learning.  By using the software in this way, the Visiting Lecturers changed their role from merely assessor of practice to firstly, mentor and guide.  In the online triadic meetings (also using Microsoft Teams and cell phone back-up) it became clear that the traditional model of the student being told how the assessor felt they had met the practicum criteria was replaced with one where the student was able to articulate for themselves.  At the end of the semester, students and lecturers were invited to give feedback via a survey. The responses focused on the deep learning experienced, ownership of learning, and the confidence the students felt at the on-line triadic. Much more unexpected was the correlation between survey responses and much of the literature. Drawing on these findings, this presentation poses some possibilities for what both the practicum and a reconceptualised relationship between visiting lecturer, associate teacher and students could look like in the ‘new normal’. 

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Jo Perry ◽  
Sarah Probine

The national lockdown during semester one of 2020 meant the Manukau Institute of Technology Early Childhood teams needed to revisit the existing requirements of their programmes  in terms of practicum. In response, the teams developed ‘virtual’ meetings to replace the usual observation visit by a visiting lecturer.  By using communication software (Microsoft Teams with cell phone back up) the student and Visiting Lecturer engaged in weekly critically reflective conversations that mentored the student in thinking about their practice, setting goals to work on and articulating their learning.  By using the software in this way, the Visiting Lecturers changed their role from merely assessor of practice to firstly, mentor and guide.  In the online triadic meetings (also using Microsoft Teams and cell phone back-up) it became clear that the traditional model of the student being told how the assessor felt they had met the practicum criteria was replaced with one where the student was able to articulate for themselves.  At the end of the semester, students and lecturers were invited to give feedback via a survey. The responses focused on the deep learning experienced, ownership of learning, and the confidence the students felt at the on-line triadic. Much more unexpected was the correlation between survey responses and much of the literature. Drawing on these findings, this presentation poses some possibilities for what both the practicum and a reconceptualised relationship between visiting lecturer, associate teacher and students could look like in the ‘new normal’. 


Author(s):  
Nestor J. Zaluzec

The Information SuperHighway, Email, The Internet, FTP, BBS, Modems, : all buzz words which are becoming more and more routine in our daily life. Confusing terminology? Hopefully it won't be in a few minutes, all you need is to have a handle on a few basic concepts and terms and you will be on-line with the rest of the "telecommunication experts". These terms all refer to some type or aspect of tools associated with a range of computer-based communication software and hardware. They are in fact far less complex than the instruments we use on a day to day basis as microscopist's and microanalyst's. The key is for each of us to know what each is and how to make use of the wealth of information which they can make available to us for the asking. Basically all of these items relate to mechanisms and protocols by which we as scientists can easily exchange information rapidly and efficiently to colleagues in the office down the hall, or half-way around the world using computers and various communications media. The purpose of this tutorial/paper is to outline and demonstrate the basic ideas of some of the major information systems available to all of us today. For the sake of simplicity we will break this presentation down into two distinct (but as we shall see later connected) areas: telecommunications over conventional phone lines, and telecommunications by computer networks. Live tutorial/demonstrations of both procedures will be presented in the Computer Workshop/Software Exchange during the course of the meeting.


Author(s):  
Mahesh K. Joshi ◽  
J.R. Klein

New technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, machine intelligence, and the Internet of Things are seeing repetitive tasks move away from humans to machines. Humans cannot become machines, but machines can become more human-like. The traditional model of educating workers for the workforce is fast becoming irrelevant. There is a massive need for the retooling of human workers. Humans need to be trained to remain focused in a society which is constantly getting bombarded with information. The two basic elements of physical and mental capacity are slowly being taken over by machines and artificial intelligence. This changes the fundamental role of the global workforce.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos ◽  
Darlan da Silva Candido ◽  
William Marciel de Souza ◽  
Lewis Buss ◽  
Sabrina L. Li ◽  
...  

AbstractBrazil has one of the fastest-growing COVID-19 epidemics worldwide. Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been adopted at the municipal level with asynchronous actions taken across 5,568 municipalities and the Federal District. This paper systematises the fragmented information on NPIs reporting on a novel dataset with survey responses from 4,027 mayors, covering 72.3% of all municipalities in the country. This dataset responds to the urgency to track and share findings on fragmented policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Quantifying NPIs can help to assess the role of interventions in reducing transmission. We offer spatial and temporal details for a range of measures aimed at implementing social distancing and the dates when these measures were relaxed by local governments.


