Bilingual children use as many words as monolingual children when telling a story, and demonstrate high levels of cognitive flexibility, according to new research by University of Alberta scientists.
“We found that the number of words that bilingual children use in their stories is highly correlated with their cognitive flexibility — the ability to switch between thinking about different concepts,” said Elena Nicoladis, lead author and professor in the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Science. “This suggests that bilinguals are adept at using the medium of storytelling.”
Vocabulary is a strong predictor of school achievement, and so is storytelling. “These results suggest that parents of bilingual children do not need to be concerned about long-term school achievement, said Nicoladis. “In a storytelling context, bilingual kids are able to use this flexibility to convey stories in creative ways.”
The research examined a group of French-English bilingual children who have been taught two languages since birth, rather than learning a second language later in life. Results show that bilingual children used just as many words to tell a story in English as monolingual children. Participants also used just as many words in French as they did in English when telling a story.
Previous research has shown that bilingual children score lower than monolingual children on traditional vocabulary tests, meaning this results are changing our understanding of multiple languages and cognition in children.
“The past research is not surprising,” added Nicoladis. “Learning a word is related to how much time you spend in each language. For bilingual children, time is split between languages. So, unsurprisingly, they tend to have lower vocabularies in each of their languages. However, this research shows that as a function of storytelling, bilingual children are equally strong as monolingual children.”
This research used a new, highly sensitive measure for examining cognitive flexibility, examining a participant’s ability to switch between games with different rules, while maintaining accuracy and reaction time. This study builds on previous research examining vocabulary in bilingual children who have learned English as a second language.
Princeton researchers have uncovered new rules governing how objects absorb and emit light, fine-tuning scientists’ control over light and boosting research into next-generation solar and optical devices.
The discovery solves a longstanding problem of scale, where light’s behavior when interacting with tiny objects violates well-established physical constraints observed at larger scales.
“The kinds of effects you get for very small objects are different from the effects you get from very large objects,” said Sean Molesky, a postdoctoral researcher in electrical engineering and the study’s first author. The difference can be observed in moving from a molecule to a grain of sand. “You can’t simultaneously describe both things,” he said.
The problem stems from light’s famous shapeshifting nature. For ordinary objects, light’s movement can be described by straight lines, or rays. But for microscopic objects, light’s wave properties take over and the neat rules of ray optics break down. The effects are significant. In important modern materials, observations at the micron scale showed infrared light radiating at millions of times more energy per unit area than ray optics predicts.
The new rules, published in Physical Review Letters on Dec. 20, tell scientists how much infrared light an object of any scale can be expected to absorb or emit, resolving a decades-old discrepancy between big and small. The work extends a 19th-century concept, known as a blackbody, into a useful modern context. Blackbodies are idealized objects that absorb and emit light with maximum efficiency.
“There’s been a lot of research done to try to understand in practice, for a given material, how one can approach these blackbody limits,” said Alejandro Rodriguez, an associate professor of electrical engineering and the study’s principal investigator. “How can we make a perfect absorber? A perfect emitter?”
“It’s a very old problem that many physicists — including Planck, Einstein and Boltzmann — tackled early on and laid the foundations for the development of quantum mechanics.”
A large body of previous work has shown that structuring objects with nanoscale features can enhance absorption and emission, effectively trapping photons in a tiny hall of mirrors. But no one had defined the fundamental limits of the possible, leaving open major questions about how to assess a design.
No longer confined to brute-force trial and error, the new level of control will allow engineers to optimize designs mathematically for a wide range of future applications. The work is especially important in technologies like solar panels, optical circuits and quantum computers.
Currently, the team’s findings are specific to thermal sources of light, like the sun or like an incandescent bulb. But the researchers hope to generalize the work further to agree with other light sources, like LEDs, fireflies, or arcing bolts of electricity.
The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, the Cornell Center for Materials Research, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
A new study led by Simon Fraser University’s Dean of Science, Prof. Paul Kench, has discovered new evidence of sea-level variability in the central Indian Ocean.
The study, which provides new details about sea levels in the past, concludes that sea levels in the central Indian Ocean have risen by close to a meter in the last two centuries.
Prof. Kench says, “We know that certain types of fossil corals act as important recorders of past sea levels. By measuring the ages and the depths of these fossil corals, we are identifying that there have been periods several hundred years ago that the sea level has been much lower than we thought in parts of the Indian Ocean.”
He says understanding where sea levels have been historically, and what happens as they rise, will provide greater insights into how coral reefs systems and islands may be able to respond to the changes in sea levels in the future.
Underscoring the serious threat posed to coastal cities and communities in the region, the ongoing study, which began in 2017, further suggests that if such acceleration continues over the next century, sea levels in the Indian Ocean will have risen to their highest level ever in recorded history.
The solar wind that pummels the Earth’s dayside magnetosphere causes turbulence, like air over a wing. Physicists at Rice University have developed new methods to characterize how that influences space weather on the nightside.
It’s rarely quiet up there. The solar wind streams around the Earth and cruises off into the night, but closer to the planet, parcels of plasma get caught in the turbulence and sink back toward Earth. That turbulence causes big ripples in the plasma.
With the help of several spacecraft and computational tools developed over the past decade, Rice scientists led by space plasma physicist Frank Toffoletto can now assess the ripples, called buoyancy waves, caused by the turbulence.
These waves, or oscillations, have been observed in the thin layer of magnetic flux along the base of the plasma sheet that tails away from the planet’s nightside. The Rice theory is the first to quantify their motion.
The theory adds another element to the Rice Convection Model, an established, decades-in-the-making algorithm that helps scientists calculate how the inner and middle magnetosphere will react to events like solar storms that threaten satellites, communications and power grids on Earth.
The new paper in JGR Space Physics by Toffoletto, emeritus professor Richard Wolf and former graduate student Aaron Schutza starts by describing the bubbles — “bursty bulk flows” predicted by Wolf and Rice alumnus Duane Pontius in 1990 — that fall back toward Earth through the plasma tail.
Functionally, they’re the reverse of buoyant air bubbles that bob up and down in the atmosphere because of gravity, but the plasma bubbles respond to magnetic fields instead. The plasma bubbles lose most of their momentum by the time they touch down at the theoretical, filamentlike boundary between the inner plasma sheet and the protective plasmasphere.
That sets the braking boundary into a gentle oscillation, which lasts mere minutes before stabilizing again. Toffoletto compared the motion to a plucked guitar string that quickly returns to equilibrium.
“The fancy name for this is the eigenmode,” he said. “We’re trying to figure out the low-frequency eigenmodes of the magnetosphere. They haven’t been studied very much, though they appear to be associated with dynamic disruptions to the magnetosphere.”
Toffoletto said the Rice team has in recent years discovered through simulations that the magnetosphere doesn’t always respond in a linear fashion to the steady driving force of the solar wind.
“You get all kinds of wave modes in the system,” he said, explaining that bursty bulk flows are one such mode. “Every time one of these things come flying in, when they hit the inner region, they basically reach their equilibrium point and oscillate with a certain frequency. Finding that frequency is what this paper is all about.”
As measured by the THE MIS spacecraft, the periods of these waves are a few minutes and the amplitudes are often bigger than the Earth.
“Understanding the natural frequency of the system and how it behaves can tell us a lot about the physical properties of plasma on the night side, its transport and how it might be related to the aurora,” he said. “A lot of these phenomena show up in the ionosphere as auroral structures, and we don’t understand where these structures come from.”
Toffoletto said the models suggest buoyant waves may play a role in the formation of the ring current that consists of charged particles that flow around Earth as well as magnetospheric substorms, all of which are connected to the aurora.
He said that no more than a decade ago, many magnetosphere simulations “would look very uniform, kind of boring.” The Rice group is collaborating with the Applied Physics Laboratory to include the Rice Convection Model in a newly developed global magnetosphere code called “Gamera,” named after the fictional Japanese monster.
“Now, with such higher-resolution models and much better numerical methods, these structures are starting to show up in the simulations,” Toffoletto said. “This paper is one little piece of the puzzle we’re putting together of how the system behaves. All this plays a big role in understanding how space weather works and how that in turn impacts technology, satellites and ground-based systems.”
The Rice Convection Model itself was refreshed this month in a paper led by recent Rice alumnus Jian Yang, now an associate professor of Earth and space sciences at the Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China.
Lithium-ion batteries are notorious for developing internal electrical shorts that can ignite a battery’s liquid electrolytes, leading to explosions and fires. Engineers at the University of Illinois have developed a solid polymer-based electrolyte that can self-heal after damage — and the material can also be recycled without the use of harsh chemicals or high temperatures.
The new study, which could help manufacturers produce recyclable, self-healing commercial batteries, is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
As lithium-ion batteries go through multiple cycles of charge and discharge, they develop tiny, branchlike structures of solid lithium called dendrites, the researchers said. These structures reduce battery life, cause hotspots and electrical shorts, and sometimes grow large enough to puncture the internal parts of the battery, causing explosive chemical reactions between the electrodes and electrolyte liquids.
There has been a push by chemists and engineers to replace the liquid electrolytes in lithium-ion batteries with solid materials such as ceramics or polymers, the researchers said. However, many of these materials are rigid and brittle resulting in poor electrolyte-to-electrode contact and reduced conductivity.
“Solid ion-conducting polymers are one option for developing nonliquid electrolytes,” said Brian Jing, a materials science and engineering graduate student and study co-author. “But the high-temperature conditions inside a battery can melt most polymers, again resulting in dendrites and failure.”
