The Virtual Field Station (VFS): using a virtual reality environment for ecological fieldwork in A-Level biological studies—Case Study 3

Case studies are one way of producing the evidential base necessary for ICT to become embedded in everyday teaching and learning. Such case studies are vital for the purposes of generalisation. Also, teacher generated case-studies have the benefit of being research that is done by teachers in conjunction with Higher Education support and mediation, as opposed to research being done to teachers by Higher Education. One such teacher-generated case study at the cutting edge of ICT researches the effectiveness of a Virtual Field Station for the teaching of an A Level biology topic. The subject was the exotic one of the Mediterranean sea turtle. Student fieldwork involving these fascinating creatures is desirable but difficult, as the sea turtle's habitat is the archipelago of the Aegean Sea. The paper argues that a Virtual Field Centre is an effective substitute for actuality in terms of the development of student knowledge and understanding for examination purposes. As such, it is an innovative development that sits at the forefront of an area of Science Education that is rapidly developing, ie ICT-mediated teaching and learning.     

Talk as Data and Practice — a critical look at phenomenographic inquiry and the appeal to experience

The article continues a critical discussion of phenomenography by raising some issues on the status of interview data in such research. It is argued that it is doubtful if and in what sense the interview data generated in much of the empirical work within this tradition can be assumed to refer to “ways of experiencing”, the core object of research in phenomenography. In general, it would seem that the data must be understood as indicative of accounting practices — ways of talking and reasoning — that interviewees, for one reason or another, find appropriate when being asked questions. Very little, if anything, is gained in analytical terms by an initial commitment to a position in which the researcher connects utterances to experiences rather than to discourse, since the latter is what is in fact analyzed. It is also argued that in some important respects discursive practices must be seen as preceding experience, and that experiential accounts given by individuals are grounded in discursive patterns.     

Revue des revues Pédagogiques de langue Française

Sans résumé     

A walk on the human performance side—Part 3

As in the first two parts of this series, Roger Addison and Carol Haig provide tools to help in the human performance side of work‐in this case, at the workplace/organization level. Improving performance at this level is driven by mapping the organization to show how it operates and aligns with the business environment. The authors offer the business logic model as one tool for creating an organizational map and provide suggestions for getting started.     

The social condition of higher education: globalisation and (beyond) regionalisation in Latin America

This article aims to discuss the relationship between higher education (HE), globalisation and regionalism projects focusing on HE in Latin America and Brazil. It is claimed that HE has predominantly taken the diverse, yet concerted and co-ordinated routes of globalisation and regionalisation and, by doing so, been profoundly transformed. The first section considers a set of theoretical categories in relation to the phenomena of globalisation and regionalisation. The second section analyses the global and regional dimensions of HE in Latin America, exploring: (1) the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR), along with the processes and mechanisms put into place to settle MERCOSUR's Educative Sector. It is argued that despite the political relevance of this regional project, its major developments are still harbouring important but preliminary preparations for future regional positioning and empowerment; (2) it is argued that the commodification, privatisation and ‘marketisation’ of HE, having occupied the centre stage in determined nations of the world, have become the founding conditions of a global market in HE; and (3) the Brazilian HE policies are examined in order to develop an argument about the decisive role played by national government in promoting and adjusting the process of globalisation and the regionalism project for HE.     

film history

Kevin Brownlow The War, the West and the Wilderness (New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1979 – $27.50, hardcover).

Marshall Deutelbaum, "Image" on the Art and Evolution of the Film (New York: Dover Publications, 1979 – $8.95 in paper).

American Theatres of Today, Volumes I and II, by R.W. Sexton and B.F. Betts (New Yorks Architectural Book Publishing Inc., 1927 and 1930 – reprinted at $35.00 in one volume, 360 pages, hardcover).

Picture Palace Architecture in Australia by Ross Thorne (South Melbourne: Sun Books, 1976 – $9.95 in paper from Vestal).

Temples of Illusion by Roger Brett($14.95, paper).

Carol Herselle Krinsky Rockefeller Center (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978 – $17.50 hardcover/ $9.95 paper)

Richard Taylor Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (London: Croom Helm/ New York: Barnes & Nonle, 1979—$25.00)

William Kittredge and Steren M. Krauzer, eds. Stories into Film (New York: Harper & RowP2olophon Books, 1979—price not given, paper)

Richard Dyer Stars (London: British Film Institute, 1979—E2.25, or about $5.00, paper)     

NEW MEDIA

In 1845 John Lewis Ricardo was among a group who bought the Cooke and Wheatstone British patents for the electric telegraph at a current cost of £10 million. Although many people have examined the history of the telegraph no one seems to have asked the question ‘Why?’ Ricardo was a Member of the Stock Exchange, financier and a leading politician campaigning against monopolies. This paper postulates that his prime objective, while the largest shareholder for the first three and executive Chairman of the Electric Telegraph Company for its first 12 years, was to build a network, obtain and then distribute financial intelligence to its own newsrooms, adjacent to all the Stock Exchanges in Britain. It was not an afterthought as has been widely assumed. Newspapers in the regions took advantage of this new media. When the telegraph companies later formed their own cartel/monopoly, and substantially boosted prices charged to newspapers, Ricardo changed sides and secretly campaigned for their nationalization.