Information Technology (IT) high school learners are constantly struggling to cope with the challenges of succeeding in the subject. IT teachers, therefore, need to be empowered to utilize appropriate teaching–learning strategies to improve IT learners’ success in the subject. By promoting critical thinking skills, IT learners have the opportunity to achieve greater success in the most difficult part of the curriculum, which is programming. Participating IT teachers received once-off face-to-face professional development where some teachers received professional development in critical thinking strategies while other IT teachers received professional development in critical thinking strategies infused into pair programming. To determine how teachers experience these suggested strategies, teachers participated in initial interviews as well as follow-up interviews after they had implemented the suggested strategies. From the interviews, it became evident that teachers felt that their learners benefited from the strategies. Teachers in the pair programming infusing critical thinking strategies focused more on the pair programming implementation than on the totality of pair programming infused with critical thinking. Although teachers were initially willing to change their ways, they were not always willing to implement new teaching–learning strategies.

Analogical thinking is one of the most effective tools to generate innovative ideas. It enables us to develop new ideas by transferring information from well-known domains and utilizing them in a novel domain. However, using analogical thinking does not always yield appropriate ideas, and there is a lack of consensus among researchers regarding the evaluation methods for assessing new ideas. Here, we define the appropriateness of generated ideas as having high structural and low superficial similarities with their source ideas. This study investigates the relationship between thinking process and the appropriateness of ideas generated through analogical thinking. We conducted four workshops with 22 students in order to collect the data. All generated ideas were assessed based on the definition of appropriateness in this study. The results show that participants who deliberate more before reaching the creative leap stage and those who are engaged in more trial and error for deciding the final domain of a new idea have a greater possibility of generating appropriate ideas. The findings suggest new strategies of designing workshops to enhance the appropriateness of new ideas.

Aim/Purpose: Students face many challenges improving their soft skills such as critical thinking. This paper offers one possible solution to this problem. Background: This paper considers one method of enhancing critical thinking through a problem-solving game called the Coffee Shop. Problem-solving is a key component to critical thinking, and game-playing is one method of enhancing this through an interactive teaching method. Methodology: Three classes of Vietnamese high school students engaged in the Coffee Shop game. The method seeks outcome measurements through the use of analysis of multiple surveys to assess and interpret if critical thinking may have been improved. Contribution: The study may help to understand the importance of problem-solving in the context of an entrepreneurial setting and add to the variation of methods used to deliver the lesson to students in the classroom. Findings: The findings show that practicing problem-solving scenarios with a focus on critical thinking in a time limited setting results in a measured improvement of this skill. Recommendations for Practitioners: The findings suggest that educators could use games more as tools for problem-solving to contribute to their students’ learning outcomes around developing critical thinking. Recommendation for Researchers: More research could be devoted to developing problem-solving and critical thinking skills through game-play models. Impact on Society: Improved critical thinking skills in individuals could make a greater contribution to society. Future Research A comparative study between different high school grades and genders as well as between different countries or cultures.

Aim/Purpose: The purpose of the current study is to introduce a digital thinking skills (DTS) theoretical model (DTSM) that could support and enhance digital instruction best practices in schools. Methodology: We have taken a mixed-methods approach. Our respondents represent diverse cultural, linguistic, pedagogical, and social heritages. Contribution: The study provides a theoretical model developed by Eshet-Alkalai and Aviram that could impact subsequent digital teaching in schools. The highly accessible model may help teachers understand the cognitive learning outcomes that derive from frequently used digital tools. Findings: We found that teachers do not have a pedagogical concept of digital thinking skills, though many believe such skills might have a positive effect on their learners’ achievements. School culture plays a key role in effective DI delivery. Teachers want better in-service IT instruction. Recommendations for Practitioners: When distance learning has become the order of the day, we recommend practitioners connect pedagogical methodology and disciplinary content with new technology to boost learning outcomes. Recent world events have shown that in many cases practitioners have not been exposed to multiple digital options, especially those that not only present and review learning content but also boost the creation and dissemination of new knowledge. Recommendation for Researchers: We recommend researchers review different types of available resources and their effective implementation in the school curricula in order to foster creativity and more profound thinking among teachers and learners. Impact on Society: Better informed and greatly improved DI in schools is clearly crucial for twenty-first-century systems. As we go to press, in the middle of the coronavirus world-wide lockdown, these words resonate more than ever before. Our research both highlights this obvious need and provides a heuristic bridge between basic research and classrooms. Future Research: Future studies should focus on a pedagogical digital model that can enhance DI best practices in schools.