Past studies have produced solid electrolytes by using a network of polymer strands that are cross-linked to form a rubbery lithium conductor. This method delays the growth of dendrites; however, these materials are complex and cannot be recovered or healed after damage, Jing said.
To address this issue, the researchers developed a network polymer electrolyte in which the cross-link point can undergo exchange reactions and swap polymer strands. In contrast to linear polymers, these networks actually get stiffer upon heating, which can potentially minimize the dendrite problem, the researchers said. Additionally, they can be easily broken down and resolidified into a networked structure after damage, making them recyclable, and they restore conductivity after being damaged because they are self-healing.
“This new network polymer also shows the remarkable property that both conductivity and stiffness increase with heating, which is not seen in conventional polymer electrolytes,” Jing said.
“Most polymers require strong acids and high temperatures to break down,” said materials science and engineering professor and lead author Christopher Evans. “Our material dissolves in water at room temperature, making it a very energy-efficient and environmentally friendly process.”
The team probed the conductivity of the new material and found its potential as an effective battery electrolyte to be promising, the researchers said, but acknowledge that more work is required before it could be used in batteries that are comparable to what is in use today.
“I think this work presents an interesting platform for others to test,” Evans said. “We used a very specific chemistry and a very specific dynamic bond in our polymer, but we think this platform can be reconfigured to be used with many other chemistries to tweak the conductivity and mechanical properties.”
Domesticated rice has fatter seed grains with higher starch content than its wild rice relatives — the result of many generations of preferential seed sorting and sowing. But even though rice was the first crop to be fully sequenced, scientists have only documented a few of the genetic changes that made rice into a staple food for more than half the world’s population.
New research now finds that a sizeable amount of domestication-related changes in rice reflects selection on traits that are determined by a portion of the genome that does not transcribe proteins.
Xiaoming Zheng, a biologist with the Institute of Crop Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, is the first author of newly published paper in Science Advances, “Genome-wide analyses reveal the role of non-coding variation in complex traits during rice domestication.” Qingwen Yang and Jun Liu, also from the Institute of Crop Sciences in the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and Kenneth M. Olsen from Washington University in St. Louis are also communicating authors of this paper.
Noncoding RNAs are suspected to play very important roles in regulating growth and development, but they’re only beginning to be characterized.
“Despite almost 20 years of genomics and genome-enabled studies of crop domestication, we still know remarkably little about the genetic basis of most domestication traits in most crop species,” said Olsen, professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University.
“Early studies tended to go for ‘low-hanging fruit’ — simple traits that were controlled by just one or two genes with easily identifiable mutations,” Olsen said. “Far more difficult is figuring out the more subtle developmental changes that were critical for a lot of the changes during crop domestication.
“This study offers a step in that direction, by examining one regulatory mechanism that has been critical for modulating domestication-associated changes in rice grain development.”
Diversity of traits
A large proportion of the DNA in the chromosomes of many plants and animals comprises genes that do not encode instructions for making proteins — up to 98% of the genome for any given species. But this genetic information is poorly understood. Some scientists have called this stuff the ‘dark matter’ of the genome, or even dismissed it as ‘junk DNA’ — but it appears to have played an out sized role in rice development.
In this study, researchers found that key changes that occurred during rice domestication more than 9,000 years ago could be tied back to molecules called long-noncoding RNAs (lnc RNAs), a class of RNA molecules with a length of more than 200 nucleotides.
About 36 percent of the genetic information recorded in the rice genome can be tracked back to non coding regions, but more than 50 percent of the diversity of traits important to agriculture is linked to these same areas, the researchers found.
“For the first time, the lnc RNAs in noncoding region of cultivated rice and wild rice was deeply annotated and described,” Zheng said.
“Our transgenic experiments and population genetic analysis convincingly demonstrate that selection on lnc RNAs contributed to changes in domesticated rice grain quality by altering the expression of genes that function in starch synthesis and grain pigmentation,” she said.
Working with several hundred rice samples and more than 260 Gbs of sequence, the researchers employed sensitive detection techniques to quantify and robustly track lnc RNA transcription in rice. The new study validates some previously identified lnc RNAs and also provides new information on previously un described molecules.
This new study adds fuel to speculation by some researchers that most adaptive differences between groups of plants or animals are due to changes in gene regulation, and not protein evolution.
“Based on our findings, we propose that selection on lnc RNAs could prove to be a broader mechanism by which genome-wide patterns of gene expression can evolve in many species,” Zheng said.
This rice study also opens eyes and possibly new doors for producing new crops and grains through precision breeding.
The Earth’s inner core is hot, under immense pressure and snow-capped, according to new research that could help scientists better understand forces that affect the entire planet.
The snow is made of tiny particles of iron — much heavier than any snowflake on Earth’s surface — that fall from the molten outer core and pile on top of the inner core, creating piles up to 200 miles thick that cover the inner core.
The image may sound like an alien winter wonderland. But the scientists who led the research said it is akin to how rocks form inside volcanoes.
“The Earth’s metallic core works like a magma chamber that we know better of in the crust,” said Jung-Fu Lin, a professor in the Jackson School of Geosciences at The University of Texas at Austin and a co-author of the study.
The study is available online and will be published in the print edition of the journal JGR Solid Earth on December 23.
Youjun Zhang, an associate professor at Sichuan University in China, led the study. The other co-authors include Jackson School graduate student Peter Nelson; and Nick Dygert, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee who conducted the research during a postdoctoral fellowship at the Jackson School.
The Earth’s core can’t be sampled, so scientists study it by recording and analyzing signals from seismic waves (a type of energy wave) as they pass through the Earth.
However, aberrations between recent seismic wave data and the values that would be expected based on the current model of the Earth’s core have raised questions. The waves move more slowly than expected as they passed through the base of the outer core, and they move faster than expected when moving through the eastern hemisphere of the top inner core.
The study proposes the iron snow-capped core as an explanation for these aberrations. The scientist S.I. Braginkskii proposed in the early 1960s that a slurry layer exists between the inner and outer core, but prevailing knowledge about heat and pressure conditions in the core environment quashed that theory. However, new data from experiments on core-like materials conducted by Zhang and pulled from more recent scientific literature found that crystallization was possible and that about 15% of the lowermost outer core could be made of iron-based crystals that eventually fall down the liquid outer core and settle on top of the solid inner core.
“It’s sort of a bizarre thing to think about,” Dygert said. “You have crystals within the outer core snowing down onto the inner core over a distance of several hundred kilometers.”
The researchers point to the accumulated snow pack as the cause of the seismic aberrations. The slurry-like composition slows the seismic waves. The variation in snow pile size — thinner in the eastern hemisphere and thicker in the western — explains the change in speed.
“The inner-core boundary is not a simple and smooth surface, which may affect the thermal conduction and the convections of the core,” Zhang said.
The paper compares the snowing of iron particles with a process that happens inside magma chambers closer to the Earth’s surface, which involves minerals crystalizing out of the melt and glomming together. In magma chambers, the compaction of the minerals creates what’s known as “cumulate rock.” In the Earth’s core, the compaction of the iron contributes to the growth of the inner core and shrinking of the outer core.
And given the core’s influence over phenomena that affects the entire planet, from generating its magnetic field to radiating the heat that drives the movement of tectonic plates, understanding more about its composition and behavior could help in understanding how these larger processes work.
Bruce Buffet, a geosciences professor at the University of California, Berkley who studies planet interiors and who was not involved in the study, said that the research confronts longstanding questions about the Earth’s interior and could even help reveal more about how the Earth’s core came to be.
“Relating the model predictions to the anomalous observations allows us to draw inferences about the possible compositions of the liquid core and maybe connect this information to the conditions that prevailed at the time the planet was formed,” he said. “The starting condition is an important factor in Earth becoming the planet we know.”


The role Islamic schools play in contributing towards pupils’ British Muslim Identity in multicultural Britain
Language is generally considered to be one of the most amazing human attributes. Namely language appears to be an inalienable precondition for the origination and formation of society, full-grown communication process and any sort of further development. The moment some idea or concept is born in the human mind, it is given a certain name (Hodge and Kress, 1993, pp. 1-3). Thus, it is impossible to operate any ideas or notional categories without their placing in the body of language, or without language itself. Thereby, language plays a central role in the educational process. It proves to be the system of storage of information, the tool for explaining or formulation of certain knowledge and the device for building further logical investigations (Hodge and Kress, 1993, pp. 1-3; Hymes, 1974, p. 19). According to Krishna (2005:358), “language plays a critical role in the formation of culture through its role in knowledge creation and application, flow of information, and functioning of the organization”. Hence, being such a significant precondition of various human activities, language proves to be of primary importance for education in all age groups, social backgrounds and cultural communities.
The current work can be identified as leading to a qualitative research. As it was described by Flyvbjerg (2006, pp. 219-245), a qualitative research aims to obtain grounded understanding of human behaviour and the preconditions that determine this way of behaviour. Again, language will play a central role in quantitative research. The form and the idea of this research requires firstly oral collection of the necessary data, and, secondly presentation and analysis of the gathered material in the written form (Green and Thorogood, 2004, pp. 80-82). In qualitative research, language appears to be a method because it is the strategy and the way by which the data is collected. Moreover, language used for the storage of information and characteristics. It can even be stated that language is data itself (Green and Thorogood, 2004, pp. 80-82; Hyde, 2000, pp. 82-90). Thus, the role of language in qualitative research or the qualitative method of investigation can be hardly overestimated. It is the sign system, tool and method that create the context and framework for this research and bring conclusions.
