Conference agenda

ABSTRACT

The Indian state, when it announced the opening of its borders – physical and imaginary – to globalisation, also embraced new digital technologies of telecommunication and transportation in its attempt to reconfigure itself as a global player in the world market. The neo‐liberal economic policies and the restructuring of the State had immediate and far reaching impact on the question of citizenship. The technologised State posited the need for a technosocial subject – a subject that was not only a consumer/user of technology but also subject to the different technological networks instituted towards a new‐modernism. The fetishisation of such a technosocial subject entails a new regime of discipline and containment that produces certain glorified non‐legal subject positions which challenge the efforts of the State to create a homogeneous sanitised cyberscape. This paper is an attempt to examine the production of illegalities with reference to cyberspace, to make a symptomatic reading of new conditions within which citizenships are enacted, in the specific context of contemporary India. Looking at one incident each, of cyber‐pornography and cyber‐terrorism, the paper sets out to look at the State’s imagination of the digital domain, the positing of the ‘good’ cyber citizen, and the production of new relationships between the state and the subject. This essay explores the ambiguities, the dilemmas and the questions that arise when Citizens become Subjects, not only to the State but also to the technologies of the State.     

Canada’s Implementation of the Right to Education for Students with Disabilities

This article analyses the content and legal implementation of the right to education as a human right in Canada. It seeks to expose the extent to which Canadian legislative mechanisms have succeeded in protecting the right to education of students with disabilities by using students with epilepsy as a test case. To that end, the article examines the barriers faced by students with epilepsy in realising their right to education. It explores the content of the right to education in international law so as to provide an ideal against which the legal implementation of the right to education in Canada can be measured. In examining the degree to which legal implementation of the right to education for students with disabilities lives up to the ideals espoused in international law, the article analyses the effectiveness of the legal mechanisms that implement the right to education for students with epilepsy in addressing the three types of barriers faced by these students. The revelation of where students with epilepsy fall through the cracks serves as a reflection of the limits of current legal mechanisms in protecting the right to education for students with disabilities.     

Research agenda for social and collaborative information seeking

Scholars in diverse fields of inquiry have identified the need to expand individual-based information seeking and behavior models and systems to incorporate social as well as collaborative dimensions. However, the research areas of Social Information Seeking (SIS) and Collaborative Information Seeking (CIS) have been largely disconnected from one another despite a few notable attempts to study them under one umbrella. Researchers in these communities have recently realized the value of bringing SIS and CIS together for two main reasons: often it is impossible to separate social and collaborative dimensions in a project; and by considering these two aspects of information seeking, we may be able to support human information behavior in ways not previously possible. A brief synthesis of work in the domains of SIS and CIS is presented here. Then, an integrated view is presented to consider Social and Collaborative Information Seeking (SCIS) as an intersection and extension of SIS and CIS. Benefits of this approach are discussed and the integrated view is used as the basis to present a research agenda that outlines opportunities and challenges unique to SCIS.     

翻转课堂联合WebQuest在信息素养教学中的应用

翻转课堂侧重在课外完成知识的学习,在课堂中完成知识的内化。但翻转课堂仅是一种教学组织方式,需配合具体的教学方法才能让翻转课堂“活”起来。WebQuest是一种在网络环境下任务驱动式的探究性学习方式,教师创建学习情境,引导学生利用网络资源以任务驱动进行自主探究活动,并以小组形式展开讨论与思考。将WebQuest与翻转课堂联合应用于信息素养教育,有助于活跃学生思维。     

Matrix metalloproteinase-3 (MMP-3) -1612 5A/6A promoter polymorphism in coronary artery disease in Indian population

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) play important role in the pathogenesis of coronary artery disease (CAD). 5A allele of -1612 5A/6A polymorphism of MMP-3 is associated with two fold higher activity than 6A allele. Present study was designed to analyse the association of this polymorphism with CAD in Indian population. Subjects included in the study were patients with stable angina (n=35), unstable angina (n=53), patients with recent event of myocardial infarction (MI) (MI Group-1, n=56) and patients at presentation of the acute MI (MI Group-2, n=49). Controls were healthy individuals (n=99). Genotyping of MMP-3 5A/6A polymorphism was carried out by PCR-based restriction digestion method. The genotype distribution of patient groups did not deviate from controls. Serum MMP-3 levels were significantly elevated at presentation of the acute MI by 36.8% (P=0.031) as compared to controls and more associated with 6A genotype suggesting discrepancy between in vitro transfection experiment and peripheral MMP-3 levels.     

Disabled and successful: education in the life stories of disabled high achievers

There has been much debate concerning the pros and cons of special and mainstream education for young people with a disability. This paper adds data to this debate by reporting the educational experiences of 20 high-achievers with congenital disabilities who live in the United Kingdom and were born between 1950 and 1970. It presents personal accounts of the high-achievers' perceptions of how their education, which was either purely in special schools, in mainstream schools or a combination of both, had influenced their transition to adulthood. While those who attended special school considered it to provide a supportive environment that permitted the cultivation of their personalities without the constraints of non-disabled barriers, many others thought it prevented them as disabled children from interacting with non-disabled peers, thus inhibiting social integration between the disabled and non-disabled world. This was the main perceived advantage of mainstream education although problems of physical access meant that some choices were out of reach. The findings highlight how both special and mainstream education can be compatible with career success of individual disabled people. The paper implies that a combination of the two systems may be needed to facilitate disabled students to develop psychologically, socially and cognitively at the rate of their non-disabled peers, and proposes that link schools and partial integration could contribute to the achievement of such goals.     

Disconnecting to Connect: Developing Postconnectivist Tactics for Mobile and Networked Technical Communication

ABSTRACT

In a networked society, humans are connected through mobile devices to always-on networks, and these technologies merge with us in new ways. In this environment, studying human-networked interactions involves an expanded type of usability. In this article, we argue that a key component of usability is how humans connect and disconnect from these networks. For this reason, the authors advocate studying how users connect and disconnect between online and offline contexts in their everyday life. Such an effort involves questioning our assumptions about the role of connection in usability and introduces methodological issues in studying these processes. These shifts require our research to be more multidisciplinary and more methodologically demanding, with major implications for the portability and durability of technical communication research.     

‘The fruit caught between two stones’: the conflicted position of teachers within Aceh's independence struggle†

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the challenging situation faced by teachers as professionals and members of the community in Aceh, Indonesia during the province's civil war. It reveals how teachers’ sense of agency during this period was deeply influenced by the economic/material, political and socio-cultural condition at that time – conditions and experiences which today have bearing on a place for teachers in the post-conflict peace-building process occurring in the province. During the conflict, teachers struggled to balance their strategic societal positioning – as civil servants and community members – and found themselves caught in the middle of a complex range of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces at play. This position of constraint, we argue, limited the ability of teachers to act as peace-builders during the conflict, and continues to influence teachers’ ability to function in such ways today.