sábado, 25 de julho de 2015
10 Most Beautiful Libraries Around Europe
Leisure Lifestyle by Julia Kitlinski-Hong
Reading and relaxing in a cosy and well-equipped library is one of the best things life offers. In these 10 beautiful European libraries, the experience will be extra marvellous.
1. Trinity College Library: Dublin, Ireland
With its dark wood paneling and high arched ceiling, this stunning scholarly library is also known to be the largest in Ireland. It is also known as a “copyright library,” which gives it rights to acquire material published in the country without any cost. This library is also home to the Book of Kells, a beautifully illustrated manuscript containing the four gospels in Latin believed to have been created in 800 AD.
2. Bibliotheue Nationale de France: Paris, France
The National Library of France has expanded its collection within the last few decades, since it was established in 1461. The older building that was completed in 1868 on the Rue de Richelieu is still in use and not to be missed. Once the largest library in the world, this title remains no longer. Nonetheless, it is still impressive with collections like 5,000 Greek manuscripts and an impressive staff of 2,700.
3. Clementinum National Library: Prague, Czech Repu
Named after Saint Clement, the grounds that holds this library has gone through many guises, beginning as a chapel and becoming a Jesuit college. The National Library was founded in 1781 and is a beautiful example of Baroque architecture, especially the Baroque library hall, known for its intreciate ceiling work by Jan Hiebl. It’s spacious courtyards and ivy-covered walls are perfect places to get lost in a book for an hour or two.
4. Wiblingen Monastery: Ulm-Wiblingen, Germany
The library in this former Benedictine abbey is one of the main reasons to see this monastery. Constructed in the whimsical Rococo fashion, it’s interior is adorned with various statues, red and green columns and intricate ceiling fresco that represent the architect’s vision of this library being a place to treasure the gifts of wisdom and science. Located on the north wing of the property, the library is part of a stunning example of Baroque architecture that is on display throughout the monastery.
5. Admont Abbey Library: Admont, Austria
Known for its breathtaking Baroque design, this abbey is the oldest monastic library in the world. Set at the base of the Gesause National Park, with snow-capped mountains as a beautiful backdrop and the Enns river in the foreground, this library is set in a surreal landscape. The interior is just as stunning as its exterior, where dreamy murals exist in high-celling rooms.
6. Bristol Central Library: Bristol, England
A blend of Tutor Revival and Modern Movement, makes this library unique and aesthetically appealing for all who visit. The interior is mostly Neoclassical, with generous use of the round-arched vaulting on the ceilings. Interestingly enough, it was built on a slope, causing it to have three stories in the front of the building, but five stories in the back.
7. The Library of El Escorial: San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain
Started by King Phillip II, this royal library is situated on the beautiful grounds of El Escorial, the past residences for all of Spain’s kings. The dark wooden shelves and the intricate frescoes painted on the ceiling make this library fit for any king. It is now a World Herritage Site, but it still has some of the original books.
8. Mafra Palace Library: Mafra, Portugal
Located within the Mafra Palace, this library houses rare books and is only open by appointment. One of its memorable features is at your feet, with the magnificant titled floor made out of grey, rose and white marble. The beautiful white Rococo architecture makes it a highly-cherished national landmark.
9. Sainte-Genevieve Library: Paris, France
Situated in one of the oldest abbeys in Paris, this library is a stunning masterpiece with its iron-wrought ceilings and sea of green lamps. The stunning design was the inspiration for Boston’s Public Library centuries later.
10. The Codrington Library: Oxford, London
An academic library of All Souls College, its dark green shelves and marble statues make for a perfect place for scholars to study. Its modern collection comprises of 185,000 books, a third which were published before the 1800’s
source: http://www.lifehack.org
Powerful, efficient ceramic fuel cells could enable in-home production of electricity from natural gas
The development of affordable and efficient ceramic fuel cells that could be used to power homes, the culmination of five years worth of work by Colorado School of Mines researchers, is featured in the July 23 issue of Science magazine.The research, led by Mines Professor Ryan O'Hayre, would enable more efficient use of natural gas for power generation through the use of fuel cells that convert the chemical energy of a fuel source into electrical energy close to where it is used. The reliable, environmentally friendly fuel source alternative would help guarantee greater energy security while distributed generation technologies would lead to reduced energy costs for consumers. "Our work demonstrates a proton-conducting ceramic fuel cell that generates electricity off of either hydrogen or methane fuel and runs at much lower temperatures that conventional ceramic fuel cells," said O'Hayre. "We achieved this advance by developing a new air electrode for our fuel cell that is highly active even at lower temperatures because it is a triple-conducting electrode (it conducts electron holes, oxygen ions, and protons all at the same time) and we applied a relatively new fabrication method that greatly reduces the complexity and cost for the fuel cell fabrication." Story Source: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Colorado School of Mines. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference:
|
É mentira, Terta?
