Old friends, new friends: predictors of children's perspective on their friends at school

Predictors of 5-year-old kindergartners' insights into their friends, and their accounts of liking and conflict with their friends were investigated, with a focus on both the children's and their friends' social understanding during the preschool period, and the quality of their preschool friendships. Seventy children initially studied at 4 years utilizing social cognition tasks and observations of dyadic play with their friends were followed over the transition to school; at school they were interviewed about their friendships and their social understanding was assessed. One group had remained close to their preschool friends, whereas a second group had formed new friendships. Social understanding, language abilities, and prosocial characteristics of both the children and preschool friends, their successful communication and shared pretend play experiences during the preschool period, and their mothers' educational level were related to their perspectives on their current school friends. Liking of current friends was linked to relationship history and maternal educational level for both those with old and with new friends, whereas insight was related to assessments of social cognition.     

The international telecommunication project in the schools of Moscow and New York state

The authors of the projects express their sincere gratitude to their partners in the project, Peter Copen of the Copen Family Fund, USA, and Jane Barley of the New York State Department of Education, USA. Thanks are also extended to Monica Bradsher from the National Geographic Society, USA, and Robert Tinker of TERC, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, for sharing their experience developing KIDNET.     

The role of educational context in beliefs about knowledge,information, and truth: an exploratory study

Beliefs about knowledge have been found to relate to a variety of student outcomes and to vary across educational domains and instructional contexts. However, there are limited data on students’ beliefs about information and truth, vis-à-vis knowledge (i.e., epistemic beliefs) and how these beliefs differ across instructional settings. Undergraduates from two educational contexts, in the USA (n?=?240) and the Netherlands (n?=?72), participated in this study. While students in the USA were enrolled primarily in lecture and discussion classes, students in the Netherlands followed a problem-based learning curriculum. Beliefs about knowledge, information, and truth and their interrelations were examined across these two contexts through graphical and written justification tasks. Results from this exploratory study indicate that Dutch students were more likely than American students to depict knowledge, information, and truth as subjective and to define knowledge and information as synonymous. Commonalities and differences associated with educational backgrounds are considered in relation to instructional implications.     

The Use of Video Demonstrations and Particulate Animation in General Chemistry

Different visualization techniques have been used for teaching chemistry concepts. Previous studies have shown that when molecular animations and video demonstrations are used, students seem to better correlate all three levels of representation: macroscopic, submicroscopic, and symbolic. This thinking process allows the students to improve their conceptual understanding and ability to create dynamic mental models. In this study, general chemistry students viewed three experiments involving dynamic fluid equilibrium in a graphic design, a video demonstration, and a molecular animation. The study investigated whether video demonstrations or particulate animations helped the students' conceptual understanding, and if the order of visualizations (video or animation first) produced any differences. Students showed improvement after each visualization. Surprisingly, there was significant improvement in responses between the first and second visualization. This work shows the importance of combining both types of visualizations, but it does not indicate a preference toward a specific order.     

Transsituational negative contrast

Rats were shifted from 32% sucrose solution in one apparatus to a 4% sucrose solution in a different apparatus, and the performance of these animals was compared to rats that received the 4% solution in both situations. Transsituational negative contrast effects were found in both consummatory and instrumental measures of behavior and, in addition, these contrast effects were found to have some elements in common with both successive and simultaneous contrast effects, but were identical to neither.     

The development of a user network as a way to re-launch an unwanted product

A common situation in product development is that of product failure and the need for re-launch. This paper presents findings regarding how one firm successfully re-launched a product through the ex-post development of a user network. The producer, Biacore, had to re-launch its biosensor product or lose a €50 million investment. The firm identified and interacted with multiple potential lead-users in order to generate new use applications. The firm benefited from the successful development of a set of new applications, innovative users, and sales. As sales of the product increased, Biacore created marketing channels as diffusion mechanisms for the encouragement of direct and indirect user-to-user interaction. These were a way to spread the costs of user support when the firm standardised how it interacted with users. Some follower-users were able to benefit from lead-users who became lead teachers; other follower-users became non-users of the product. This paper illustrates three main roles for the firm in developing a user network: creating lead-users, organising directed applications development and facilitating user-to-user interaction.     

Rethinking Our Mobility: Supporting Our Patrons Where They Live

This article describes initiatives undertaken by one academic medical library to support patrons using handheld mobile devices. These initiatives included efforts to assist patrons with installation and use of mobile information resources, educate librarians regarding content and navigation of mobile apps and websites, and leverage tools to promote the library in a mobile environment.