Aim/Purpose This paper aims to illustrate, through an exploratory ideographic case study, how a Complex Thinking framework can inform the design of scientific events and the facilitation of scientific Inter and Transdisciplinary groups towards positive emergent outcomes, both at the level of the functioning of the group and the collective complexity of their thinking. Moreover, it aims to show how the choice of facilitation strategies can contribute to positive emergent outcomes in the context of a fully online event, with its inherent constraints. Finally, this study aims to conduct an exploratory qualitative evaluation of the participants’ experiences during School, with a focus on the processes and how they relate to the aims of the School and the goals of the facilitation. Background Science needs to embrace modes of knowing capable of generating more complex (differentiated, integrated, recursively organized, emergent), ecologically fit, and creative responses, to meet the complexity of the world’s challenges. New formats and strategies are required that attend to the facilitation of Inter and Transdisciplinary scientific events and meetings, towards creative and complex outcomes. A Complex Thinking framework provides suggestions for the facilitation of Inter and Transdisciplinary meetings and events through targeting key properties which may lead to the emergence of complex and creative outcomes. Methodology We adopt an ideographic case study approach to illustrate how a complex systems approach, in particular a Complex Thinking framework, grounded in an enactive view of cognition, guided the design choices and the facilitation strategies of an online Inter and Transdisciplinary Advanced Training School (Winter School). We aim to illustrate how the facilitation strategies were selected and used to promote deep and creative interactions within the constraints of an online environment. We adopt an exploratory qualitative approach to investigate the participants’ reports of their experiences of the School, in light of the principles and goals that guided its design and facilitation. Contribution This paper opens a new area of theoretical and applied research, under the scope of a Complex Thinking framework, focused on the facilitation of Inter and Transdisciplinarity at scientific events, meetings, and discussions towards complex and creative outcomes. Findings The results of the exploratory qualitative analysis of the participants’ experiences regarding the event suggest a critical role of its methodology in fostering rich, deep, and constructive interactions, in leading to the emergence of a collective group experience, to the integration of ideas, and in facilitating transformative personal experiences, under the effects of the emergent group processes. It suggests that the strategies employed were successful, anticipating and overcoming the particular constraints of an online event. Recommendations for Practitioners This case study suggests that a Complex Thinking framework can fruitfully guide the design of facilitation strategies and activities for scientific events and meetings, activating a number of key relational processes that contribute to or boost the emergence of positive group experiences and the production and integration of novel ideas. Recommendations for Researchers This study calls for action-oriented and applied research focused on the developmental evaluation of innovations, regarding the facilitation of scientific creativity and integration, within the scope of a Complex Thinking approach. Impact on Society This paper calls for new modes of organization and formats of scientific activities, suggesting that Inter and Transdisciplinary events and meetings may benefit from intentional management and facilitation of interactions between participants to produce transformative impacts. It demonstrates the importance of the organizational principles used to plan and run events that engage multiple and various societal agents, from academics to practitioners and social activists, towards enhancing their richness and relevance to complex real-world challenges. Future Research This study highlights the need for process-focused systematic case study research using complex systems-informed designs to explore how and which facilitation strategies may promote which (interaction of) properties of Complex Thinking and associated processes and how, and under which conditions, these lead to more complex and creative outcomes.

In my knowledge graph class yesterday we talked about the SPARQL query language and I illustrated it with DBpedia queries, including an example getting data about the movie Double Indemnity. I had brought a google assistant device and used it to compare its answers to those from DBpedia. When I asked the Google assistant “Who […]

The post Why does Google think Raymond Chandler starred in Double Indemnity? appeared first on UMBC ebiquity.

Calls for greater diversity in management research, education and practice have increased in recent years, driven by a sense of fairness and ethical responsibility, but also because research shows that greater diversity of inputs into management processes can lead to greater innovation. But how can greater diversity of thought be encouraged when educating management students, beyond the advocacy of affirmative action and relating the research on the link between multiplicity and creativity? One way is to think again about how we introduce the subject. Introductory textbooks often begin by relaying the history of management. What is presented is a very limited mono-cultural and linear view of how management emerged. This article highlights the limits this view outlines for initiates in contrast to the histories of other comparable fields (medicine and architecture), and discusses how a wider, deeper and more engaged understanding of history can foster thinking differently.