Terta era a mulher do coronel Pantaleão, um personagem vivido por Chico Anisio em seu programa de muitos anos atrás, “Chico City”. Como ele só vivia contando mentiras, ao final de cada estória que contava ele perguntava à Terta que estava sempre ouvindo suas fanfarronices, “É mentira, Terta? E ela não iria contradizer o austero coronel, e respondia sempre : Verdadeeeeeeeeee !
Quanto à citação de autoria de Antonio Porchia (1885-1968), refere-se ao fato de quando presenteamos alguém com algum objeto, ou mesmo um conselho ou elogio, a reação interior de quem o recebe nunca ficamos sabendo realmente. Alguém deu à essa pessoa algo, mas como ela a interpretou só mesmo essa pessoa sabe, mesmo que ela reaja com um sorriso e um “Obrigado, gostei muito!”
Citações ao uivar dos lobos
Prezados leitores do Blogreen. Não se impressionem com títulos de algumas de minhas postagens, servem apenas como referência. Meu finado tio Nenê costumava dizer de vez em quando, “Ao frigir dos ovos” e eu gostei da expressão. Por isso quando não me ocorre um título conveniente eu coloco qualquer coisa parecida. O que vale é o meu trabalho usando o excelente Page Plus da excelente empresa britânica “Serif”. Quanto a citação de Albert Einstein, entendo que ele quiz dizer que todos nós temos que ceder de vez em quando para que o equilíbrio social se restabeleça, pelo menos em nossos círculos.
José Sidenei
Understanding why some latina women discontinue participation in cancer prevention outreach
It has long been known that rates of breast and cervical cancer screening among Latinas are low compared to rates for U.S. women overall. A study led by researchers at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) found that age and fear of cancer diagnosis are among the reasons why Latina women do not continue participation following breast and cervical cancer education programs. The research was published in the Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives.This research is a secondary analysis of a large randomized, controlled study reported earlier and was designed to specifically understand the characteristics of women who were lost to attrition for follow-up telephone calls following participation in the multisite, peer-led education program Esperanza y Vida (EyV). Esperanza y Vida aims to address the low rates of breast and cervical cancer screening in the diverse Latina population and offers cancer screening information and education in community settings delivered by lay health advisers and sobreviventes (cancer survivors). A narrative from the sobreviventes incorporates personal experiences to promote learning and increase self-efficacy for pap and mammography screenings. In that earlier EyV intervention study, a participant was considered lost to follow-up if, for example, she did not provide a telephone number at registration, declined to complete the follow-up questions, or did not have a working telephone number. The secondary analysis only examined attrition at two months, as women lost to follow-up at this time were dropped from further analysis. Of the 908 Latina women who participated in the cancer education program and consented to follow-up, 76% were retained at the two-month follow-up assessment. "Participant loss to follow-up represents a potentially important source of bias in research studies," says Deborah Erwin, PhD, Principal Investigator of the study and Director of the Office of Cancer Health Disparities Research at Roswell Park. "These findings are underscored by the fact that while there was a very high response rate for follow-up assessment two months after the program (77%) -- especially for a group that includes many non-English-speaking, foreign-born women -- unscreened women at that time could receive navigation assistance for screening, and the women lost to follow-up (23%) may remain unscreened without additional assistance." Analysis of the data found that Latinas lost to attrition at the two-month follow-up assessment included women who were younger than 40 years of age (59.6%; most women in this group were ineligible for mammograms, but eligible for pap tests); those who felt that hearing a survivor's story would lead them to make an appointment for preventive screening (17.6%); and women who were afraid of hearing medical results (43.2%). More research would be required to determine whether the group of women impacted by a survivor's personal experiences went on to obtain screening on their own. The large share of women who were concerned about hearing medical results and who were no longer participating in the study demonstrates the continued need to address fears and emotional issues around screening. "Knowing more about the reasons behind attrition characteristics provides insight for future studies," adds Dr. Erwin. "These findings contribute to the literature regarding the recruitment and retention of minorities, specifically Latinas and newer immigrants, in research studies, as well as to how attrition and the ability to follow up with Latina women of varying ages are understood." The study, entitled "Who's Missing? Predictors of Attrition Following Participation in Culturally Targeted Educational Breast and Cervical Cancer Outreach Programs for Latinas," was supported by American Cancer Society grant RSGT-07-021-01-CPPB, the John R. Oishei Foundation of Western New York, and Susan G. Komen Western New York. Story Source: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference:
|
Clues to human molecular interactions