The described research will be carried out relying on discourse analysis. Wood and Kroger (2000, p. 2) define the methods of discourse analysis as “based on talking and, of course, writing”. In the other words, “discourse analysis” can be understood as a universal term embracing a group of approaches of analysing oral or written speech (Wood and Kroger, 2000, p. 2). The chosen aspect of discourse analysis would be narrative analysis. Narrative analysis can be better applied for the research process in order to increase the sensitivity of the researcher (theoretical layouts can be illustrated but not validated by it). “A common focus of narrative analysis is the exploration of ethical, moral, and cultural ambiguities” (Alvarez and Urla, 2002:38).
Thus, the narrative analysis will be rather useful for studying the narratives of both students and teachers in Islamic schools in order to estimate their contribution to the British Muslim identity in multicultural Britain. This way, the structure of the current research project will be as follows. The first section will briefly describe the research methodology and present the theoretical framework for the future analysis. The second section will explain the reasons and rationale for choosing this methodology. It will also present the structure and the scenario of conducting narrative analysis in details. The third section will discuss conclusions.
1 Theoretical and Methodological Framework
The chosen methodological framework for the future detailed analysis is the following. Epistemological position for the current study is interpretivism. This concept would mean that when conducting research the respondents are taken as “social actors” playing various social or even ethno-social roles in the society. The real meaning of their narratives will be interpreted from the meaning they give their roles (Saunders et al, 2007, p. 105). Indeed, specific features and certain patterns of behaviour can be explained by the belonging to an ethno-social group.
Constructivism appears to be a similar ontological position stating that various social phenomena and their meaning are, to a certain degree, dependent on the above mentioned “social actors”. This position implies that social phenomena are not originated only by means of interaction in the society, but they are constantly reconsidered and revised (Grix, 2002, pp. 4-5; Mills et al, 2006; Klotz and Lynch, 2007, p. 309-311). From this described theoretical standpoint the ethnographic case study of two Islamic schools in the city of Leicester will be conducted. The peculiarity about choosing the schools will be the following: one of them is to be state funded, the other private funded. Narratives of various age and social groups from these Islamic schools will be analysed (four male and four female students aged 12-14; 2 male and 2 female teachers from each school).
2. Discourse Analysis: Aspect, Approaches, Structure, Linguistic Phenomena and Similar Cases
The choice for the earlier discussed methodology can be rationally explained. Indeed, both methodological positions (interpretivism and constructivism) view the human behaviour as dependant on the “social roles” these humans play. Or it can be specified in the case of the current study “ethno-social roles”. The question may be put the following way: what is national identification? On the basement of inborn characteristics a person ranks himself to a certain national community. The moment he starts to associate himself with an ethnic group, the individual begins to follow some characteristic or typical rules of that group (Smith, 1993, pp. 99-123). Indeed, it does not matter what national group a person belongs to in accordance with his appearance or race. If he does not associate himself with that group, or even dislikes this group, he would not play the role of that group’s member (Smith, 1993, pp. 99-123).
This way, the chosen epistemological and ontological positions serve a very good precondition for the research. The analysis should lead to the estimation of the role of Islamic schools in building British Muslim identity in multicultural Britain. Considering oneself to be a member of the Islamic ethnic group means playing the role of the member of this national community. Playing the role means “following the standards” (Cameron, 1999, pp. 125-143). From this standpoint, the identity denotes certain distinction on the cultural level.
The methodology implies investigation of the respondents’ narrations from both state funded and privately funded Islamic schools. This step proves to be necessary to make the results more objective. The point is that privately funded schools may be more interested in following national Islamic traditions and original customs. Usually they can be maintained by individuals or nationally-coloured organisations. Thus, there may be a more intensive tendency for the renewal of national religion and cultural traditions. State funded Islamic schools theoretically have a more formal attitude towards Muslim customs. However, this peculiarity is not a regular occurrence and the situation may differ from school to school (Ramadan, 2004, p. 131).
Conducting the analysis only on private funded or state funded school would limit the analysis and lower its objectiveness. Another very important issue for the discussed research is the topic of the narrative. It should not be too nationally oriented. However, it should not be absolutely ethnically colourless. These conditions would be necessary for reasonable potential frequency of national words and expressions (metaphors and other stylistic devices).
Choosing discourse analysis for the future investigation appears to be rather rational too. As it is known, writing, talking, discourse and conversational are the main objects of the discourse analysis (Harris, 1952a, pp. 1-30). British Muslim identity may be expressed in various forms: clothing, cuisine, language, etc. And to all of these manifestations Islamic schools make contribution. However, all the forms of national manifestation will be reflected in language. As it was already described, language proves to be a universal device of storage of various cultural phenomena. Thus, by investigating the impact of Islamic schools on the language level, in some degree other levels will be investigated too. To analyse speech, discourse analysis should be chosen, because it is one of the objects of this analysis. These characteristics of discourse analysis are explained by the fact that it positions itself on the intersection of numerous relative to the objective of the research disciplines, such as human geography, translation studies, international relations and social psychology (Harris, 1952b, pp. 474-494).
The choice of narrative analysis as the aspect of discourse analysis is explained by the fact that namely this method focuses on the manner in which individuals complete stories and narratives. Through it their interpretation of the world is obtained. This way, narratives are viewed as social products created in the framework of their ethnic, cultural and social locations (Riessman, 2001, pp. 695-710). As it was stated by Labov (1972, pp. 354-396) in his seminal work, narrative discourse enables to investigate cross-cultural perspective. Again, narrative analysis would serve a perfect tool for evaluating the impact of Islamic culture through nationally-oriented schools. It may be concluded that both discourse analysis and narrative analysis fit the type of the collected data and correspond with the aims of the further investigations.
There are various kinds of approaches to discourse analysis, such as functional grammar, emergent grammar, rhetoric, stylistic, interactional, ethnographical, conversational analysis, variation analysis, etc. (Maat and Lentz, 1997, pp. 59-71; Brown and Yule, 1983, pp. 4-19). Depending on the representational form of the narrative (whether it is in the oral or written form), the choice of the approaches will be determined. The oral form of representation would appear more striking and vivid. This way, using the oral form rhetoric approach and ethnography of communication approach may be applied (Bhatia et al, 2007, pp. 1-3). Rhetoric approach will deal with specific pronunciation, some original intonation patterns and pauses. Ethnography of communication is a broader notion that would view the general Muslim understanding of the communicative process. In spite of the fact that oral narration is a more vivid form, it will be presented only once, while the written narration may be carefully analysed and read many times over. This could pose a difficulty that may be solved by voice recording. Besides, the approaches of stylistics, functional grammar and cognitive psychology should be applied (Bhatia et al, 2007, pp. 1-3).
Narrative structure proves to be rather important for determining the influence of Islamic schools on British Muslims. To be more precise it is important for estimating their real connection with national culture and traditions. Narrative structure is the succession or the order of events in which the narrative is presented to a listener or a reader. Moreover, the belonging to a certain genre will also give some additional information about the speaker (Labov, 1980). The following example may illustrate the connection between the genre and structure of narration and certain national identity. When considering European fairy tales and the tales of Muslim world, several peculiarities may be noticed. In spite of the fact that the genre will be the same (fairy tale), differences and national identity might be noticeable. A similar situation may be observed in the interviewing of students and teachers of the discussed Muslim schools. It can be assumed that this difference will not be as striking as in the case of tales. However, some degree of ethnic colouring may be expected.
The set of all the possible stages in the generic structure of a narrative will look the following way: abstract, orientation, complication, evaluation, resolution and coda (Muntigl, 2004, pp. 109-110). The narration of the respondents from Islamic schools should be evaluated from the standpoint of the generic structure. It may be suggested that not all of the narrative will contain the above stages of generic structure. This feature has nothing to do with ethnic identity realised through the oral narrative. The point is that certain stories may be built according to an original and non-standard plan.
The usage of some lexical and grammatical categories in the narrative may hint at certain regularities. For example, according to Schiffrin (1994, p. 81), the use of the present tense may be ambiguous. It can be representative of either habitual for the predicate or repeated action, or historical present tense, which is usually exploited for narrative events. Tannen (2007, p. 39) argues that the use of constructed dialogue may also give valuable information about the speaker. As it is broadly known, the existing ways of interpretation of speech in the narration, such as direct speech, direct quotation, reported speech and indirect speech also witness the speaker’s identification with what he is discussing. Narrative peaks marked in the syntax by the means of repetition and paraphrasing are also important for establishing the speaker’s degree of involvement in the narrative (Fleischman, 1990, p. 54). All these lexical, grammatical and syntactical phenomena will serve as important indicators for evaluating national Muslim identity of the students and teachers in Islamic schools. However, it does not mean that the set of the discussed signs will be absolutely different from those of British native settlers. These phenomena appear to be breaking points of language where differences can be observed.
Among the advantages and disadvantages of the narrative aspect of discourse analysis the following should be mentioned. A vivid advantage is that narrative analysis is based on semi-structured interview, but not on questionnaires. This feature can be considered an advantage, because a questionnaire considerably limits space for revealing ethnical identity. Semi-structured interview is conducted in a natural situation and atmosphere; and the respondent does not feel that he is tested or examined (Toolan, 1988). Moreover, it generates an unconventional situation that is broader than answers to the list of questions. One more advantage is that usually a real life story is involved in the conversation. The researcher does not say much while the interview is ongoing and positions himself as an attentive listener, giving the opportunity for a respondent to speak naturally. However, all narratives are co-constructed (Toolan, 1988).
