Holley R. Lange, George Philip, Bradley C. Watson, John Kountz, Samuel T. Waters and George Doddington
A real potential exists for library use of voice technologies: as aids to the disabled or illiterate library user, as front‐ends for general library help systems, in online…
Abstract
A real potential exists for library use of voice technologies: as aids to the disabled or illiterate library user, as front‐ends for general library help systems, in online systems for commands or control words, and in many of the hands‐busy‐eyes‐busy activities that are common in libraries. Initially, these applications would be small, limited processes that would not require the more fluent human‐machine communication that we might hope for in the future. Voice technologies will depend on and benefit from new computer systems, advances in artificial intelligence and expert systems to facilitate their use and enable them to better circumvent present input and output problems. These voice systems will gradually assume more importance, improving access to information and complementing existing systems, but they will not likely revolutionize or dominate human‐machine communications or library services in the near future.
Gonzalo Jover, Rosario González Martín and Juan Luis Fuentes
The year 2016 marked the 100th anniversary of Democracy and Education, one of John Dewey’s most widely translated and published books around the world still in the author’s…
Abstract
The year 2016 marked the 100th anniversary of Democracy and Education, one of John Dewey’s most widely translated and published books around the world still in the author’s lifetime. Nowadays, in a context in which pedagogy is bogged down in ‘economicism’ and suspicion towards any proposal that hints of value, Dewey’s ideas once again provide a ray of hope for a possible future. One of the contemporary authors that has fostered this hopeful reading of Dewey is Martha C. Nussbaum, whose appeal to bringing the humanities back to schools motivated a project on approaching the classic texts with the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), which we have developed during the past years with secondary education students from three schools in Santiago de Chile, Madrid and London. The project is based on an open reading of Sophocles’s Antigone through an online application that enables students from the participating schools to interact. This chapter delves deeper into the theoretical bases of the project. In the first two sections, we analyse the interpretation that Nussbaum and Dewey each made of Antigone. Then, in the third, we present the Antigone project as a learning experience promoting a creative democracy, as Dewey called it.
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Sue Ellen Henry and Kathleen Knight Abowitz
In this chapter, we read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me (2015) against Dewey’s Democracy and Education (1916) to glean insight into how Deweyan transactionalism can…
Abstract
In this chapter, we read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me (2015) against Dewey’s Democracy and Education (1916) to glean insight into how Deweyan transactionalism can help theorize greater democratic participation for the corporeally disenfranchised, that is, those persons who experience sociocultural and/or political marginalization due to the racialized status of their bodies. We argue that transactionalism carries promise to help interrupt current, systemic practice that negatively reifies Black bodies and reasserts Black bodies as central, full participants in democratic action. An analysis of transactionalism as interpreted from Democracy and Education and other Deweyan writings is followed by an analysis of Coates’ memoir, Between the World and Me, focusing on his experiential understanding of how Black bodies exist in educational institutions. We conclude the chapter with possibilities for an embodied ideal of democracy, and some educational practices that can follow from it.
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The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act…
Abstract
The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:
It has always seemed to us that a comparatively large number of people who spend their holidays abroad—on the Continent—and especially those who deviate from the main streams of…
Abstract
It has always seemed to us that a comparatively large number of people who spend their holidays abroad—on the Continent—and especially those who deviate from the main streams of tourist routes, return having suffered or suffering from food‐borne intestinal diseases. Are we right in suspecting that the incidence of these intestinal infections is higher in this body of holiday‐makers than in those who perforce enjoy the winds that blow at the end of Blackpool pier or question what the wild waves are saying at Brighton? The occurrence of intestinal symptoms suggesting bacterial food poisoning and shigellosis (dysentery) in so many of one's friends (and their friends) returning from abroad seems to point to this. Despite the fancy names given to the illnesses, such as “Spanish ‘tummy’”, the bulk of the cases are undoubtedly salmonellosis.
