The Postmodern Space of Operator's Manuals

Most operator's manuals are examples of failed rhetoric: discourse that fails to inform, to persuade, or even to be read. By moving from a tacit reliance on a modernist model of communication that emphasizes the transfer of information to a postmodem model that emphasizes the communication of understanding, and by applying two principles of negotiating understanding—encouraging users to denaturalize their common sense and encouraging users to take their share of responsibility for the safe and effective use of technologies—technical writers can construct manuals that are more likely to succeed rhetorically and legally.     

英国家长参与特殊儿童教育的评介

家长参与特殊儿童教育模式的不同,其影响也不相同。传统模式中,家长往往不能发挥其应有的作用;心理学模式从信息交流的角度强调家长的参与;消费者模式引进市场经济的概念,强调家长的决定作用。家长与教师的有效协商,无疑更有利于问题的解决。无论何种模式,目的都是为了使家长与学校相互配合,共同搞好特殊儿童的教育,促进其发展     

关于面子和关联理论的探讨

单独用社会心理学上最新发展的面子模式或关联理论很难解释交际现象,因为它们各自有自己的局限性。面子更多地强调交际的社会文化层面而忽视了心理层面;而关联理论过多地强调了认知层面而忽视了社会文化层面。但两者具有互补性,两者有机的结合起来能更有效的解释交际现象。     

Designing minimal computer manuals from scratch

We designed from scratch a minimal manual of the kind proposed by Carroll (1990) for Unix e-mail. The design process involved acquiring from a set of experts information about e-mail use that would be helpful to novices, and acquiring from novices information that guided subsequent versions of the manual. The seventh version of the minimal manual was tested against a commercial manual, in a comparative performance experiment, with 30 naive subjects. It had approximately 13% of the pages of the commercial manual; it resulted in 30% faster learning and more effective use of the e-mail system overall, and significantly better performance on individual subtasks; including the recovery from errors. Significantly more users were satisfied with it than with the conventional manual. Carroll's general principles of manual design for minimal manuals were found to be a good basis for design, and we suggest these guidelines are suitable for the design of such manuals from scratch.     

网络传输的方向是群对群传输研究

网络传输可以分为四种形态：“一对一”,“多对一”,“一对多”和“多对多”。“一对一”是问题分解的终极,而“多对多”则是效率所追求的终极。由四种形态之间转变展开讨论,为了提高效率,网络传输应该转向“多对多”。群对群是“多对多”的另一种传输方式,或者说,是强调分群的“多对多”传输。     

Developing the Breadth-First Curriculum: Results of a Three-Year Experiment

This article summarizes the results of designing, class-testing, and developing teaching materials (texts, laboratory manuals, and software) for a novel introductory curriculum in computer science known as the “breadth-first curriculum.” This curriculum covers the first four one-semester courses in an undergraduate computer science major, and has been class-tested in several colleges of science, engineering, and liberal arts. It differs fundamentally from the traditional model because it emphasizes breadth of discipline coverage, regular structured laboratory experiences, incorporation of theory, and inclusion of the social context as essential parts of each course.     

Sports video summarization and adaptation for application in mobile communication

Sports video appeals to large audiences due to its high commercial potentials. Automatically extracting useful semantic information and generating highlight summary from sports video to facilitate users‘ accessing requirements is an important problem, especially in the forthcoming broadband mobile communication and the need for users to access their multimedia information of interest from anywhere at anytime with their most convenient digital equipments. In this paper, a system to generate highlight summaries oriented for mobile applications is introduced, which includes highlight extraction and video adaptation. In this system, several highlight extraction techniques are provided for field sports video and racket sports video by using multi-modal information. To enhance users‘ viewing experience and save bandwidth, 3D animation from highlight segment is also generated. As an important procedure to make video analysis results universally applicable, video transcoding techniques are applied to adapt the video for mobile communication environment and user preference. Experimental results are encouraging and show the advantage and feasibility of the system for multimedia content personalization, enhancement and adaptation to meet different user preference and network/device requirements.     