Similar discourse analysis was conducted by Wodak and Meyer (2001). It investigated the national identity of Romanian immigrants in Austria. Basing this on the group of analyses (narrative analysis was also among them), these scholars studied the ways Romanian identity became apparent and developed (Wodak and Meyer, 2001). As in the case of the current research the attention was given to specifics of nomination of various articles and objects, interlingual connections, etc. The identity was revealed to a considerable degree.
It may be concluded that discourse analysis and its aspect, narrative analysis, appear to be quite reasonable for the evaluation of the contribution of Islamic schools to British Muslim identity. Relying on other investigations conducted by means of discourse analysis in similar context, it is expected that phonetic, grammatical and lexical peculiarities of Islamic ethnic group’s language will be revealed in this case too. It may be supposed that the structure of narratives, the described situation and theuse of “culture- or religion-coloured” words will show a certain degree of Muslim identity in multicultural Britain. However, there can arise several limitations: the respondents from state funded schools may be less involved into the observing of national traditions and customs. And, besides, the presentation of narrative will take place only once, meaning the researcher give undivided attention and would be better served trying to record the narration.
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Green, J., Thorogood, N., 2004. Qualitative methods for health research. SAGE, pp. 80-82.
Grix, J., 2002. Approaches to the study of contemporary Germany: research methodologies in German studies. Continuum International Publishing Group, pp. 4-5.
Harris, Zellig S., 1952a. ‘Discourse Analysis. Language’, Volume: 28, No. 1, pp. 1-30.
Harris, Zellig S., 1952b. ‘Discourse Analysis: A sample text’. Language Volume: 28, No. 4, pp. 474-494.
Hodge, R.I.V., Kress G., 1993. Language as ideology. Edition: 2, Routledge, Lonodon, pp. 1-3.
Hyde, K.F., 2000. ‘Recognising deductive processes in qualitative research’. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Volume: 3, Issue: 2, pp. 82-90.
Hymes, D.H., 1974. Foundations in sociolinguistics: an ethnographic approach. Edition: 2, University of Pennsylvania Press, p. 19.
Klotz, A., Lynch, C., 2007. ‘Strategies for Research in Constructivist International Relations’. Journal of International Relations and Development 2008, Volume 11, pp. 309-311.
Krishna, S.D., 2005. ‘The value of language: concept, perspectives, and policies’. Corporate Communications: An International Journal. Volume: 10, Number: 4, pp. 358-382.
Labov, W., 1972. The transformation of experience in narrative syntax. Language in the inner city: Studies in Black English vernacular. University of Philadelphia Press, Philadelphia, PA, pp. 354-396.
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Maat, H.P., Lentz, L., 1997. Discourse Analysis and Evaluation: Functional Approaches. Rodopi, pp. 59-71.
Mills, J., Bonner, A., and Francis, K., 2006. ‘The development of constructivist grounded theory’. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, Volume: 5, No. 1, Article 3.
Muntigl, P., 2004. Narrative counselling: social and linguistic processes of change. John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 109-110.
Ramadan, T., 2004. Western Muslims and the future of Islam. Oxford University Press US, p. 131.
Riessman, C. K., 2001. Analysis of personal narratives. Handbook of Interview Research. Sage Publications, London, pp. 695-710.
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We all have an obligation to undertake this inquiry to better understand our individual identities and our collective identity as Canadians sharing this land.
These materials and ideas are part of this journey.
May we find joy in this journey. May our youngest students see vibrant communities and strong people first, before they are introduced to the darker sides of our Canadian history that we must all face if we are to reconcile and make peace with the past.
My grade 3 students are learning about soil. The first lesson I teach is a Smartboard lesson where I provide 7 reasons for soil. Here is the Smart Notebook file if you are a Smarboard user.
At the end of the lesson, students are given 8 pictures and are asked to retell the 7 key reasons for soil. Students who need more support get the pictures below because they have the sentences on them. Most of my students get the slides without the sentences.
Once students have these images in the camera roll, then we can open iMovie and bring these still images into a new iMovie project.
Next, have students use the microphone and record the main point for each picture.
Here is a link to examples:
YouTube Playlist of student work: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmteZ8LJoFVewE40Z3jFqERVoLFW_TkSG
What is Computational Thinking (CT)?
Mitch Resnick and Jeanette M. Wing are the two main people who best describe Computational Thinking (CT).
Mitch Resnick, Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab and creator of Scratch published this paper with Karen Brennan in 2012. Computational thinking has three main parts: Concepts, Practices, and Perspectives.
- Concepts are the actual computer science ideas.
- Practices are the ways of thinking and problem solving.
- Perspectives are beliefs about oneself and having a mindset that is open to being a computer scientist and/or thinking like a computer scientist.
Jeanette M. Wing, head of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, explains Computational Thinking in a 2006 article
Here are Wing’s everyday examples of people using computational thinking:
When your daughter goes to school in the morning, she puts in her backpack the things she needs for the day; that’s prefetching and caching.
When your son loses his mittens, you suggest he retrace his steps; that’s back- tracking.
At what point do you stop renting skis and buy yourself a pair?; that’s online algorithms.
How do Completely Automated Public Turing Test(s) to Tell Computers and Humans Apart, or CAPTCHAs, authenticate humans?; that’s exploiting the difficulty of solving hard AI problems to foil computing agents.
Prefetching and caching, back-tracking, algorithms, and solving AI problems are all computer science concepts. All this takes place in your daily life.
Wing suggests that computational thinking is not just about programming computers but thinking like a computer scientist. A computer scientist is a creative human problem solver that thinks with computers, not a boring human who tries to think like a computer, says Wing.
Who is Teaching Computational Thinking?
As coding and computational thinking have been written into curricula around the world, we are seeing people working to understand what it means. Here is a collection of sites and projects of people making sense of CT.
Coding and CT in the United Kingdom
Computing At School Barefoot (aka CAS Barefoot) is an project in England designed to support primary school teachers to understand and teach computational thinking. Here is how they define and explain CT.
What does it look like in UK schools?
Marc is a teacher and Apple Distinguished Educator in the UK has been integrating coding into his early years curriculum for several years. Here are some examples of the activities he has been doing:
Unplugged Activities February 2, 2015
Programming Apps for Early Years July 13, 2013
He also has a book Enabling Environments: A Computing Curriculum Beginning in Early Years
And, here is a blog post if you are looking for apps for teaching coding from a teacher in the UK.
Coding and CT in the United States
33 states allow students to count computer science courses toward high school graduation.
Google is conducting research in the area of computer science education in the US.
Google has also put together a course on Computational Thinking for Educators.
ISTE has compiled many resources to support educators and parents in understanding CT.
Coding and CT in British Columbia, Canada
British Columbia has recently launched a new curriculum that explicitly includes coding and computational thinking. Coding and CT are found within the new Applied Design, Skills and Technologies (ADST) curriculum, last updated June 27, 2016.
Questions I have about Coding and Computational Thinking:
- Is it a requirement to teach coding in order to teach Computational Thinking?
- In Ontario, should we be teaching computational thinking and coding even if it is not in the curriculum?
- If we decide to teach coding and CT in Ontario, do we have to cut back on something else? If so, what are we cutting back on?
- Many subjects have habits of mind that we are trying to develop in students. In math we want to develop powerful math thinkers, in social studies we want critical thinkers, in language we want to be able to express ideas in sensitive and culturally responsive ways. How does focusing on CT help or hinder these existing habits of mind and ways of thinking that we are already trying to emphasize the in the existing curriculum?
- Computational thinking and algorithmic thinking are all about logic and being highly systematic. Dr. Donna Kotsopoulos has asked whether this is counter to what we have been saying about divergent and creative thinking relating to 21st Century skills. Does computational thinking run in opposition to 21st Century learning ideals? In what ways does computational thinking compliment or detract from the 6Cs: character, citizenship, communication, critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity?
- How often do we lead coding activities that teach coding concepts like sequencing and debugging but do not go deeper into thinking and beliefs? How do we go beyond the pure computer science concepts and into deep thinking?
You should run a Google CS First Coding Club for kids. It’s easier than you think. Here’s what I learned from running a club at Stoney Creek Public School.
First, listen to what my students had to say about the club:
What is Google CS First?
CS stands for Computer Science. Google CS First is a computer science club that is run through Google with everything you need. Google has created a portal that you and students will log into that keeps everything organized and holds all the content. There are 9 different themes like storytelling, animation, fashion and sports. Each club takes about 10 hours. Students will code using Scratch.
Here is a video to welcome you to Google CS First. Click on the image below:
How to get started?
Go to Google CS First and sign in or click on “Start a Club Now.” Click on the “Start a New Club” button and follow the prompts. It takes 5 minutes and you will:
- Pick a theme
- Create a schedule
- Order materials (US only) or print materials
- Bonus: Find a Guru which is someone who will help you during the sessions. I was lucky to get a parent from my community who is a developer for IBM.
Promote your club by putting up posters that are provided once you have picked your theme. Consider having an information meeting where you can show the slides below. Be sure to personalize and edit the slides before the meeting. Click on the image to see the Google Slides:
Tip: Be sure to think carefully about the schedule. Do not just put in random dates. This is because the activities are linked to the dates. When students login, they will get the activity assigned for that date. So if your first club meets on Monday, December 12th and if you correctly entered December 12th in the schedule then students will login and get the Day 1 activities. If you get these wrong, kids will be looking at the wrong activities.
