Information and Communication Technology Challenges to Scientific Professional Identity

Increasingly, information and communication technology (ICT) uses are transforming professional activities and interactions in ways that challenge traditional assumptions about professional identity. In this article, we consider the ways in which the professional identities of research scientists in oceanography and marine biology are shaped by the use of ICTs. We draw empirical data from an ongoing study of scientific research collaborations that examines uses of basic communication technologies, as well as scientific technologies with embedded ICT components. Our analysis suggests that development and use of ICT-enabled scientific technologies are identity enhancing for many scientists, facilitating their development of unique areas of scientific knowledge. ICT-related changes in data collection, collaborative coordination, and scientific interaction also challenge traditional definitions of expertise and professional identity. An examination of these challenges directs attention to the project identities that form around ICT-enabled scientific technologies and the ways that those project identities are enacted through ICTs.     

新兴技术在国内图书馆中的应用趋势研究

通过内容分析法对国际知名机构美国新媒体联盟2008-2015年间发布的《地平线报告》进行分析, 在理清新兴技术发展脉络的基础上, 将影响教育领域的新兴技术归纳为六类。针对各类技术群, 利用CNKI数据库查找相关文献并进行计量分析, 发现:移动技术和物联网技术是当前和未来对图书馆影响最大的两项技术, 其中移动设备和智能物体技术在图书馆领域运用广泛, 发展迅速。最后依据当前图书馆领域对新兴技术的采用现状, 尝试提几点建议。     

Exploring practices of multiliteracies pedagogy through digital technologies: a narrative inquiry

Digital technologies have fast become integral within literacy learning and teaching across contexts as students engage with a variety of digital and multimodal texts. While teachers in New Zealand schools have a high degree of autonomy in the design and planning of literacy programs, little is currently known about how they understand and enact multiliteracies pedagogy (MLP). Using data gathered via interviews and classroom observations in an intermediate school in New Zealand, this article adopts a narrative inquiry approach to explore one teacher's approaches to using digital technologies and texts within literacy instruction. We explore in particular the ways in which MLP may be enacted implicitly rather than explicitly, within the complex matrix of teachers' personal beliefs and learning experiences, the perceived learning needs of students, and the school curriculum. We conclude with a call for the conscious and purposeful teaching of MLP, focusing on synaesthesia and the semiotic functions of texts.     

Rethinking the contributions of young people with learning disabilities to iPad storymaking: a new model of distributed authorship

Digital technologies such as iPads are now ubiquitous in classrooms and family homes, enabling new possibilities for all learners but particularly for those with disabilities. Existing literature explores how children with learning disabilities create and benefit from personalised digital stories but does not unpack theoretical understandings of their ‘authorship’. This paper addresses this gap by proposing an original model of ‘distributed authorship’ with three axes of distribution—interpersonal, technological and temporal—to account for the authorial contributions of young people with learning disabilities. Five families were given an iPad with Pictello storymaking app and instructed to use it with their young person in any way which was engaging for them. Data generation over 12 weeks included weekly diaries, home videos, semi-structured interviews and story collection. Findings indicated that whilst ability to directly engage with the app varied, all the young people could be said to exert authorial influence on the stories distributed across three axes: support from others, support from the technology itself and incorporation of prior embodied agency. The study has theoretical implications for our understanding of ‘authorship’ as well as implications for pedagogy and practice by reconceptualising severely disabled children as literate learners and co-authors.     

The heterogeneous effects of environmental taxation on green technologies

This paper analyses the effectiveness of environmental taxation in stimulating the adoption of end-of-pipe and cleaner production technologies across manufacturing and mining firms between 2008 and 2014. We perform simple and categorical treatment matching of firms to study the heterogeneous effects of different taxation levels. We assess the effects between firms forced to pay environmental taxation (treated) and those that did not have to pay such taxes (controls), as well as between different levels of environmental taxation (small, medium, large). We find that low levels of environmental taxation are ineffective at stimulating green technology adoption. As the taxation level increases, so does the associated effect on green technology investment. Additionally, we find that even low levels of environmental taxation can be effective when combined with public financing. In this case, the effect is stronger than that of providing public financing alone.     

Resisting the Tick Box: Reflexive Use of Educational Technologies in Developing Student Identities and Challenging Higher Education Constructions of Disability Based on Notions of Conformity and Consistency

For many students, impairments such as chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis, epilepsy, or diabetes have the potential to vary in intensity, and thus impact, on participation in learning activities and on self-perception/identity. This article considers some of the factors that may be of influence on the ways in which students with such fluctuating or recurring impairments enact identity within higher education in the United Kingdom. In particular, the article highlights the potential role of higher education discourses based on notions of consistency and conformity in constructing disablement in finite ways. It also reviews the potential for reflexive use of communication technologies in offering students ways of promoting or masking selected aspects of identity. The article concludes with some insights into possibilities for the use of online communication modes in offering flexibility and autonomy in managing student identity and challenging institutional discourses of disability as fixed or finite.     

Coordinating Constant Invention: Social Media's Role in Distributed Work

Cultural shifts in technology and organizational structure are affecting the embodied practice of symbolic-analytic work, creating the need for more fine-grained tracings of everyday activity. Drawing on interviews and observations, this article explores how one freelance professional communicator's social media use is intertwined with inventive social coordination. Networked writing environments help symbolic analysts gain access to communities of practice, maintain a presence within them, and leverage social norms to circulate texts through them.     

新媒介环境下的跨文化传播——以讲述“美丽江苏”故事为例

在全球化时代,跨文化传播对于塑造自身形象、增进理解意义重大。新的国际格局和传播环境要求跨文化传播在传播主体、渠道、内容、受众意识等方面进行变革。本文以"美丽江苏"的跨文化传播为例,分析了这一品牌形象传播的现状和问题,提出"六结合"的理念和具体的传播策略。它们指向了这样一种对跨文化传播的理解:跨文化传播是一座"桥",连接了不同的群体,其价值不是为了传播自己,而是依靠对"自己"的传播,争取相互之间的理解。