Towards automated software model checking using graph transformation systems and Bogor

Graph transformation systems have become a general formal modeling language to describe many models in software development process. Behavioral modeling of dynamic systems and model-to-model transformations are only a few examples in which graphs have been used to software development. But even the perfect graph transformation system must be equipped with automated analysis capabilities to let users understand whether such a formal specification fulfills their requirements. In this paper, we present a new solution to verify graph transformation systems using the Bogor model checker. The attributed graph grammars （AGG）-like graph transformation systems are translated to Bandera intermediate representation （BIR）, the input language of Bogor, and Bogor verifies the model against some interesting properties defined by combining linear temporal logic （LTL） and special-purpose graph rules. Experimental results are encouraging, showing that in most cases our solution improves existing approaches in terms of both performance and expressiveness.     

Increasing the use of evidence-based strategies by special education teachers: A collaborative approach

This article describes a process developed to increase the use of evidence-based instructional strategies by teachers of students in special education programs in a middle school and high school. The project developed a working partnership between university researchers and parents, teachers and administrators of students in special education programs. The partnership produced manuals for the teachers that outlined effective strategies for teaching reading, encouraging family involvement, providing academic feedback, and engaging in positive behavior support in the classroom. The results of assessing implementation fidelity, implications of the study, and future research issues are presented.     

英语活动课的活动设计与组织

英语活动课是语言实践课，活动的设计具有教育性、创造性、实践性、情感交流真实性。是以学生主体活动为主要形式，以鼓励学生主动参与、主动探索、主动思考和主动实践为基本特征，以实现学生多方面能力综合发展为核心，以促进学生整体素质的全面提高为目的的开放性新型教学模式。     

Multisectoral partnerships in e-learning: A potential force for improved human capital development in the Asia Pacific

Since their inception, a dominant characteristic of higher education institutions has been their reliance on the advantages conferred by geographic and political boundaries. However, emerging technologies and growing consumer power are challenging the status quo. The application of Internet-based information and communication technologies in education—e-learning—is now making it possible for education to transcend space, time, and political boundaries. In e-learning, content and mode of delivery are increasingly defined by external groups: students as well as employers. The emergence of e-learning is weakening the dominance of traditional providers of higher and continuing education—nonprofit colleges and universities—and they are being challenged by a proliferation of alternative institutions and providers with the skills and attitudes required to succeed in the new educational marketplace. Partnerships will allow traditional suppliers and intermediaries to contribute from their respective comparative advantages. In a common emerging model, traditional universities provide the intellectual capital, content, and content support; evaluate student performance; and award appropriate degree credit or certification. Intermediaries contribute in such areas as hardware and software provision, instructional design for the Web, website and communication for maintenance, record keeping, teacher training, and technical support for courseware development and marketing. Although this trend is not yet well advanced in the Asia Pacific Region, there are already a few pioneers, and interest is strong and growing among the major stakeholder groups—traditional academic institutions, traditional students, emerging intermediaries, professionals with a need for continuing education, and private sector corporations with the need to provide educational opportunities for their workforce. The Asia Pacific Regional Technology Centre (APRTC) is an example of an emerging intermediary organization. Its primary focus is on providing continuing educational opportunities for agricultural professionals throughout the Asia Pacific. It relies almost exclusively on e-learning for educational delivery and carries out its work through multisectoral partnerships. Initial experience indicates that the approach works in the region and is cost effective and that all partners and the clients can and do benefit from the collaboration.     

Donald Trump tweets the 2014 Ebola outbreak: The infectious nature of apocalyptic counterpublic rhetoric and constitution of an exaggerated health crisis

In 2014, a deadly Ebola virus outbreak caught the world’s attention. At the height of this crisis, future president of the United States, Donald Trump, tweeted about Ebola’s threat to Americans.Throughout the 2014 Ebola outbreak, the vibrant nature of, and public familiarity with, apocalyptic frames allowed the rhetoric of social media users, like Trump, to constitute an apocalyptic counterpublic where unsubstantiated claims increased public panic in the United States. This article demonstrates that health crises, like the 2014 Ebola outbreak, can be exaggerated through communication from traditional media, government institutions, and social media.     

Language development: A complex,systematic, and natural process

Conclusions Although we do not understand very well what the processes are that contribute to language development, it is clear that communication plays a central role. As children strive to become increasingly skilled at communicating their ideas (White, 1959), as they have increasingly complex ideas to communicate (Piaget, 1955), and as they encounter an increasingly diverse set of people with whom to communicate (Brown, 1973), they must learn to use language which is richer and more flexible.When children come to school or to a day care center they already know a great deal about language. They have readily and actively mastered words, sentences and forms of communication which they need in their own family and community. In their new environment—the school or center—children's language development can further be fostered by adults who are receptive to children's efforts at communication. Adults who encourage children to use language in new ways, who attend to what children mean to say and who recognize that children's errors are often not mistakes, are likely to play a positive role in children's language development.Janet H. Kane and Karen Sheingold are on the Staff at Bank Street College of Education.     

