Report on Travel to Albania,September 6–12, 2004

ABSTRACT

I visited Albania from September 6 to 12, 2004 as a guest speaker of the U.S. Department of State. I gave three lectures on library use of information technology and on information resources–two at the National Library of Albania and one at the House of the Book and Communication. The lectures were in English, but the accompanying PowerPoint presentations had captions in Albanian. The 40 participants from several libraries across Albania and Kosovo knew English but were given Albanian translations as well of my lectures. I also visited the municipal library in Vlora. This report summarizes my daily activities and the three lectures during my time in Albania.     

Photovoice as an evaluation tool for student learning on a field trip

Background: Photovoice is one method that enables an educator to view an experience from a student’s perspective. This study examined how teachers might use photovoice during an informal learning experience to understand the students’ experiences and experiential gain.

Design and methods: Participants in this study consisted of six students, three male and three female, ranging from ninth through twelfth grade at a rural Ohio high school, who attended a field trip to a biological field station for a four-day immersive science experience. Students were provided cameras to photograph what they believed was important, interesting, or significant during an immersive four-day science trip to a biological field station, individualizing their observations in ways meaningful to them, and enabling them to assimilate or accommodate the experiences to their schema.

Results: Analysis identified five positive benefits to use photovoice as an evaluation tool: teachers were provided qualitative evidence to evaluate student interaction on the field trip; teachers could evaluate the students’ photographs and captions to determine if the field trip met the learning objectives; students were empowered to approach the goals and objectives of the field trip by making the field trip personally relevant; students assimilated and accommodated the new observations and experiences to their own schema; students automatically reflected upon the learning experience as they captioned the photos.

Conclusions: Through photovoice, the teachers were enabled to qualitatively assess each student’s experience and learning from the field trip by illustrating what the students experienced and thought was significant; providing the teachers a method to evaluate all participating students, including those who are secretive or do not normally contribute to class discussions.     

Incorporating field trips as science learning environment enrichment – an interpretive study

This interpretive study of learning environments involved two groups of Israeli science teachers who participated in courses and implemented field trips as part of sciencetechnologysociety (STS) education and under the framework of general system theory. The different groups of preservice and experienced teachers were selected in order to provide diverse perspectives on learning environments associated with the enactment of field trips as enrichment for the science classroom. The article describes the field trip programs and provides examples of how teachers in different stages of their professional development perceive the content, learning activities and problem solving as characteristics of the learning environment. The learning environment categories identified under the content characteristic were interest, interdisciplinary, innovation, difficulty, and contexualising. Under the activity characteristic were autonomy, involvement, collaboration, interaction, effectiveness and concretisation. Under problem solving were identified interaction, availability of resources, teacher support and democracy. The teachers' perceptions of the experienced learning environment were diverse and the categories described provide a framework of planning improvement in the content domain as well as in the enactment process of the field trip planned according to the principles of the general system theory.     

石家庄市区道路慢行系统问题分析及治理

数量庞大的慢行交通是我国城市交通规划的难点。对慢行交通特性及石家庄市交通问题进行分析，提出优化道路等级配置，均衡交通分布，协调公交与慢行交通关系等解决交通问题的对策。     

The “real value” of field trips in the early weeks of higher education: the student perspective

The benefits attributed to field trips by science educators are: social development; observation and perception skills; giving meaning to learning; providing first-hand experience and stimulating interest and motivation. Arguably, the “real value” of field work is attributed by students. In this study, 100 first-year students took part in an analysis of the value of a residential field trip. The field trip was a purposeful combination of personal development and academic activities. Pairwise comparison showed that the attributed value score for “Personal and Social Development” was significantly higher than scores for “Provide First-hand Experience” and “Observation and Perception Skills”. The attributed value for “Stimulate Interest and Motivation in the Subject” also scored more highly than “Provide First-hand Experience”, and “Observation and Perception Skills”; “Give meaning to Learning” was significantly higher than that for “Observation and Perception Skills”. In addition, the “educator” was also able to significantly improve students’ scores for “Stimulate Interest and Motivation”. This insight into students’ perceptions of field work recasts our thinking as educators; social capital is a key factor in student persistence and subsequence academic success. Field trips should be considered a valuable addition to retention strategies in a way that is tangible for students themselves.     

300MW汽轮机危急跳闸保护系统的改进与实践

分析了贵溪发电公司300MW机组ETS保护系统设计存在的问题,提出了技术改造方案,该方案实施后取得了良好的改造效果,确保了机组安全稳定运行。     

竞争性公共交通客运需求预测模型

优先发展公共交通，是解决我国大城市交通问题的必要要求，文章以公共交通系统中的车辆行程速度和公交站点分布密度作为两个主要影响因素，建立一个出行分布与交通方式划分合一的公共交通客运需求预测模型，并据此提出促进公共交通可持续发展的发展的若干战略措施。     

刍议我国山区铁路10kV电力贯通线的防雷措施——以九景衢铁路电力设计为例

通过分析山区铁路10 kV电力贯通线路雷击跳闸产生的原因,结合九景衢铁路电力设计提出一些合理的防雷方式,以提高送电线路耐雷水平.     

凤凰县体育旅游市场的现状与发展

采用文献资料、调查访问、实地考查等研究方法,通过对凤凰县体育旅游市场的现状、开发的必要性、可行性等方面的研究。认为凤凰县体育旅游市场蕴含着较大的开发潜力。建议充分利用每年一次的“棋行天下”,开发凤凰县体育旅游市场,把她做大做强,使之成为凤凰旅游市场中一大知名品牌和凤凰经济发展中又一个强有力的新的增长点。