 The tetrameric TOPLESS complex with the EAR motif peptides bound at its repressor-peptide binding grooves. The repressor peptides are shown as a ball presentation. Credit: Karsten Melcher, Ph.D., Van Andel Research Institute Scientists at Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) have revealed an important molecular mechanism in plants that has significant similarities to certain signaling mechanisms in humans, which are closely linked to early embryonic development and to diseases such as cancer. In plants as in animals and humans, intricate molecular networks regulate key biological functions, such as development and stress responses. The system can be likened to a massive switchboard--when the wrong switches are flipped, genes can be inappropriately turned on or off, leading to the onset of diseases. Now, VARI scientists have unraveled how an important plant protein, known as TOPLESS, interacts with other molecules responsible for turning genes off. The findings in plants provide a general model across species for this type of gene silencing, which is linked to several vital biological functions in humans. The discovery was published today in Science Advances. "This is really a fundamental discovery--our structure shows the corepressor TOPLESS interacting with key repressor motifs, which constitutes a major component of gene silencing in plants," said Van Andel Research Institute's Karsten Melcher, Ph.D., one of the study's corresponding authors. "Understanding this interaction in plants gives us unique insight into similar pathways in humans that involve these proteins, which are notoriously tough to investigate." Using a method called X-ray crystallography, the team determined the three- dimensional structure of TOPLESS, both on its own and when linked with other molecules responsible for turning genes off, thereby regulating gene expression. Although these interacting molecules were chosen from different signaling pathways in plants, they all linked up with TOPLESS in the same manner "This structure will allow us to take a more targeted approach to investigating TOPLESS's counterparts in humans and significantly expands our knowledge base," said VARI's H. Eric Xu, Ph.D., who also is a corresponding author. "We're extremely excited to continue this work to better understand these proteins and how they interact with other molecules in health and disease states." The new paper is the third in a trio of publications that unveil key components of fundamental molecular processes. Although the new study provides further insight into human molecular pathways, the work also directly describes how components of the molecular switchboard in plants interact to regulate responses to a multitude of stressors, including temperature fluctuations. The new findings follow an earlier Nature paper, which was included in the top ten list of scientific breakthroughs of 2009 by Science magazine, and an earlier Science paper, both of which describe how plants respond to drought and temperature stress. Taken together, the papers not only have implications for developing hardier plants but also for determining molecular structures for components of entire pathways. Authors include Jiyuan Ke, Honglei Ma, and Xin Gu of VARI and VARI-Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica; Jiayang Li of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Joseph S. Brunzelle of Northwestern University; and Adam Thelen, now at Michigan State University. Additional background information on TOPLESS and gene regulation: Gene expression is regulated by both activators and repressors. Although gene repression is thought to be equally important as gene activation for this regulation, relatively little is known about the mechanisms of gene repressors and co-repressors. TOPLESS functions as a co-repressor and interacts with repressors containing ethylene-responsive element binding factor-associated amphiphilic repression (EAR) motifs. EAR motifs are the most common form of transcriptional repression motifs found in plants and are thought to facilitate stable epigenetic regulation of gene expression via recruitment of chromatin modifiers. TOPLESS plays important roles in plant development; its name stems from the fact that mutations in TOPLESS can give rise to seedlings in which the shoot is transformed into a second root, hence "topless" seedlings. In humans, similar proteins also are altered in many types of tumors, and control embryonic development and the development of neurons. Story Source: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Van Andel Research Institute. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference:
|
Changing the Color of Light
 The UD research team aims to develop new nanostructures that act like a ratchet to combine the energy of two red photons of light into a single blue photon, which has higher energy. Such an advance could improve solar cell efficiency to chemotherapy treatments. Credit: Image courtesy of University of Delaware Researchers at the University of Delaware have received a $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to explore a new idea that could improve solar cells, medical imaging and even cancer treatments. Simply put, they want to change the color of light. They won't be tinkering with what you see out your window: no purple days or chartreuse nights, no edits to rainbows and blazing sunsets. Their goal is to turn low-energy colors of light, such as red, into higher-energy colors, like blue or green. Changing the color of light would give solar technology a considerable boost. A traditional solar cell can only absorb light with energy above a certain