1,721,091 research outputs found
Meaning and medium in young children's picture-making
Full text linkPicture-making has a special role in early childhood. It is an activity that bridges the young child’s sensory exploration of the world around them and their later engagement with graphic symbolic practices. Psychological and sociological studies have focused on young children’s pictures as both subjects of and tools in research. Yet these studies have conceptualized picture-making almost exclusively as a practice that occurs on paper using pencils, felt-tip pens or crayons as inscription devices. Despite the increasing presence of screen media in children’s lives, very little research has explored the influence that the screen medium has on picture-making and any similarities and
differences that exist between picture-making on paper and on screen. Furthermore, almost no research has examined how key members in the ‘interpretive community’ (Fish, 1980) of early years education
conceptualize and construct screen picture-making, or how children enact this activity in the naturalistic environment of the free-flowing early years classroom.
The present research addressed these issues using a social semiotic approach in designing and conducting three related studies on screen picture-making. In the first study, 36 children were observed as they made pictures either on paper or on screen. Through the resulting comparisons, various material and social affordances of screen picturemaking were identified as having an influence on the processes and products of picture-making. In order to determine whether these affordances were equally applicable in everyday contexts, an observational study of screen picture-making in the early years classroom was conducted. The findings from that study provided further evidence of the importance of the affordances identified in the previous study, but also demonstrated the extent to which social interactions shape how the activity of screen picture-making is enacted. To explore this further, six practitioners were interviewed about their attitudes towards screen picture-making and the learning it entails. Their responses revealed the relationships between their perceptions of the activity and the way it was implemented and constructed in the classrooms where they work.
Collectively, the findings from these studies demonstrate the importance of considering both the material and social aspects of the affordances of the screen medium and how these influence the expression of meaning through picture-making. Four key material
properties of screen picture-making were seen to influence how children made pictures: abundance, rapidity, referential rule-breaking, and mouse manipulation. These properties need to be taken into
account when determining the opportunities for early years learning presented by screen picture-making. Moreover, the research findings highlight the extent to which the construction of screen picture-making
is the work of an ‘interpretive community’ surrounding each child. Thus, screen picture-making in the early years is best thought of as a social project, which unfolds according to the decisions made by those in the classroom. Through understanding the activity in this way, practitioners and children are empowered to discuss and decide how screen picturemaking should be integrated into the early years classroom and what new opportunities it should offer in the expression and construction of
meaning
An organisational approach to supporting pedagogical leadership: reporting on a case study with London Early Years Foundation
Full text linkIntroduction
Full text linkThis book emerged from conversations with colleagues from across the world and is intended to contribute to our understanding of pedagogical leadership in early childhood education (ECE). In this book, colleagues from academic, policy and practice organisations discuss pedagogical leadership, how it is defined and delivered in a range of international contexts. This chapter highlights gaps and weaknesses in the existing literature on pedagogical leadership and explains how the contributors to this book respond to these and in doing so, how they advance the field
Locspeck: A collaborative and distributed positioning system for asymmetric nodes based on UWB ad-hoc network and wi-fi fingerprinting
Full text linkThis paper presents LocSpeck, a collaborative and distributed indoor positioning system for dynamic nodes connected using an ad-hoc network, based on inter-node relative range measurements and Wi-Fi fingerprinting. The proposed system operates using peer-to-peer range measurements and does not need ultra-wideband (UWB) fixed anchor, nor it needs a predefined network topology. The nodes could be asymmetric in terms of the available sensors onboard, the computational resources, and the power capacity. This asymmetry adversely affects the positioning performance of the weaker nodes. Collaboration between different nodes is achieved through a distributed estimator without the need of a single centralized computing element. The ranging measurement component of the system is based on the DW1000 UWB transceiver chip from Decawave, which is attached to a set of smartphones equipped with asymmetric sensors. The distributed positioning filter fuses, locally on each node, the relative range measurements, the reading from the internal sensors, and the Wi-Fi received signal strength indicator (RSSI) readings to obtain an estimate of the position of each node. The described system does not depend on fixed UWB anchors and supports online addition and removal of nodes and dynamic node role assignment, either as an anchor or as a rover. The performance of the system is evaluated by real-world test scenarios using a set of four smartphones navigating an indoor environment on foot. The performance is compared to that of a commercial UWB-based system. The results presented in this paper show that weak mobile nodes, in terms of available positioning sensors, can benefit from collaboration with other nearby nodes
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
EVALUATION OF DYNAMIC AD-HOC UWB INDOOR POSITIONING SYSTEM
Full text linkUltra-wideband (UWB) technology has witnessed tremendous development and advancement in the past few years. Currently available UWB transceivers can provide high-precision time-of-flight measurements which corresponds to range measurements with theoretical accuracy of few centimetres. Position estimation using range measurement is determined by measuring the ranges from a rover or a dynamic node, to a set of anchor points with known positions. However, building a flexible and accurate indoor positioning system requires more than just accurate range measurements. The performance of indoor positioning system is affected by the number and the configuration of the anchor points used, along with the accuracy of the anchor positions.This paper introduces LocSpeck, a dynamic ad-hoc positioning system based on the DW1000 UWB transceiver from Decawave. LocSpeck is composed of a set of identical nodes communicating on a common RF channel, forming a fully or partially connected network where the positioning algorithm run on each node. Each LocSpeck node could act as an anchor or a rover, and the role could change dynamically during the same session. The number of nodes in the network could change dynamically, since the firmware of LocSpeck supports adding and removing nodes on-the-fly. The paper compares the performance of the LocSpeck system with commercially available off-the-shelf UWB positioning system. Different operating scenarios are considered when evaluating the performance of the system, including cases where collaboration between the two systems is considered.</p
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
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