Following Sushant Singh Rajput's suicide, Rhea Chakraborty was arrested on charges of procuring drugs for the actor

Ready for a literary trip that messes with your head? These six books will leave you wondering what just happened.

Privacy: “Everything you say or do can and will be used against you, at any point in the far future when the context and agreeableness of what you said or did has changed dramatically.” With the analog surveillance of our parents, everything was caught in the context of its time. The digital surveillance of our children saves everything for later use against them.

It’s a reality for our digital children so horrible, that not even Nineteen Eighty-Four managed to think of it. In the analog surveillance world, where people are put under surveillance only after they’ve been identified as suspects of a crime, everything we said and did was transient. If Winston’s telescreen missed him doing something bad, then it had missed the moment and Winston was safe.

The analog surveillance was transient for two reasons: one, it was assumed that all surveillance was people watching other people, and two, that nobody would have the capacity of instantly finding keywords in the past twenty years of somebody’s conversations. In the analog world of our parents, that would mean somebody would need to actually listen to twenty years’ worth of tape recordings, which would in turn take sixty years (as we only work 8 out of 24 hours). In the digital world of our children, surveillance agencies type a few words to get automatic transcripts of the saved-forever surveillance-of-everybody up on screen in realtime as they type the keywords – not just from one person’s conversation, but from everybody’s. (This isn’t even exaggerating; this was reality in or about 2010 with the GCHQ-NSA XKEYSCORE program.)

In the world of our analog parents, surveillance was only a thing at the specific time it was active, which was when you were under individual and concrete suspicion of a specific, already-committed, and serious crime.

In the world of our digital children, surveillance can be retroactively activated for any reason or no reason, with the net effect that everybody is under surveillance for everything they have ever done or said.

We should tell people as it has become instead; “anything you say or do can be used against you, for any reason or no reason, at any point in the future”.

The current generation has utterly failed to preserve the presumption of innocence, as it applies to surveillance, in the shift from our analog parents to our digital children.

This subtle addition – that everything is recorded for later use against you – amplifies the horrors of the previous aspects of surveillance by orders of magnitude.

Consider somebody asking you where you were on the evening of March 13, 1992. You would, at best, have a vague idea of what you did that year. (“Let’s see… I remember my military service started on March 3 of that year… and the first week was a tough boot camp in freezing winter forest… so I was probably… back at barracks after the first week, having the first military theory class of something? Or maybe that date was a Saturday or Sunday, in which case I’d be on weekend leave?” That’s about the maximum precision your memory can produce for twenty-five years past.)

However, when confronted with hard data on what you did, the people confronting you will have an utter and complete upper hand, because you simply can’t refute it. “You were in this room and said these words, according to our data transcript. These other people were also in the same room. We have to assume what you said was communicated with the intention for them to hear. What do you have to say for yourself?”

It doesn’t have to be 25 years ago. A few months back would be sufficient for most memories to be not very detailed anymore.

To illustrate further: consider that the NSA is known to store copies even of all encrypted correspondence today, on the assumption that even if it’s not breakable today, it will probably be so in the future. Consider what you’re communicating encrypted today — in text, voice, or video — can be used against you in twenty years. You probably don’t even know half of it, because the window of acceptable behavior will have shifted in ways we cannot predict, as it always does. In the 1950s, it was completely socially acceptable to drop disparaging remarks about some minorities in society, which would socially ostracize you today. Other minorities are still okay to disparage, but might not be in the future.

When you’re listening to somebody talking from fifty years ago, they were talking in the context of their time, maybe even with the best of intentions by today’s standards. Yet, we could judge them harshly for their words interpreted by today’s context — today’s completely different context.

Our digital children will face exactly this scenario, because everything they do and say can and will be used against them, at any point in the future. It should not be this way. They should have every right to enjoy Analog Equivalent Privacy Rights.

How can we monitor Europe-wide farmland biodiversity so that it makes sense to farmers, is ecologically credible and scientifically sound and can be implemented for a reasonable price? Two new studies answer these questions.