What does a typical club meeting look like?
My club ran for 8 weeks on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school for 20 students in grades 4-8. We met from 3:30-4:45pm. Students came to the library and logged into a Chromebook or desktop computer with the Google CS First username and password provided by the club (these are generated automatically and can be reused if kids join another club). Once all the coders had arrived, here is what the day looked like:
- Showcase Selector: Two activities get randomly selected at the end of the last club meeting. We start each time with looking at two students’ Scratch projects.
- Self-Paced Learning: Students then work at their own pace watching videos and working in Scratch. The leader and guru (the adults running the club) circulate to help students.
- Wrap Up Video: We would end the club by collectively watching the Wrap Up video. Every day has a video that recaps the key computer science concepts and relates those concepts to the real world and real people’s jobs. We would watch these as a group, though you could have kids watch on their own too.
- Showcase Selector: The last task is to do the Showcase Selector to pick two projects to kick off the next club meeting.
3 Tips for Running a Successful Coding Club:
1) Manage Student Expectations
Many students came to club expectations that they would learn how to make an app or become hackers. One of my club members was on HackerTyper.com instead of working through the activities. It is important to set reasonable expectations so students aren’t disappointed that they aren’t taking over the Internet by the end of the first club meeting. Explain the goals and what computer science concepts will be taught up front.
2) Get a Guru or it’s all you!
Get a Guru! Having another adult there was so helpful. Having another adult with a background in computer science was tremendous. The students were able to get a lot more out of the club because Mr. Rozon was able to explain what they were doing and why it was important.
If you can’t get someone to help who has experience in coding, make sure to do all the activities ahead of time.
3) Emphasize Collaboration
One thing I did not like about the Google CS First Coding club was that it felt a lot like I was supervising some sort of call centre. I looked out over a library full of students all wearing headsets and plugged into computers. It was quiet and students largely worked alone. Next time, I want to emphasize more collaboration and team work. I want to force everyone to stop every 10 minutes and talk to the person next to them. I want to have more time to share more projects and get students to give each other feedback.
How to give feedback on Scratch projects?
Helping students improve their code can be tricky. They can make their projects more complex by using more sprites and fewer more powerful blocks, but even this advice doesn’t always work.
Check out Dr. Scratch. This is a website that analyzes projects. You enter in the URL associated with the Scratch project and paste it into Dr. Scratch. Dr. Scratch provides feedback on the program, like this:
**Updated January 4 2017 with information about artsy.net and seeing more Miro art.**
This blog post includes a 5 minute video, a lesson plan and examples of student that show integration of visual art curriculum and Computational Thinking in my grade 3 classroom.
Thank you to Bea Leiderman, Carolyn Skibba, Douglas Kian and my experience at the Apple Institute in Berlin for this idea. Using Keynote and Kandinsky is Bea’s idea. It’s brilliant. Bea, Carolyn and I went to the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin where we saw Kandinsky’s work. We also had in depth workshops on Keynote. The combination of these experiences at the Apple Institute in Berlin lead to this idea and a project. Bea, Douglas and I are currently working on a project where we are investigating how these ideas of art, coding, and Computational Thinking might fit together. This is the early stage of this team project.
This video gives an overview of the lesson and a chance to peak inside my grade 3 classroom:
Visual Arts Expectations
These are the expectations from the Ontario Arts Curriculum that apply to this lesson:
Elements of Design:
• line: variety of line (e.g., thick, thin, dotted)
• shape and form: composite shapes; symmetrical and asymmetrical shapes and forms in both the human-made environment and the natural world
Principles of Design:
• variety: slight variations on a major theme; strong contrasts (e.g., use of different lines, shapes, values, and colours to create interest)
Creating and Presenting:
D1.1 create two- and three-dimensional works of art that express personal feelings and ideas inspired by the environment or that have the community as their subject
D1.2 demonstrate an understanding of compo – sition, using principles of design to create narrative art works or art works on a theme or topic
D1.4 use a variety of materials, tools, and techniques to respond to design challenges
Reflecting Responding and Analysing:
D2.2 explain how elements and principles of design are used to communicate meaning or understanding in their own and others’ art work
Exploring Forms and Cultural Contexts:
D3.2 demonstrate an awareness of a variety of works of art and artistic traditions from diverse communities, times, and places
Computational Thinking Goals
Karen Brennan and Mitch Resnick published a paper in 2012 describing a framework for teaching and assessing Computational Thinking (CT). I learned about this paper from a presentation by Julie Mueller at a CT event for teachers in August 2016. Based on this framework, these are the CT goals of this lesson:
Coding Concepts (actual computer science concepts): Sequencing and Debugging.
Practices (thinking habits): Being incremental and iterative, testing and debugging, reusing and remixing.
Perspective (beliefs about self): Using technology to express oneself.
- iPad with Swift Playgrounds, Keynote, iMovie, and Seesaw
- Mac with Keynote and iMovie (for the teacher)
- Example Keynote File (this is Bea’s creation): Example Miro Kandinsky Art.key
- Colouring Pages
- Pictures of Kandinsky and Miro Art
Source: Wassily Kandinsky [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Source: The Smile of the Flamboyant Wings, 1953 by Joan Miro
For more information on Joan Miro, check out this artsy.net site here. Thank you Louise L. for letting me know about this site.The page I have linked “provides visitors with Miró’s bio, over 400 of his works, exclusive articles, and up-to-date Miró exhibition listings. The page also includes related artists and categories, allowing viewers to discover art beyond our Miró page.” The rest of artsy.net is very much worth looking at also.
Teacher Prior Knowledge/Experience:
Student Prior Knowledge/Experience:
- Time to play with Keynote
Lesson Part 1:
Bell-work and Minds On:
As students enter the classroom, give them the option of taking either a Miro or Kandinsky colouring sheet. While the students settle and the teacher takes attendance, students colour the colouring sheets anyway they like.
Introducing the Project and Meeting Miro and Kandinsky:
Introduce the project by showing an example. This was created by Bea:
Next, show examples of Kandinsky and Miro works. Ideally show the same art work as the colouring pages and several more.
Explain how the art is abstract. Show how the example has movement that happens with just a single click.
Go over the success criteria:
Teach Art Concepts:
Have students compare their colouring pages to the actual artists’ works. Notice the main differences. Miro uses curved lines and primary colours whereas Kandinsky uses many different colours but has more geometric shapes and straight lines.
Teach Coding Concepts:
Introduce the coding concepts of sequence and debugging.
Working On It:
Now it’s up to students to create their own Kandinsky or Miro style art, or a mixture of both. You should model how to find shapes, lines, and how to add animation. There are two ways to animate and they are shown in the screenshots below.
Or, tap on the object you want to animate and tap on “Animate.”
Warning: Many students will figure out how to add the animations but won’t be able to link them together. I skip telling them this step so they are confronted with having to problem solve and debug. Once they have a need for this information, I show them how, though many figured it out on their own. The screenshot below shows how to link the animation. To sequence the animation tap on the object, then tap Animate, then tap the heading to get the options you see in the screenshot. Notice that you have to change “Start Build” from “On Tap” to “With Previous Build” or “After Previous Build.”
Once students have completed their projects ask them to share the Keynote files with you. You could do this by using Airdrop or having them save the Keynote file to Google Drive.
This is the end of the first part of the lesson. Now you will need some time to convert those Keynote files on your Mac to mP4. This part was time consuming. I wish I could export keynote files to iMovie on iPad. But, at this point you can only send a copy As Keynote, PDF, or PowerPoint.
Teacher’s Homework Prior to Part 2:
This part is not fun.
- Open each file in Keynote on a Mac and export the file as a Quicktime. (File>Export To>QuickTime…)
- Then, open each file in iMovie and export as MP4.
- Share these files with students. I used Google Drive.
Lesson Part 2:
Bell-work and Housekeeping:
Give students instructions to retrieve the MP4 file you created with the Keynote files. Ask students to open the file in iMovie. Review the success criteria.
Teach Art Concepts ~ Reflection:
Students use iMovie to create a voice over audio recording explaining why Miro or Kandinsky would like their art work. Review the key elements and principles of design for each artist. Give students time to do their reflection and upload videos to Seesaw.
Teach Coding Concepts:
When students are finished uploading their art reflection, have students use Apple Swift Playgrounds Learn to Code 1 to reinforce coding concepts. Have students work on the Command puzzles.
Examples of Student Work:
Here are examples of the animations prior to students adding reflections.
Here are examples including the reflection:
What is Swift Playgrounds?
Swift Playgrounds is a free app that runs on iPad, as long as that iPad is running iOS 10 or later. It’s such a large and powerful programming app that it needs the power of an iPad to run. This is why you can’t get it on a Chromebook and why it is not web-based.
What makes Swift Playgrounds special?
- It will help your students bridge the gap from block based coding to real programming. Working with block based programming tools like Blockly and Scratch is a great way to get started, but how do kids learn to write actual lines of code? Swift Playgrounds is designed to solve that problem. Users can tap on lines of code and drop them into the project or use a keyboard to actually type out commands.
- Swift Playgrounds is a modern programming language designed to be simple and intuitive yet powerful. You can develop an app completely on iPad using Swift Playground except for the final step of preparing the app for the app store using XCode.
- Swift Playgrounds works on both an iPad and Mac. With Swift Playgrounds, you can start a project on iPad and transition to using a Mac.
