Public libraries embrace citizen science: Strengths and challenges

Can public libraries become hubs for citizen science? In line with the principles of citizen science, this question was answered collaboratively with librarians from the Barcelona Network of Public Libraries who performed two hands-on activities. One activity was a training course taken by 30 librarians from 24 different libraries which enabled them to envisage citizen science implementation at each library. The other activity consisted of co-creating a citizen social science project and involved 40 library users, seven librarians from three different cities, and professional scientists. The analysis considers the perspectives of both librarians and users, through participant observation, surveys, and a focus group to identify strengths and challenges. The overall results suggest that public libraries can offer leadership in the promotion of citizen science and contribute to the mission of public libraries to act as local community hubs. The main challenges identified were related to the complexity of collaboration, uncertainty regarding research co-creation, and participant retention strategies.     

Citizen reactions to municipalities’ Instagram communication

In this paper, we explore how local governments are using Instagram as a communication tool to engage with their citizens, using data from the municipalities of Andalusia (Spain). We seek to identify the determinants of local government use of Instagram, the determinants of activity in this channel and the determinants of citizen reactions in order to understand the influence of media types (picture, video or album) used in municipality posts, and to understand content type (what the post is about). Instaloader, an open source intelligence (OSINT) tool for Instagram, was applied. It made it possible to automatically extract all posts of the analysed municipalities (14,742 posts). These were later automatically analysed using R, an open source software. It was determined that of the 29 Andalusian local governments with the highest populations, only those that maintain an account on Instagram, totalling 17 municipalities (58.62%), would be part of the final analysis. Our findings demonstrate that when local governments have a high level of debt, they do not maintain and actively use Instagram accounts. We also found that quality of posts’ content is more important than quantity of followers, since there is no significant relationship between citizen reactions and the number of inhabitants of a municipality or the number of followers (audience), while there is a significant negative relationship between the number of posts (activity) and reactions. Our results also highlight that the level of reactions can be stimulated by certain media and content types.     

Errors of programming and ownership of the robot concept made by trainee kindergarten teachers during an induction training

Education and Information Technologies - Computational thinking in the educational environment has awaken a rising interest, having been included as part of the curricula from the very beginnings...     

Novice teacher vertical professional development? Exploring teachers’ and coaches’ beliefs throughout a two-year induction program

Learning Environments Research - The pedagogical beliefs of novice teachers and their coaches throughout a two-year induction program and how those beliefs impact their induction experiences were...     

Research results of two personal learning environments experiments in a higher education institution

This paper focuses on institutionally powered personal learning environments (iPLEs). The concept of the iPLE can be seen as a way universities can incorporate learner-centred approach into the architecture of their technology-enhanced learning environments. The aim of this paper is to pose that there are other ways to learn complementary to virtual learning environments, such as using distributed Web 2.0 tools from personal learning environments (PLEs). With that aim in mind, this paper presents an exploratory study with two different iPLE configurations, analyses how they modify the learning–teaching process, and reports their perceived usefulness from the students' point of view. These two case studies were carried out by a research group of educational technology from a Spanish university in graduate and postgraduate courses. As reported by other case studies, the results revealed that students use the environment basically in the academic context and this usage is conceived as another time and effort requiring task. This fact can be observed in the low level iPLEs customization. The overall conclusions we can extract are, on the one hand, that the new environment to integrate informal and formal learning should be flexible and adaptable to the student's needs and preferences and, on the other hand, that academic tools might someday become personal tools.     

Children’s recall and motivation for an environmental education video with supporting pedagogical materials

This study examined recall (Rcl) differences of high, average and low achieving fifth-grade elementary students (72) for an environmental education video with supporting pedagogical materials. In addition, it assessed the motivational level of all students. Recall assessment was carried out one-week and twenty-weeks after intervention. Main findings suggest comparative Rcl results for all achievers and high motivation for the designed video and pedagogical materials. Implications for future research and for an integrative materials’ design approach are presented.     

Fear of Deportation in High School: Implications for Breaking the Circle of Silence Surrounding Migration Status

Long-term ethnographic data on the daily lives of undocumented students, their teachers, and administrators reveal the effects of fear of deportation (De Genova,?2002) on the routine of a high school. Thirty years after Plyler v. Doe guaranteed the educational rights of undocumented students, this study finds many factors contributing to the creation of a Circle of Silence around these students’ rights and access to schooling that threatens the educational opportunities of a significant population of immigrant students. The implications of this study reveal how schools can become a space to interrupt this vicious cycle through awareness, counseling, and advocacy.     

Developing an audiovisual notebook as a self‐learning tool in histology: Perceptions of teachers and students

Videos can be used as didactic tools for self‐learning under several circumstances, including those cases in which students are responsible for the development of this resource as an audiovisual notebook. We compared students' and teachers' perceptions regarding the main features that an audiovisual notebook should include. Four questionnaires with items about information, images, text and music, and filmmaking were used to investigate students' (n = 115) and teachers' perceptions (n = 28) regarding the development of a video focused on a histological technique. The results show that both students and teachers significantly prioritize informative components, images and filmmaking more than text and music. The scores were significantly higher for teachers than for students for all four components analyzed. The highest scores were given to items related to practical and medically oriented elements, and the lowest values were given to theoretical and complementary elements. For most items, there were no differences between genders. A strong positive correlation was found between the scores given to each item by teachers and students. These results show that both students' and teachers' perceptions tend to coincide for most items, and suggest that audiovisual notebooks developed by students would emphasize the same items as those perceived by teachers to be the most relevant. Further, these findings suggest that the use of video as an audiovisual learning notebook would not only preserve the curricular objectives but would also offer the advantages of self‐learning processes. Anat Sci Educ 7: 209–218. © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.