First, stakeholders were asked, which indicators provided best "value for money" for their purpose. Habitat, plant species and farm management indicators ranked highest. Wild bees, earthworms and spiders as important providers of ecosystem services came next. Together they form a minimum set of indicators which provides non-redundant information and which can make dominant changes in farmland biodiversity visible.

Researchers from the FP7 funded EU projects "Biodiversity Indicators for European Farming Systems (BioBio)" and "Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON)", then developed cost estimates for nine monitoring scenarios and the authors conclude that a continent-wide farmland biodiversity monitoring scheme would require only a modest share of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget (2014-2020).

Cost assessments showed that the farmland biodiversity monitoring scenarios require 0·01% - 0·74% of the total CAP budget and 0·04% - 2·48% of the CAP budget specifically allocated to environmental targets. With 30% of the CAP devoted to environmental targets (more than 120 billion EURO), investing in a monitoring process seems a logical choice given these results. The researchers provide a framework for individual countries to start farmland biodiversity monitoring, building towards a coherent European picture.

The studies were published in the Journal of Applied Ecology and the Journal of Environmental Management.

"Despite scientific proof that monitoring increases the (cost) efficiency of policy measures, monitoring rarely gets included in policy programme budgets. We identified that the cost are not as high as feared. To further facilitate implementation, the study provides stepping stones to build a European monitoring scheme, offering a choice in indicators and using regions as a unit of trend analysis," explains Dr. Ilse Geijzendorffer, the lead author of the Journal of Applied Ecology paper.

"To me, that championship meant the most. Because all of us won."

The post What does David Ortiz think is the greatest championship in Boston sports history? appeared first on Boston.com.

The former Patriots QB cited McDaniels's halftime adjustments as a major reason for the team's most recent Super Bowl title.

The post Brian Hoyer: Josh McDaniels’s quick thinking won Super Bowl LIII for the Patriots appeared first on Boston.com.

"He’s actually a good friend of mine and he plays all my doubles in all my other commercials."

The post What does Rob Gronkowski think of his portrayal in ‘American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez’? appeared first on Boston.com.

We’re in the holiday season of the worst pandemic of our lives. Canceling our gatherings is the safe thing to do. But, how can we still — creatively and safely — connect with the people we love? Maybe there are some opportunities for us this year, too.

Original Air Date: November 28, 2020

Guests: 

Priya Parker — Stanley Weintraub — Peter Reinhart — Helen Macdonald — Gregg Krech

Interviews In This Hour: 

A Pandemic Holiday Season Offers Opportunities For Community, Too — Stanley Weintraub on the World War I Christmas Truce — Peter Reinhart on the Spiritual Importance of Bread — Helen Macdonald On 'The Dark Is Rising' — How to Cultivate Gratitude

Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast.

Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

The NIE Awards submission process will be open from approximately late Aug. through Nov. 28, 2022. 

Without question, the building and construction industry has been impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak. Approximately 1.1 million construction jobs were eliminated in the first two months of the pandemic prior to the industry’s designation as “essential.” While the industry has recouped nearly 80 percent of its workforce since then, companies will need to hire another 1 million workers over the next two years to meet the country’s insatiable demand for new home construction and improvement.

The distinction between “noise” and “sound” is expansive and the implications are significant in terms of subjective and objective attributes of the built environment.

Are we willing to reject the broken ‘as is’ and push towards a more radical new way of learning and working together?

In towns and smaller cities nationwide, local governments are looking for ways to implement greener operations and promote sustainability initiatives that will benefit their communities in a changing climate. But faced with finite resources and an urgent need to act, where should these municipal leaders start?

March is National Ladder Safety Month – the perfect time to take our quiz on safe use of ladders! Let’s see how you do.

This Avetta white paper provides information on how to react after a worker fatality, including immediate next steps for the employer, support for the family, workplace considerations and insurance.

This informative guide from Red Wing for Business compares the many advantages of a managed safety footwear program with those of a typical reimbursement program – for both you and your employees.

Keeping workers happy as well as safe starts by supplying personal protective equipment that fits well, feels good and they’re proud to wear.

Occupational skin diseases are the second-most common type of occupational disease. NIOSH estimates that more than 13 million U.S. workers are potentially exposed to chemicals that can be absorbed through their skin.