How to get Started
In Swift Playgrounds you can develop your own Playgrounds from a template (I found this too hard for me at this stage) or you can interact with pre-made Playbooks. Start by downloading Learn to Code 1, 2 and 3. Each one is a series of puzzles that you need to solve using lines of Swift code. The objective is to get Byte or one of the other avatars to move through a 3D world to collect gems, toggle switches and more.
You and your students will learn:
“the fundamentals of Swift, the programming language used to create apps for Apple products.”
Fun fact: I’m working through Learn to Code 1 and I have completed all the puzzles for the following computer science concepts: Commands, Functions, and For Loops. Next up: Conditional Code.
Are there lessons and resources?
Puzzles are grouped by computer science (CS) concepts such as Commands, Logical Operators and Conditionals. At the beginning of each set of puzzles there is a mini lesson explaining to the user the CS concept. In addition, there are free Teacher Guides and an iTunes Course that include complete lessons, videos and Keynote slides to help teachers guide students through learning computer science concepts in Swift Playgrounds. The Teacher Guides also include all the solutions to the puzzles.
The Learn to Code 3 Teacher Guide has just been released too:
Hour of Code
There is also a Facilitator’s Guide for the Hour of Code:
What do students say?
I ran a Swift Playgrounds coding club for 8 weeks and here is what some of my students had to say about learning with Swift Playgrounds:
What else can you do in Swift Playgrounds?
If you know about Tickle then you already know that you can use other apps to program robots and smart-toys. Just like Tickle, Swift Playgrounds can be used to interact and program robots. Wonder Workshop, the makers of Dash, have created a Playbook that works with Dash called Dashbook. Read about and download the Playbook here. Below is a screen shot of what the Dashbook looks like:
This is one of the activities I will be doing this week with my class to celebrate Computer Science week which is December 5-9 2016.
Going even Deeper with Swift
Computer Science Education Week is December 5th-9th. Classrooms across Ontario, throughout Canada and around the world will be diving into Hour of Code activities. As we do this, I would like to ask a couple of questions:
1) Should students learn to code?
2) Should teachers teach coding?
3) Is coding in the curriculum?
1) Should students learn to code?
What would your students say if asked? Members of my coding club share their thoughts in the video below (their answers may surprise you):
2) Should teachers teach coding?
Yes: We should use coding as a teaching tool if we think that it is the most powerful and efficient tool to teach a concept. John Hattie says that almost every single intervention and tool in education can be found to be effective. He encourages us to “Ask not what works, but what works best.” Listen to John Hattie’s keynote from the Education On Air event held on Friday, December 2nd 2016 (watch from 19:23-19:50) to hear these very words and other related ideas:
No: We should not be using coding as a teaching tool if there are other more effective ways to teach the curriculum expectations.
Yes: We should teach coding because it is an opportunity to develop computational thinking. Computational thinking is modern problem solving. George Polya’s four step problem solving method was introduced in 1945. Remember these four steps:
- Understand the Problem
- Make a Plan
- Carry out the Plan
- Look Back
This method for problem solving has been effective for teaching math for a long time, but will it be an effective model of problem solving for the future? The problem solving skills and habits of mind listed below are more fruitful for the current world we live in and the types of problems our students may face now and in the future:
Yes: By 2020, there will be over 200,000 unfilled jobs in Information Technology says ICTC. 50% of those jobs will be indirectly or directly related to app development. If one of the roles of education is to prepare our students for employment, then we should be giving all students opportunities to learn to code since students are likely to get work where they are either coding or working with a developer/programmer. It is up to us to ensure that all students, including ones in my video above, to understand that learning to code is relevant to their lives.
3) Is Coding in the curriculum?
The short factual answer is no.
If you look more creatively at the curriculum the answer might be yes.
The only place I found anything close was a reference to computational strategies, which is not the same as computational thinking.
However, teachers can use coding as a tool to teach the curriculum, just like you might use a chocolate sundae making activity to engage students and teach about procedural writing or you would use a ruler when working on measurement.
According to people like Dr. Julie Mueller, coding and computational thinking is “hiding in plain sight” in the curriculum. This is a perspective that was presented by Dr. Mueller and her research collaborator at a session in August 2016. The same thinking and problem solving that is foundational to science, math, inquiry in social studies is also foundational to computational thinking. Also, some have found that there are many expectations in many documents, such a math, that can be explicitly taught with and through coding. See for example Integrating Coding into the Elementary Curriculum by Lisa Floyd, secondary school teacher.
And, while coding is not in the curriculum, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has written an open letter to the minister of Education Mitzie Hunter encouraging educators to dip a toe, ever so gently, into computer coding:
Show Up and Refuse to Leave Keynote
Net Smart by Howard Rheingold
Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks by Nicholas Christakis
Presence by Amy Cuddy
Mindfulness by Ellen Langer
Websites/Apps: (Also mentioned in Demo Slam)
GoNoodle Body breaks and meditation for kids
The Hidden Influence of Social Networks TED Talk by Nicholas Christakis 21 minutes
Your body language shapes who you are TED Talk by Amy Cuddy
Let it Go ~ Think About it by GoNoodle
GAFE and iPad: BFFs 4EVR
This is a beginner session. Please bring an iPad.
View GAFE and iPad: BFFs 4EVR slides here or at bit.ly/gafeipadbff
Get your own copy of GAFE and iPad: BFFs 4EVR slides here
Get Google to Give you Time ~ Productivity Tips
This is an Intermediate session. A lap top or Chromebook is recommended.
View Productivity slides here or at bit.ly/GAFEgivemetime
Get your own copy of the Productivity slides here
Copies of Book Talk assessment (to use with Autocrat Mail Merge) here
Assessment and Pedagogical Documentation with iPad
This is a beginner session. Please bring an iPad.
View Assessment with iPad slides here or at goo.gl/ToU8rS (Case Sensitive)
Get your own copy of the Assessment with iPad slides here
Thank you Lucy Gray, Steve Hargadon and your colleagues for organizing this event. I suspect that Julie Lindsay also helped out, so thank you goes to you too Lindsay!
Thank you to these people for pushing my thinking.
This was my first visit to any kind of Global Education event. The day alternated between ignite talks and round table discussions. I have organized my notes to share some highlights from the day. You’ll get some quotes and key points from the ignite talks and round table discussions that resonated for me. I hope you enjoy them too.
His message was that Global Education should be for all students. He would like to see more people engaging in global education. He believes it should be integrated throughout the grades and curriculum. Key points from his talk were:
- Very few students have the opportunity to engage in global education despite the desire from the world of work to have workers that are globally engaged, aware and active.
- Global education should not be an add-on, it should be the lense through which we teach and learn everything at school.
- All teachers should teach from a global perspective.
- Technology allows us to bring global education to all.
- Digital badging can provide acknowledgement of skills developed in this space.
Lisa Parisi‘s ignite included these gems:
- “At first it was about the technology, then it became about collaboration and globalization.”
- “It is impossible to ignore the global issues we face each day.”
- “People study in schools about animals, climate and other things from other countries but almost never about the people.”
Round Table Conversation
Leader: Julie Lindsay
How do you support discussions between students from classrooms all over the world? Do you communicate asynchronously and synchronously. Do you have teacher directed conversations or less structured time for kids to be kids and just talk? Perhaps not surprisingly, the experienced people in this group believe that a balance of approaches is ideal. Due to time zone challenges, sometimes a synchronous conversation is not possible. Some teachers would have evening events at their school with students and families to Skype or Google Hangout with other classrooms. I thought this was a clever solution. As for the conversations, students need some unstructured time to be themselves and let a bond develop. However, participants in the discussion warned that you need to get past the “I like pizza, you like pizza” type discussion and into deeper topics.
Near the end of the time together, people talked about Student Personal Learning Networks. “Who do you have in your online network that you don’t see everyday?” Is a question Julie Lindsay thinks all students should be able to answer.
Terry Godwaldt from The Center for Global Education and Bob LaRocca from Primary Source were also part of this round table. These are new-to-me people with new-to-me organizations. Later in the day Terry talked about Taking It Global.
Near the end of the hour together, Julie talked about A Day in the Life. She says she puts students into a virtual classroom for synchronous communication. But also has students connecting asynchronously through various blogging and social media services. I love how she said: “It all works, *just*.” Time zones are a challenge, probably the biggest.
Someone in the group asked where to get in touch with people to get started. Here is what people shared:
Cultural Relay Fitness for young girls!
Julie Lindsay’s ignite was titled “Putting the Global into Online Collaboration.” She has lived and worked in six different countries. She is global, and yet, she has a dilemma with the term. Her supervisors for her doctoral program told her to drop the word ‘global’ from her dissertation. So, she has been thinking about what global really means. Is the use of the word ‘global’ acceptable, necessary or redundant when talking about learning online. Great question.
Favourite Quotes and thought bites:
- What does the word ‘global’ add to online learning.
- Is ‘global’ a mirage?
- What happens when we put ‘global’ into online collaboration? What is different? Is there a new understanding of time differences, cultural and daily life?
- Global is all-embracing and covering the entire world.
- ‘Global’ and affirmative action.
Julie proclaims that the ‘Global’ in ‘Online Global Collaboration’ is not redundant.
Then, she got ground level and practical by outlining the Norms of Online Global Collaboration:
- Being prepared to connect and communicate.
- Having a purpose shared outcomes.
- Paraphrase use clear common language.
- Perceive: ask for help and share knowledge.
- Participate and be visible online.
