Disabled Children and Residential Schools: The Implications for Local Education Professionals

Jenny Morris, freelance researcher, David Abbott, research associate at the Norah Fry Research Centre at the University of Bristol, and Linda Ward, Director of the Norah Fry Research Centre at the University of Bristol, carried out research to look at whether the current system of legislation and regulation is adequately protecting and promoting the interests of disabled children placed at residential schools. This article summarises some findings from the research which investigated the decision-making processes leading to residential special school placements and explored the involvement of education and social services authorities after placements have been made. The research found that the needs of individual children are not central to these decision-making processes; and that the local authorities who make such placements do not pay sufficient attention to protecting and promoting children's educational or care needs once they have gone away to school. Jenny Morris, David Abbott and Linda Ward indicate some of the ways in which current practice could be improved; make recommendations for future developments; and call for further research into the role of special residential schools in the context of policy on educational and social inclusion.     

The literary works of Sir William Osler

A paper read at the first regular meeting of the Osler Society of McGill University, October 19, 1921.     

Design and evaluation of a personal digital assistant- based alerting service for clinicians.

PURPOSE: This study describes the system architecture and user acceptance of a suite of programs that deliver information about newly updated library resources to clinicians' personal digital assistants (PDAs). DESCRIPTION: Participants received headlines delivered to their PDAs alerting them to new books, National Guideline Clearinghouse guidelines, Cochrane Reviews, and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Alerts, as well as updated content in UpToDate, Harrison's Online, Scientific American Medicine, and Clinical Evidence. Participants could request additional information for any of the headlines, and the information was delivered via e-mail during their next synchronization. Participants completed a survey at the conclusion of the study to gauge their opinions about the service. RESULTS/OUTCOME: Of the 816 headlines delivered to the 16 study participants' PDAs during the project, Scientific American Medicine generated the highest proportion of headline requests at 35%. Most users of the PDA Alerts software reported that they learned about new medical developments sooner than they otherwise would have, and half reported that they learned about developments that they would not have heard about at all. While some users liked the PDA platform for receiving headlines, it seemed that a Web database that allowed tailored searches and alerts could be configured to satisfy both PDA-oriented and e-mail-oriented users.     

Imagining transformative spaces: the personal–political sites of community archives

Although much has been written about formal archival spaces, little scholarship has addressed the physical spaces of community archives. This paper asks: How do community members imagine the physical spaces that steward identity-based community archives? Based on focus groups with more than 54 community archives users at five different community archives sites across Southern California, this paper examines how members of marginalized communities conceive of the physical space inhabited by community archives representing their communities. The sites explored range from a prominent location on a university campus, to storefronts, strip malls, and small cinderblock buildings. Yet across sites, users spoke about community archives spaces as symbolic and affectively moving locations. Many users described their community archives site as a “home-away-from-home,” marked by intergenerational dialog and a profound sense of belonging. For other users, community archives sites were described as “politically generative spaces” which foster dialog and debate about identity, representation, and activism and enable the community to envision its future. And yet, while the very existence of community archives is political, many participants felt that the full political potential of these sites is not yet realized. By listening to the voices of the communities represented and served by community archives, our research both indicates that a shift is warranted in archival metaphors of space and reveals how community archives are personally and politically transformative spaces for the communities they represent and serve.     

Exploring Developmental Appropriateness of Multitouch Tables in Prekindergarten: A Video Analysis

This study explored how developmentally appropriate practices influenced the affordances of a multitouch surface in an early childhood classroom. Children, ages 4 to 5 years old, were videotaped while engaged in a storymaking application on a multitouch table. As a result of the study, we found that some challenges with the functionality undermined children's autonomous control. The researchers observed numerous instances of issues with control of the medium, including height of the table, sensitivity to multiple types of touch, and limited instructions and prompts. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Television: The performance of nonresident students in the “economics U$A” telecourse

Abstract

Correspondence study represents the first and most persistent distance education format in American universities. Later called independent study, it enabled universities to disseminate instruction far beyond their campuses. Yet, national‐level leadership provided by the National University Continuing Education Association (NUEA) and its divisions has been relatively restrained. In contrast, leadership in the private correspondence school sector has been assertive, and sometimes even aggressive. The NUEA and its members shunned this approach, choosing instead to lead by persuasion and example. The NUEA developed standards of practice concerned primarily with replicating on‐campus teaching styles and values, rather than the promotion of distance education. With the abolition of its division structure, the NUEA's successor, the University Continuing Education Association (UCEA), has opted out of a leadership role in independent study. This paper concludes that the NUEA's initial attempt at leadership in distance education— while reasoned and principled—contained flaws that made failure inevitable.