WE write on the eve of an Annual Meeting of the Library Association. We expect many interesting things from it, for although it is not the first meeting under the new…
Abstract
WE write on the eve of an Annual Meeting of the Library Association. We expect many interesting things from it, for although it is not the first meeting under the new constitution, it is the first in which all the sections will be actively engaged. From a membership of eight hundred in 1927 we are, in 1930, within measurable distance of a membership of three thousand; and, although we have not reached that figure by a few hundreds—and those few will be the most difficult to obtain quickly—this is a really memorable achievement. There are certain necessary results of the Association's expansion. In the former days it was possible for every member, if he desired, to attend all the meetings; today parallel meetings are necessary in order to represent all interests, and members must make a selection amongst the good things offered. Large meetings are not entirely desirable; discussion of any effective sort is impossible in them; and the speakers are usually those who always speak, and who possess more nerve than the rest of us. This does not mean that they are not worth a hearing. Nevertheless, seeing that at least 1,000 will be at Cambridge, small sectional meetings in which no one who has anything to say need be afraid of saying it, are an ideal to which we are forced by the growth of our numbers.
Elizabeth Hale, Hope E. Wilson, Lauren Gibbs, Jessie Didier and Carolyne Ali-Khan
The purpose of this study was to examine how participants experienced and perceived an M.Ed. program that had a school-based design. In particular, the authors sought to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to examine how participants experienced and perceived an M.Ed. program that had a school-based design. In particular, the authors sought to understand: (1) how participants experienced being in a school-based cohort and (2) whether and how participants experienced the three designated tenets of the M.Ed. program: teacher inquiry, social justice and student engagement and motivation.
Design/methodology/approach
This qualitative study used semi-structured focus group interviews (n = 7) to examine teachers’ perceptions, using a constant comparative method (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) of open coding to analyze the data and determine emergent themes.
Findings
The findings indicate the design of this school-based M.Ed. program provided both social and academic benefits including strengthening teachers’ working relationships and their understanding of students outside their own classroom and a transfer from individual learning to organizational benefit. Teachers positively perceived the three tenets that guided the first year of the program, especially the ability to study social justice and student motivation in depth.
Practical implications
This study has implications for teacher education and retention as well as how boundary spanning roles in PDS schools can impact graduate students’ experiences in schools. Given the current teacher shortage concerns, it is important to understand how M.Ed. programs can be designed with teacher needs at the forefront so learning is relevant and rewarding, both to the individual and the school.
Originality/value
While there are many studies that examine the use of cohorts in education, particularly in doctoral programs, few, if any, studies examine a school-based cohort M.Ed. program for practicing teachers. This study also puts a unique spotlight on how boundary-spanning roles can benefit not only teacher candidates but also practicing teachers in their M.Ed. programs.
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Harald Wahl, Werner Winiwarter and Gerald Quirchmayr
Computer‐assisted language learning (CALL) comes in many different flavors. The purpose of this paper is to focus on developing an integrated e‐learning environment that allows…
Abstract
Purpose
Computer‐assisted language learning (CALL) comes in many different flavors. The purpose of this paper is to focus on developing an integrated e‐learning environment that allows improving language skills in specific contexts. Integrated e‐learning environment means that it is a web‐based solution that performs language learning tasks using common working environments such as, for instance, web browsers or e‐mail clients. It should be accessible on different platforms, even on mobile devices. Natural language processing (NLP) forms the technological basis for developing such a learning framework. The use of NLP technologies, or in broader view artificial intelligence technologies, in CALL has also been dubbed intelligent CALL. The paper gives an overview of the state of the art in this area.
Design/methodology/approach
On the one hand, the paper explains creation processes for NLP resources and gives an overview of language corpora. On the other hand, it describes existing NLP standards. Based on the authors' requirements, the paper gives special attention to the evaluation and comparison of toolkits that can suitably support the planned implementation. In consideration of the evaluation results, the authors give a closer look at the system architecture of the CALL platform. An outlook at the end points out necessary developments in e‐learning to keep in mind.
Findings
Based on evaluation result, the authors have designed the framework architecture for the intelligent integrated CALL (iiCALL) system. A first prototype shows a web browser plug‐in communicating with the framework started in an Apache Tomcat server environment.
Originality/value
The paper presents an extended version of a paper that has been selected as one of the invited papers for journal special issue consideration at iiWAS2010. It focuses on the evaluation of several NLP toolkits which might be of importance for those who plan to integrate NLP technologies in their projects.