The Design of Stereotype and the Image

Our everyday life is influenced by an overproduction of images and by an iconogenic surplus that is connected to the proliferation of media. These contribute to both the quality and quantity of communication, but simultaneously amplify the knowledge gap between an audience that is able to critically process messages and another that is affected uncritically by prejudices and stereotypes. Bellino argues for a critical media education to address this gap by encouraging the development of students' critical thinking and social awareness. In this article we will discuss the results of a research‐driven design project in which visual communication design students engaged with theories of cultural stereotypes and critiqued the role of media in their perpetuation. We adopted Kolb's model of experiential learning as recent published research demonstrates that art and design students have difficulties in conventional academic approaches to learning theory. In this regard students learned theories of stereotype through doing and making and embodied this learning in their critical project outcomes.     

Including the Tukey Mean‐Difference (Bland–Altman) Plot in a Statistics Course

The Tukey mean‐difference plot, also called the Bland–Altman plot, is a recognized graphical tool in the exploration of biometrical data. We show that this technique deserves a place on an introductory statistics course by encouraging students to think about the kind of graph they wish to create, rather than just creating the default graph for the variables types they have. This graphical technique is described, and two examples are presented: one dealing with official agricultural data of Poland and the other one with an experiment on anorexia. Our opinion is that the plot is so easy and yet efficient in visualizing paired data that it should be included in statistics courses to support understanding and interpretation of data and their analysis. © 2014 The Authors. Teaching Statistics © 2014 Teaching Statistics Trust     

ASK to THINK-TEL WHY: A model of transactive peer tutoring for scaffolding higher level complex learning

This article presents an inquiry-based model of mutual peer tutoring called ASK to THINK-TEL WHY®©. The model is described along with its purpose, its theoretical and research bases, and how it is used by tutoring partners to mediate each others' learning. Unlike tutoring systems used to promote learning at the comprehension level, this model is designed to promote higher level complex learning, namely the construction of new knowledge. The model emphasizes reciprocal tutor-tutee roles, supportive communication, and (elaborated explanation and questioning skills. When in the tutoring role, students learn to use different kinds of questions to prompt their partners to make corresponding responses. Tutors also learn to sequence their questioning in a particular way. Thus, during this transactive process, partners scaffold each other's thinking and learning to progressively higher levels. Mechanisms involved in this form of peer-mediated learning are discussed along with results of research on the model's effectiveness.     

Emergent Feminist Technical Communication

The feminist approaches to technical communication that have emerged recently are largely liberal feminist or radical feminist in orientation. Liberal feminism arises out of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and emphasizes equality and rights. It sees that women's opportunities to develop their intellects and talents and participate freely in the world of men have been thwarted by discriminatory practices. Radical feminism, in contrast, emphasizes differences between women and men, the limitations of patriarchal culture, and the characteristics of women's ways of communicating and knowing. The essays included in this issue, while multidimensional, primarily exhibit characteristics of both liberal and radical feminism.     

浅论实名制博客网站的社交网络建构——以博联社为例

实名制与网络传播环境变迁密切相关。其强化了博联社用户身份和信息传播的双重真实性,在无形中促进了用户与网站以及用户之间的互动,个人的社交网络也随之得以建立。此过程主要表现为个人社会资本在网络传播语境下的一种独特复现。博联社等一批实名制博客网站的产生与发展目前虽非主流趋势,但业已体现出新的传播理念转向,如从大众传播到分众传播、从平台支持到内容支持等。     

Skopos Theory and Instruction Manual-translating

A well-translated instruction manual not only provides complete information related to the products,but also creates aesthetic appealing to bring out purchasing and repurchasing actions.So how to render a qualified and successful instruction manual to the users or consumers is of great significance.Based upon the Skopos theory,this paper is dealing with the translation of instruction manuals in reality.Through analyzing the application of the Skopos rule,the coherence rule and the fidelity rule to translation,it is found that skopos theory are of great guidance to the instruction manual-translating.