2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 2447-2467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Bögels ◽  
Herbert Schriefers ◽  
Wietske Vonk ◽  
Dorothee J. Chwilla

The present study addresses the question whether accentuation and prosodic phrasing can have a similar function, namely, to group words in a sentence together. Participants listened to locally ambiguous sentences containing object- and subject-control verbs while ERPs were measured. In Experiment 1, these sentences contained a prosodic break, which can create a certain syntactic grouping of words, or no prosodic break. At the disambiguation, an N400 effect occurred when the disambiguation was in conflict with the syntactic grouping created by the break. We found a similar N400 effect without the break, indicating that the break did not strengthen an already existing preference. This pattern held for both object- and subject-control items. In Experiment 2, the same sentences contained a break and a pitch accent on the noun following the break. We argue that the pitch accent indicates a broad focus covering two words [see Gussenhoven, C. On the limits of focus projection in English. In P. Bosch & R. van der Sandt (Eds.), Focus: Linguistic, cognitive, and computational perspectives. Cambridge: University Press, 1999], thus grouping these words together. For object-control items, this was semantically possible, which led to a “good-enough” interpretation of the sentence. Therefore, both sentences were interpreted equally well and the N400 effect found in Experiment 1 was absent. In contrast, for subject-control items, a corresponding grouping of the words was impossible, both semantically and syntactically, leading to processing difficulty in the form of an N400 effect and a late positivity. In conclusion, accentuation can group words together on the level of information structure, leading to either a semantically “good-enough” interpretation or a processing problem when such a semantic interpretation is not possible.


Animation ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 83-95
Author(s):  
Raz Greenberg

Produced throughout the 1980s using the company’s Adventure Game Interpreter engine, the digital adventure games created by American software publisher Sierra On-Line played an important and largely overlooked role in the development of animation as an integral part of the digital gaming experience. While the little historical and theoretical discussion of the company’s games of the era focuses on their genre, it ignores these games’ contribution to the relationship between the animated avatars and the gamers that control them – a relationship that, as argued in this article, in essence turns gamers into animators. If we consider Chris Pallant’s (2019) argument in ‘Video games and animation’ that animation is essential to the sense of immersion within a digital game, then the great freedom provided to the gamers in animating their avatars within Sierra On-Line’s adventure games paved the way to the same sense of immersion in digital. And, if we refer to Gonzalo Frasca’s (1999) divide of digital games to narrative-led or free-play (ludus versus paidea) in ‘Ludology meets narratology: Similitude and differences between (video) games and narrative’, then the company’s adventure games served as an important early example of balance between the two elements through the gamers’ ability to animate their avatars. Furthermore, Sierra On-Line’s adventure games have tapped into the traditional tension between the animator and the character it animated, as observed by Scott Bukatman in ‘The poetics of Slumberland: Animated spirits and the animated spirit (2012), when he challenged the traditional divide between animators, the characters they animate and the audience. All these contributions, as this articles aims to demonstrate, continue to influence the role of animation in digital games to this very day.


2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 309-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wangzhong Mu ◽  
Pär Göran Jönsson ◽  
Keiji Nakajima

AbstractIntragranular ferrite (IGF), which nucleates from specific inclusion surfaces in low alloy steels, is the desired microstructure to improve mechanical properties of steel such as the toughness. This microstructure is especially important in the coarse grain heat affected zone (CGHAZ) of weldments. The latest review paper focusing on the role of non-metallic inclusions in the IGF formation in steels has been reported by Sarma et al. in 2009 (ISIJ int., 49(2009), 1063–1074). In recent years, large amount of papers have been presented to investigate different issues of this topic. This paper mainly highlights the frontiers of experimental and theoretical investigations on the effects of inclusion characteristics, such as the composition, size distribution and number density, on the IGF formation in low carbon low-alloyed steels, undertaken by the group of Applied Process Metallurgy, KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Related results reported in previous studies are also introduced. Also, plausible future work regarding various items of IGF formation is mentioned in each section. This work aims to give a better control of improving the steel quality during casting and in the heat affected zone (HAZ) of weldment, according to the concept of oxide metallurgy.


Physics Today ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 9-9
Author(s):  
Martin Jeffries ◽  
James Overland ◽  
Don Perovich
Keyword(s):  

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