threshold. Infrared light passes right through, its energy untapped. However, if that low-energy light could be transformed into higher-energy light, a solar cell could absorb much more of the sun's clean, free, abundant energy. The team predicts that their novel approach could increase the efficiency of commercial solar cells by 25 to 30 percent. The research team, based in UD's College of Engineering, is led by Matthew Doty, associate professor of materials science and engineering and associate director of UD's Nanofabrication Facility. Doty's co-investigators include Joshua Zide, Diane Sellers and Chris Kloxin, all in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering; and Emily Day and John Slater, both in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. "This prestigious $1 million grant from the Keck Foundation underscores the excellence and innovation of our University of Delaware faculty," says Nancy Targett, acting president of the University. "Clearly, the University of Delaware is pursuing big ideas in renewable energy and biomedicine with the potential to benefit the world." "The University's Delaware Will Shine strategic plan challenges us to think boldly as we seek solutions to problems facing society," Domenico Grasso, UD's provost, adds. "We congratulate the research team in the College of Engineering for this major award, and we look forward to their findings." Changing the color of light "A ray of light contains millions and millions of individual units of light called photons," says project leader Matthew Doty. "The energy of each photon is directly related to the color of the light -- a photon of red light has less energy than a photon of blue light. You can't simply turn a red photon into a blue one, but you can combine the energy from two or more red photons to make one blue photon." This process, called "photon upconversion," isn't new, Doty says. However, the UD team's approach to it is. They want to design a new kind of semiconductor nanostructure that will act like a ratchet. It will absorb two red photons, one after the other, to push an electron into an excited state when it can emit a single high-energy (blue) photon. These nanostructures will be so teeny they can only be viewed when magnified a million times under a high-powered electron microscope. "Think of the electrons in this structure as if they were at a water park," Doty says. "The first red photon has only enough energy to push an electron half-way up the ladder of the water slide. The second red photon pushes it the rest of the way up. Then the electron goes down the slide, releasing all of that energy in a single process, with the emission of the blue photon. The trick is to make sure the electron doesn't slip down the ladder before the second photon arrives. The semiconductor ratchet structure is how we trap the electron in the middle of the ladder until the second photon arrives to push it the rest of the way up." The UD team will develop new semiconductor structures containing multiple layers of different materials, such as aluminum arsenide and gallium bismuth arsenide, each only a few nanometers thick. This "tailored landscape" will control the flow of electrons into states with varying potential energy, turning once-wasted photons into useful energy. The UD team has shown theoretically that their semiconductors could reach an upconversion efficiency of 86 percent, which would be a vast improvement over the 36 percent efficiency demonstrated by today's best materials. What's more, Doty says, the amount of light absorbed and energy emitted by the structures could be customized for a variety of applications, from lightbulbs to laser-guided surgery. How do you even begin to make structures so tiny they can only be seen with an electron microscope? In one technique the UD team will use, called molecular beam epitaxy, nanostructures will be built by depositing layers of atoms one at a time. Each structure will be tested to see how well it absorbs and emits light, and the results will be used to tailor the structure to improve performance. The researchers also will develop a milk-like solution filled with millions of identical individual nanoparticles, each one containing multiple layers of different materials. The multiple layers of this structure, like multiple candy shells in an M&M, will implement the photon ratchet idea. Through such work, the team envisions a future upconversion "paint" that could be easily applied to solar cells, windows and other commercial products. Improving medical tests and treatments While the initial focus of the three-year project will be on improving solar energy harvesting, the team also will explore biomedical applications. A number of diagnostic tests and medical treatments, ranging from CT and PET scans to chemotherapy, rely on the release of fluorescent dyes and pharmaceutical drugs. Ideally, such payloads are delivered both at specific disease sites and at specific times, but this is hard to control in practice. The UD team aims to develop an upconversion nanoparticle that can be triggered by light to release its payload. The goal is to achieve the controlled release of drug therapies even deep within diseased human tissue while reducing the peripheral damage to normal tissue by minimizing the laser power required. "This is high-risk, high-reward research," Doty says. "High-risk because we don't yet have proof-of-concept data. High-reward because it has such a huge potential impact in renewable energy to medicine. It's amazing to think that this same technology could be used to harvest more solar energy and to treat cancer. We're excited to get started!" Story Source: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Delaware. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