With only a couple of exceptions, lower-and zero-calorie sugar alternatives have failed to live up to the multifaceted functionality and flavor of sucrose and its components, glucose and fructose. In fact, great taste remains one of the primary obstacles to overcome with the range of sugar alternatives cropping up in the marketplace. A close second, of course, is performance in a formulation.

Some foods and ingredients that can help improve both sleep and brain function. Think favorites from the simple— tart cherries, seeds (especially pumpkin seeds), nuts (almonds and walnuts), and kiwi fruit—to the more exotic, like schisandra, turmeric, and saffron.

Children's Geographies; 02/01/2022
(AN 154441553); ISSN: 14733285
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Children's Geographies; 06/01/2022
(AN 156867990); ISSN: 14733285
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Children's Geographies; 08/01/2024
(AN 178911409); ISSN: 14733285
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Children's Geographies; 10/01/2024
(AN 180134750); ISSN: 14733285
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The post Rethinking Justice in Catholic Social Thought was curated by information for practice.

The post Rethinking Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Research was curated by information for practice.

The post Rethinking Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Research was curated by information for practice.

Prof. Tom Ginsburg examines legality of indicting President Trump

An expanded meeting of the Board of the Ministry of Defenсe was held in Moscow on December 21. During the meeting, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu delivered a keynote speech. President Vladimir Putin also spoke at the meeting. Below are key remarks that Shoigu and Putin made about the army, the special operation and priority tasks for 2023. Russian President Vladimir Putin: Of course, the hostilities and military operations are always associated with tragedy and loss of lives. We understand this very well, we are aware of this. But since this [conflict] is inevitable, better today than tomorrow. I think that everyone present in this auditorium perfectly understands what I am talking about. I still consider the Ukrainian people our brotherly nation. What is happening now is a tragedy, but it does not come as a result of our policy. We need to study NATO's experience and tactics in order to include that in the troops training programme and equipping the army. NATO weapons must be analyzed and used to build the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Russia will continue to develop the nuclear triad. This is the main guarantee of maintaining the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country. As many as 150,000 of the 300,000 mobilised are now undergoing training at training grounds. The other half is in the zone of hostilities. This is enough for the special operation. The past mobilisation has revealed certain problems. To eliminate them, we need to modernise the system of military commissariats. The hostilities have identified issues that need to be worked on, including communication issues. The Ministry of Defence should be attentive to criticism. The ministry should respond to it in a timely manner. Everything a fighter needs must be modern and reliable. Officers and sergeants who have gained experience in the special operation should be assigned to new positions as a matter of priority. It is necessary to develop and use drones in the army — they must be everywhere. We need to expand the arsenal of modern attack weapons. Sarmat intercontinental missiles will be put on combat duty in the near future. The Admiral Gorshkov frigate with state-of-the-art Zirkon hypersonic missile systems will enter combat service in early 2023. We need to saturate the troops with everything necessary — from modern first-aid kits to sights. Everything is important on the battlefield. There are no restrictions to finance the Russian Armed Forces. The country gives the army everything they ask for. We've got everything. We look forward to constructive and meaningful negotiations with a visible end result that would ensure equal security for all, within a certain timeframe. We will not engage in the militarization of the country and economy. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu:

Think Tank, the UK bespoke packaging design agency, is launching new SMART packaging formats designed to help brands elevate their packaging design and boost their commercial reach.

BGS launches digital version of UK legacy geothermal catalogue  ThinkGeoEnergy - Geothermal Energy News

BGS breaks ground on geothermal heating system in Keyworth HQ, UK  ThinkGeoEnergy - Geothermal Energy News

Recipients of the 10th annual Communication Awards were announced today by the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine.

The world faces enormous challenges of unprecedented complexity—problems that intertwine in a dizzyingly interconnected, interdependent, and changing landscape. Few of them—especially those dealing with energy, environment, and social structures—admit clean solutions with clear endpoints.

Race, ethnicity, and ancestry labels are often used in genomics and genetics research to describe human genetic differences, which is misleading and inaccurate. Researchers and scientists who utilize genetic and genomic data should rethink and justify how and why they use these descriptors in their work.

The Art of Connecting is Rethinking the Risk. Be clear on where you stand with BT Security.

The Art of Connecting is Rethinking the Risk. Be clear on where you stand with BT Security