- Positive and encouraged DC, build empathy, assume best intentions.
- Produce. Productively co-create and encourage learners to compare, contrast and create.
- Be open to the potential and serendipitous learning that will happen if you let it.
Up next was Amy Shaffer from Connected World. She is intelligent and also quite darling. Her slides are here. “Do you consider yourself as a creator?” she asked right off the top. She believes that when you bush buttons and see things happen, that we then build faith in the world around us. She uses doorknobs as an example. The doorknob is a button you bush everyday, and it works every time. So you trust that it works. This is the idea behind The Wonderment. “It’s a space that gives kids that button to push” she says. A sense of belonging is important in working to make change. And this is the ethos behind The Wonderment.
Amy Shaffer wants to give kids a way to actively engage in their own world at their level. More great quotes from Amy:
- You can’t leave behind the possibility for genuine human interactions.
- The world is waiting and wanting to hear from our students.
- Education without action is like food without exercise.
Round Table Conversation
Topic: Beyond Mystery Location Calls
Leader: Billy Krakower (Who brought his own power cord!)
- Pro tip: Use TouchCast to practice Mystery Skype. Use a green screen to upload a different picture so it appears that you are coming from another country.
- When mystery Skyping, have students keep the same job for 3 times.
- Skype around the world in two hours.
- If time difference is a challenge have the Skype at night and make it an event with parents!
- Link to check out Sharks for Kids
Friends I was delighted to see:
New connections and First Face2Face Meetings:
Do you use the Daily 5 and CAFE in your class?
Perhaps you are familiar with this series of books:
I attended “Hacking the Daily Five” presented byVictoria Olson MsVictoriaOlson and Sara Boucher @MsGeekyTeach. Victoria and Sara demonstrated how to integrate technology with the Daily 5. They focused on Google and iOS Apple tools. To get session resources, go to the links below:
They gave a Daily-5-Disclaimer saying they don’t follow every aspect of the Sister’s Approach. They hack it. Victoria and Sara do stick with the 5 parts of the program. In each of these areas, I learned something new.
Read to Self New Learning:
- Literably A website where students can read text and the online service provides a running record. I think this is pretty cool, but I like that Victoria emphasized that nothing beats the classroom teacher sitting down with a student. Nothing.
- Google and Explain Everything: Victoria fills a Google folder full of books she has downloaded from Reading A-Z. Students can then bring those books into Explain Everything and record their reading. The key idea for me was the idea of using Google and Explain Everything to make a library of things for students to read. I would like to put in shared reading from the previous week, books I have written, classbooks, as well as texts I have access to use.
Read to Someone New Learning:
- Have two students record their reading and then switch iPad devices.
- Invite guest authors via Skype and Google Hangout or even invite parents to read to students if they can make a short break during their work day!
Listen to Reading New Learning:
- Tools and Websites for Listening to Reading:
Work on Writing New Learning:
Word Work New Learning:
Websites for Word Work:
- Spelling City (also an iOS App)
- Funbrain and play Mad Libs
- Florida Center for Reading Research


Tags: aging/life course, demography/population, methodology/statistics, demographic transition, fertility, mortality, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins
Summary: In an earlier video post from The Economist I introduced the population pyramid, which is a type of graph used by demographers to interpret population characteristics and project how those characteristics will change in the future. Using these pyramid graphs, it's possible to discern whether a given population is growing rapidly, growing slowly, or in decline, and whether the country has undergone a demographic transition. Few graphs are more useful than population pyramids, for they allow policymakers to establish tax structures, based on projections of the number of working-age people who will be able to pay taxes and the number of people who will be dependent on social services. Knowing characteristics of a population is also essential if one hopes to prevent food shortages, avoid ecological threats, and lesson the blow of chronic poverty. This video lesson prepared by Kim Preshoff is a nice primer on reading the graphs, as it compares the population distributions of a number of different countries, including Russia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Canada, Japan, China, and the United States. After watching the video and discussing the potential challenges each country faces, it's useful to ask students to find or create population pyramids for other countries and report on the challenges their chosen country faces based on its population characteristics.
Submitted By: Lester Andrist
Tags: aging/life course, demography/population, health/medicine, methodology/statistics, demographic transition, fertility, mortality, total fertility rate, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins
Summary: The population pyramid is a visualization of a society's age structure and is so named because of its shape. A thick base at the bottom indicates that the largest share of the population is young, and the pyramid's steep slope, which vanishes to a point, represents the cold fact that the mortality rate increases as people age. In countries around the world, the shape of this pyramid age distribution has been observed to change, a process demographers call a demographic transition. The traditional pyramid shape is common in less industrialized societies, which is an indication that fertility and mortality rates are high and life spans are short. However, with the diffusion of medical advancements, the reach of health care services, and improvments in drinking water and sanitation mortality rates typically drop and life spans increase. And with more children surviving the first decade of life and contraception becoming more widely available, fertility rates typically plummet. The result is that the pyramid-looking age distribution begins to resemble a column. Since each successive bar represents the size of an age cohort, it follows that in a society with a stable fertility rate and a low mortality rate, the bars resist sloping inward until the older age cohorts where mortaility seems to overcome advancements in health. • As the above video from The Economist explains, demographic transitions have been observed to happen on a country-by-country basis, but if one pools data from countries around the world, it appears that the age structure of the global population is slowly undergoing one big demographic transition. In 1970, the world's population could be represented as a pyramid, but in 2015 the the pyramid more closely resembles the dome of the U.S. Capitol Building. By 2060, demographers project that the dome-like structure will give way to columns, and it may be difficult to remember why demographers ever called it a population pyramid in the first place. • It is important to keep in mind that creating these graphs is more than an exercise in data visualization, and such graphs can be useful tools for policymakers. For instance, whether the age distribution resembles a pyramid or a column has important implications for answering questions about society's tax structure and resource allocations. It is essential to know the number of people who comprise vulnerable populations, such as children and the elderly. Population pyramids and the calculations they represent can also become a catalyst for more philosophical ponderings, such as what it will mean that for the first time in human history the world will have just as many older people as children.
Submitted by: Lester Andrist
Tags: aging/life course, children/youth, health/medicine, marriage/family, psychology/social psychology, change, college, depression, high school graduation, moving, retirement home, transition, turning point, 06 to 10 mins
Summary: Sociologists that study the life course emphasize the importance of turning points. The life course refers to the various interconnected sequences of events that take place over the course of a person’s lifetime. Transitions are changes that people experience in different stages or roles of their life; examples include entry into marriage, divorce, parenthood, employment, or military service. These transitions can, but don’t necessarily, lead to turning points, which are marked by long-term changes in behavior that “redirect” a person’s life path. Whether or not a turning point has taken place only becomes apparent after the passage of time, when one can look back and confirm that a long-term change has occurred (e.g., see Elder 1985; Sampson and Laub 1996; Abbott 2001, ch. 8). Rutter (1996) highlights three types of life events can serve as turning points: (1) life events that either close or open opportunities, (2) life events that make a lasting change on the person’s environment, and (3) life events that change a person’s self-concept, beliefs, or expectations. For example, Uggen (2000) examined whether work serves as a turning point in the life course of criminals, and whether age and employment status can explain recidivism rates. In the short film above, a young filmmaker chronicles the transitions taking place in the lives of two family members: his 82-year-old grandmother, Obaa, and his 17-year-old sister, Phoebe. Obaa has recently sold her house and is moving into a retirement home; Phoebe is graduating high school in two weeks and will soon be heading off to college. Both women experience depression. As viewers, we don’t know whether these transitions will lead to turning points in the lives of Obaa or Phoebe. Viewers are encouraged to consider how these life changes constitute a transition, using Rutter’s (1996) criteria above. Also, how might mental illnesses, such as depression or dementia, intersect with the ability for a transition to result in a turning point? How might transitions help or hinder people with mental illnesses? What about a person’s age? Do viewers believe that Obaa’s or Phoebe’s age will play an important role in their transition or potential turning point? What unique and/or similar challenges and/or opportunities will each woman face as they transition into a new stage of their life?
Submitted By: Anonymous
Tags: abortion/reproduction, aging/life course, demography/population, marriage/family, cohabitation, divorce, millennials, 00 to 05 mins
Summary: A report from Pew Research Center confirms a familiar trend known to sociologists of the family: marriage is in decline. While in 1960 about 7 in 10 Americans over the age of 18 were married, by 2010 that rate had slipped to about 5 in 10. To those who see this trend as evidence that families are disappearing, the evidence appears even more grim once one examines the rate of decline among different age groups. In 1960, about 6 out of every 10 Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 tied the knot. Today, people in that age bracket have been dubbed millennials and far fewer of them are married—only about 2 in 10 in 2010. Not surprisingly, the difference in cohort marriage rates seems to be echoed in the difference between what those cohorts say about marriage. For instance, 44% of millenials agree with the sentiment that marriage is becoming obsolete, while only 32% of people over the age of 65 agree with that view. • While the proportion of people aged 18 to 29 who are reluctant to ever get married appears to be growing, it's important to note that many millennials are just waiting longer than ever to to do it. That is, the median age at first marriage in 1960 was 20 for women and 23 for men, but by 2013, the respective ages had increased to 23 for women and 29 for men. Accompanying this delay is the fact that people appear to be much more inclined to have children out of wedlock. • Nevertheless, it is true that the institution of marriage, as Americans once understood it, appears to be changing, and by nearly every measure it is fair to say it is in decline. But to those who see the foregoing discussion as further evidence that the American family is also in decline, or in the grips of a crisis, take a breath and consider the following. Familes existed long before the advent of marriage, so there is no logical reason to assume that they will cease to exist if marriage disappears. To peer into the future of marriage and family, one must analytically uncouple the two concepts: family can exist without marriage, and marriage can exist without family. What seems clear is that families are simply continuing to change, just as they have always changed. Unlike the nuclear family of the 1950s, there is no dominant family type which casts a long shadow on all the others. In a sense, families are persisting in spite of marriage. For even more information about demographic trends related to the family, check out our Pinterest page devoted to the topic.