|
Wind energy provides 8% of Europe's electricity
|
EU's grid connected cumulative capacity in 2014 reached 129 GW, meeting 8% of European electricity demand, equivalent to the combined annual consumption of Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece and Ireland. According to a JRC report, the impressive growth of the industry will allow at least 12% electricity share by 2020, a significant contribution to the goal of the European energy and climate package of 20% share of energy from renewable sources. The 2014 JRC wind status report presents the technology, market and economics of the wind energy sector with a focus on the EU. Wind power is the renewable energy which has seen the widest and most successful deployment over the last two decades, increasing the global cumulative capacity from 3 GW to 370 GW. Last year represented an annual record with 52.8 GW of wind turbines capacity installed worldwide, a 48% increase compared to 2013 and 17% over the 2012 record of 45.2GW. With 23.2 GW of new installations and a market share of 44%, China is well ahead of EU's member states which together installed 13.05 GW. The EU however still leads in cumulative capacity and its 129 GW onshore and offshore wind installations, allowed six countries -- Denmark, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Romania and Germany -- to generate between 10 and 40 % of their electricity from wind. European turbine manufacturers accounted for 78% of the non-China world market in 2014. In a context of high competition and diminishing turbine prices, manufacturers managed to improve their balance sheet thanks to better cost management and reduced raw materials costs. The cost of generating wind energy continues its downward trend, highly favoured by a reduction in the cost of project financing. More information: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/eur-scientific-and-technical-research-reports/2014-jrc-wind-status-report Story Source: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC). Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
|
The algorithm of writing
 The idea of new software is to give teachers useful diagnostic information on each writer and give them more time to address problems and assist students with things no machine can comprehend -- content, reasoning and, especially, the young writer at work. Credit: Illustration by Jeffrey Chase/ University of Delaware "Can we write during recess?" Some students were asking that question at Anna P. Mote Elementary School, where teachers were testing software that automatically evaluates essays for University of Delaware researcher Joshua Wilson. Wilson, assistant professor in UD's School of Education in the College of Education and Human Development, asked teachers at Mote and Heritage Elementary School, both in Delaware's Red Clay Consolidated School District, to use the software during the 2014-15 school year and give him their reaction. Wilson, whose doctorate is in special education, is studying how the use of such software might shape instruction and help struggling writers. The software Wilson used is called PEGWriting (which stands for Project Essay Grade Writing), based on work by the late education researcher Ellis B. Page and sold by Measurement Incorporated, which supports Wilson's research with indirect funding to the University. The software uses algorithms to measure more than 500 text-level variables to yield scores and feedback regarding the following characteristics of writing quality: idea development, organization, style, word choice, sentence structure, and writing conventions such as spelling and grammar. The idea is to give teachers useful diagnostic information on each writer and give them more time to address problems and assist students with things no machine can comprehend -- content, reasoning and, especially, the young writer at work. Writing is recognized as a critical skill in business, education and many other layers of social engagement. Finding reliable, efficient ways to assess writing is of increasing interest nationally as standardized tests add writing components and move to computer-based formats. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, also called the Nation's Report Card, first offered computer-based writing tests in 2011 for grades 8 and 12 with a plan to add grade 4 tests in 2017. That test uses trained readers for all scoring. Other standardized tests also include writing components, such as the assessments developed by the Partnership for Assessment of College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment, used for the first time in Delaware this year. Both PARCC and Smarter Balanced are computer-based tests that will use automated essay scoring in the coming years. Researchers have established that computer models are highly predictive of how humans would have scored a given piece of writing, Wilson said, and efforts to increase that accuracy continue. However, Wilson's research is the first to look at how the software might be used in conjunction with instruction and not as a standalone scoring/feedback machine. In earlier research, Wilson and his collaborators showed that teachers using the automated system spent more time giving feedback on higher-level writing skills -- ideas, organization, word choice. Those who used standard feedback methods without automated scoring said they spent