1,721,103 research outputs found
Una professione da inventare. Il docente di lingua straniera nella scuola primaria
No full textIl grande equivoco che per troppo tempo ha accompagnato la didattica delle lingue straniere in Italia è che si potesse ottenere la conoscenza della lingua attraverso la conoscenza della struttura grammaticale/linguistica di questa, quasi che una lingua potesse essere ridotta a una somma di elementi statici staccati dalla realtà. La grammatica appunto, o meglio “il libro di grammatica”. Il vero oggetto del contendere di ogni discussione che abbia come sfondo la didattica delle lingue straniere. “E se la grammatica fosse inutile”? Scriveva provocatoriamente Célestin Freinet più di mezzo secolo fa, facendo riferimento a una sua pubblicazione che risale addirittura all’ottobre del 1937.
A leggere oggi la prefazione a quell’articolo, che all’epoca fece scalpore, ci rendiamo conto di quanto siano attuali i rilievi di Freinet, di quanto tempo sia trascorso inutilmente per alcuni docenti, che ancora oggi in Italia concepiscono la didattica della lingua essenzialmente come insegnamento delle strutture grammaticali. Sulla base di quanto appena detto, mi pare del tutto evidente che la professione di docente di lingue straniere sia ai nostri giorni in Italia tutta da inventare, e ancor più quella del docente di lingue nella scuola primaria e dell’infanzia, un capitolo che le autorità politiche e accademiche dovranno affrontare seriamente al più presto se non si vuole che l’Italia continui a essere il fanalino di coda in Europa in questo strategico settore
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
New Approaches to Off-Shore Wind Energy Management Exploiting Satellite EO Data
No full textWind as an energy resource has been increasingly in focus over the past decades, starting with the global oil crisis in the 1970s. The possibility of expanding wind power production to off-shore locations is attractive, especially in sites where wind levels tend to be higher and more constant.
Off-shore high-potential sites for wind energy plants are currently being looked up by means of wind atlases, which are essentially based on NWP (Numerical Weather Prediction) archive data and that supply information with low spatial resolution and very low accuracy. Moreover, real-time monitoring of active off-shore wind plants is being carried out using in-situ installed anemometers, that are not very reliable (especially on long time periods) and that should be periodically substituted when malfunctions or damages occur.
These activities could be greatly supported exploiting archived and near real-time satellite imagery, that could provide accurate, global coverage and high spatial resolution information about both averaged and near real-time off-shore windiness.
In this work we present new methodologies aimed to support both planning and near-real-time monitoring of off-shore wind energy plants using satellite SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) imagery. Such methodologies are currently being developed in the scope of SATENERG, a research project funded by ASI (Italian Space Agency).
SAR wind data are derived from radar backscattering using empirical geophysical model functions, thus achieving greater accuracy and greater resolution with respect to other wind measurement methods. In detail, we calculate wind speed from X-band and C-band satellite SAR data, such as Cosmo-SkyMed (XMOD2) and ERS and ENVISAT (CMOD4) respectively. Then, using also detailed models of each part of the wind plant, we are able to calculate the AC power yield expected behaviour, which can be used to support either the design of potential plants (using historical series of satellite images) or the monitoring and performance analysis of active plants (using near-real-time satellite imagery).
We have applied these methods in several test cases and obtained successful results in comparison with standard methodologies
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