Submitted By: Lester Andrist
Tags: aging/life course, comedy, stereotypes, 11 to 20 mins
Summary: In this video, Fritz Coleman delivers the keynote address at the Pasadena Conference on Aging. Coleman, who has been both a weatherman and standup comedian for over 30 years, shares his thoughts about aging. In a very entertaining talk, he defies a variety the stereotypes that have been attached to the aged. Coleman discusses what people go through in terms of body changes, relationship dynamics, ignored elements in a youth-oriented culture, and the subtleties of everyday life. This is a good way to introduce a sociological approach to aging that addresses the combination of biological, psychological, and social processes that affect people as they grow older. As part of a life course perspective, it emphasizes viewing older adults as active agents in their own lives, but also facing structural constraints (e.g. stereotypes), and the ways that societies view aging differently (e.g. while the US is a very youth-oriented culture, other cultures hold older adults in great esteem). As a Senior Citizen (72), I believe this will help all younger people get a better understanding of what we seniors deal with. Furthermore, it might give them a good idea of what they can look forward too. His account invites people to make sense of aging by using humor to address the physical, emotional, and mental, issues all seniors deal with.
Submitted By: Paul D. LaBarre, Retired & Adjunct Faculty at Daniel Webster College and Southern New Hampshire University
Tags: aging/life course, emotion/desire, lgbtq, prejudice/discrimination, rural/urban, sex/sexuality, adolescence, gay, performative social science, uk, 21 to 60 mins
Summary: Rufus Stone is a short film about "love, sexual awakening, and treachery." According to Director Josh Appignanesi, "the story dramatizes the old and continued prejudices of village life from three main perspectives. Chiefly it is the story of Rufus, an ‘out’ older gay man who was exiled from the village as a youth and reluctantly returns from London to sell his dead parents’ cottage, where he is forced to confront the faces of his estranged past. Of these, Abigail is the tattle-tale who ‘outed’ Rufus 50 years ago when he spurned her interest. She has become a lonely deluded lush. Flip, the boy Rufus adored, has also stayed in the village: a life wasted in celibacy (occasionally interrupted by anonymous sexual encounters) and denial (who is) looking after his elderly mother. But Rufus too isn’t whole, saddled with an inability to return or forgive." The film is based on three years of a Research Council UK funded study of the lives of older lesbians and gay men in south west England and Wales, a part of the national New Dynamics of Ageing Programme of research. The project was led by Kip Jones, who also wrote the story and acted as Executive Producer for the film. Winner of two awards, the film has gone on to be screened at film festivals, other universities in the UK, USA and Canada and by organizations such as Alzheimer’s Society UK, LGBT groups, and health, social and aging support networks. Screenings of the film would be appropriate for a wide variety of audiences, including in undergraduate and graduate teaching, community groups, and LGBT and aging support organisations. Viewers can access more information about the project and film at the Rufus Stone Blog.
Submitted By: Kip Jones
Tags: aging/life course, children/youth, crime/law/deviance, discourse/language, health/medicine, inequality, media, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, crack, cocaine, drugs, moral panic, war on drugs, 06 to 10 mins
Access: New York Times
Summary: In their book, Policing the Crisis, Stuart Hall and his coauthors investigate what was reported to be a sharp increase in muggings that occurred in Britain at the start of the 1970s. In fact, despite much public concern, a rash of criminality could not be verified, leading the authors to consider a far more likely scenario, that British society was gripped by something called a moral panic. "When the official reaction to a person, groups of persons or series of events is out of all proportion to the actual threat offered, when 'experts', in the form of police chiefs, the judiciary, politicians and editors perceive the threat in all but identical terms, and appear to talk 'with one voice' of rates, diagnoses, prognoses and solutions, when the media representations universally stress 'sudden and dramatic' increases (in numbers involved or events) and 'novelty', above and beyond that which a sober, realistic appraisal could sustain, then we believe it is appropriate to speak of the beginnings of a moral panic." The public fear about widespread muggings in Britain can be likened to the sudden swell of concern in the U.S. regarding the spread of crack cocaine in the 1980s. Unlike muggings, cocaine use was truly on the rise, but in many ways the dilemma was similarly blown "all out of proportion." The above video chronicles the role played by the media in exaggerating the scale of the cocaine problem and the dire health consequences predicted for the children of women who used the drug. As expressed by one politician, there was a belief that crack babies would "overwhelm every social service delivery system that they come into contact with throughout the rest of their lives." As the video explains, many people born to mothers who were addicted to crack have been able to lead lives free of the health complications foretold by newscasters. So if the actual threat posed by the growing use of cocaine was something different than the one portrayed in the media, why did the moral panic about "crack babies" take hold in the public consciousness? One explanation is that the preliminary research, which first raised the issue of potential health consequences for these children, coincided with President Ronald Reagan's War on Drugs. As the legal scholar Michelle Alexander notes, in an effort to secure funding for the new war, Reagan actually hired staff in 1985 to publicize the emergence of crack cocaine, and a national tragedy involving "crack babies" was just the kind of story they sought to promote. A second explanation for why the moral panic took hold ties in the fact that the War on Drugs has been a racist war from the very start, and the idea of a scourge of crack-addicted pregnant mothers aligned well with long held, racist stereotypes of black welfare queens who raise children in crime-infested neighborhoods.
Submitted By: Lester Andrist
Tags: abortion/reproduction, aging/life course, biology, bodies, gender, health/medicine, lgbtq, marriage/family, science/technology, sex/sexuality, social construction, fatherhood, motherhood, parenting, pregnancy, stigma, transgender, subtitles/CC, 06 to 10 mins
Summary: This video portrays the experiences and voices of various transgender parents and their families, which includes their decisions to become parents, reflections on what it means to be a parent, experiences of being a child of a transgender parent, the social stigma attached to being a transgender parent (and transgenderism in general), and experiences with various reproductive technology options. The video is excellent for illustrating the diversity of family structures and alternative gender arrangements, and would be useful in a class on sociology of the family, reproduction, gender, or sex and sexuality. People in the video highlight the hyper-gendered experience of pregnancy and parenting, thereby illustrating the social construction of these core features of the life course; this social constructivist perspective stands in contrast to common biological understandings of pregnancy and parenting. This video would pair well with Laura Mamo's Queering Reproduction: Achieving Pregnancy in the Age of Technoscience, as well as with GLAD's recently released book, Transgender Family Law: A Guide to Effective Advocacy, which can offer a nice framework for discussing some of the legal issues and advocacy strategies that transgender people encounter in a family law context. The video is also available with Spanish subtitles.
Submitted By: Valerie Chepp
Image by Kristian Dowling/Getty Images for Beatie
Tags: aging/life course, bodies, ageism, comedy, stereotypes, 21 to 60 mins
Access: no online access (trailer here)
Summary: According to the show's creators, "'Betty White's Off Their Rockers'" takes senior stereotypes and blows them out of the water with a cast of sassy septuagenarians who are hip, sexy and ready to party!" The show features seniors who routinely prank young adults in hilarious situations. Season 1, episode 1 of the show offers a great platform for a discussion about ageism and stereotypes about the elderly (although all episodes to date also seem to be great for this). When using the episode in class, I had my students take notes on underlying stereotypes that make the show shocking and funny. We discussed that societal norms can sometimes most clearly be seen in showing their opposite. My students quickly picked up that the show would not be shocking if other age groups were doing these things. They also noticed that the show assumes elderly people are not sexual, do not have fun, and are not energetic or lively. It was a fun way to start a conversation about our section on aging.
Submitted By: @iamtjones
Tags: aging/life course, art/music, emotion/desire, marriage/family, methodology/statistics, biography, data visualization, divorce, memory, narrative, storytelling, 00 to 05 mins
Summary: In this clip "Polly", a 65 year old woman from the Midlands in the UK, recalls the time as a child when her parents sat her down and asked her which of them she wanted to be with. Her story, re-narrated by three players, represents how this traumatic event became an enduring memory throughout the various stages of her life. This video exhibits how sociologists can draw upon biography and narrative to explore any number of sociological concepts; in this particular clip, Polly's narration of her own biography can be used to explore sociological understandings of memory, emotion, family, and the life course. For example, the clip could be useful in a class on cognitive sociology, highlighting how cognitive processes, such as memory, are shaped by socio-cultural events, such as divorce. In addition to using the clip as a way to interrogate biography and narrative as sociological methods of research, the clip could also be a nice launching pad from which to introduce an assignment where students create their own videos, using their own biographical narratives as a window through which to explore larger sociological phenomena, much in the way C.W. Mills suggested. The clip's Vimeo webpage provides production details about the video, as well as a link to a paper by Kip Jones, the video's writer and producer, "The Art of Collaborative Storytelling: Arts-Based Representations of Narrative Contexts," which tells more about Polly's story and Jones' method. Kip Jones describes the clip as an "experiment in visualisation of research data."
Submitted By: Kip Jones
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