more time discussing spelling, punctuation, capitalization and grammar. The benefits of automation are great, from an administrative point of view. If computer models provide acceptable evaluations and speedy feedback, they reduce the amount of needed training for human scorers and, of course, the time necessary to do the scoring. Consider the thousands of standardized tests now available -- state writing tests, SAT and ACT tests for college admission, GREs for graduate school applicants, LSATs for law school hopefuls and MCATs for those applying to medical school. When scored by humans, essays are evaluated by groups of readers that might include retired teachers, journalists and others trained to apply specific rubrics (expectations) as they analyze writing. Their scores are calibrated and analyzed for subjectivity and, in large-scale assessments, the process can take a month or more. Classroom teachers can evaluate writing in less time, of course, but it still can take weeks, as any English teacher with five or six sections of classes can attest. "Writing is very time and labor and cost intensive to score at any type of scale," Wilson said. Those who have participated in the traditional method of scoring standardized tests know that it takes a toll on the human assessor, too. Where it might take a human reader five minutes to attach a holistic score to a piece of writing, the automated system can process thousands at a time, producing a score within a matter of seconds, Wilson said. "If it takes a couple weeks to get back to the student they don't care about it anymore," he said. "Or there is no time to do anything about it. The software vastly accelerates the feedback loop." But computers are illiterate. They have zero comprehension. The scores they attach to writing are based on mathematical equations that assign or deduct value according to the programmer's instructions. They do not grade on a curve. They do not understand how far Johnny has come in his writing and they have no special patience for someone who is just learning English. These computer deficiencies are among the reasons many teachers -- including the National Council of Teachers of English -- roundly reject computerized scoring programs. They fear a steep decline in instruction, discouraging messages the soulless judge will send to students, and some see a real threat to those who teach English. In a recent study, Wilson and other collaborators showed that use of automated feedback produced some efficiencies for teachers, faster feedback for students, and moderate increases in student persistence. This time they brought a different question to their review. Could automated scoring and feedback produce benefits throughout the school year, shaping instruction and providing incentives and feedback for struggling writers, beyond simply delivering speedy scores? "If we use the system throughout the year, can we start to improve the learning?" Wilson said. "Can we change the trajectory of kids who would otherwise fail, drop out or give up?" To find out, he distributed free software subscriptions provided by Measurement Incorporated to teachers of third-, fourth- and fifth-graders at Mote and Heritage and asked them to try it during the 2014-15 school year. Teachers don't dismiss the idea of automation, he said. Calculators and other electronic devices are routinely used by educators. "Do math teachers rue the day students didn't do all computations on their own?" he said. Wilson heard mixed reviews about use of the software in the classroom when he met with teachers at Mote in early June. Teachers said students liked the "game" aspects of the automated writing environment and that seemed to increase their motivation to write quite a bit. Because they got immediate scores on their writing, many worked to raise their scores by correcting errors and revising their work over and over. "There was an 'aha!' moment," one teacher said. "Students said, 'I added details and my score went up.' They figured that out." And they wanted to keep going, shooting for higher scores. "Many times during recess my students chose to do PEGWriting," one teacher said. "It was fun to see that." That same quick score produced discouragement for other students, though, teachers said, when they received low scores and could not figure out how to raise them no matter how hard they worked. That demonstrates the importance of the teacher's role, Wilson said. The teacher helps the student interpret and apply the feedback. Teachers said some students were discouraged when the software wouldn't accept their writing because of errors. Others figured out they could cut and paste material to get higher scores, without understanding that plagiarism is never acceptable. The teacher's role is essential to that instruction, too, Wilson said. Teachers agreed that the software showed students the writing and editing process in ways they hadn't grasped before, but some weren't convinced that the computer-based evaluation would save them much time. They still needed to have individual conversations with each student -- some more than others. "I don't think it's the answer," one teacher said, "but it is a tool we can use to help them." How teachers can use such tools effectively to demonstrate and reinforce the principles and rules of writing is the focus of Wilson's research. He wants to know what kind of training teachers and students need to make the most of the software and what kind of efficiencies it offers teachers to help them do more of what they do best: teach. Bradford Holstein, principal at Mote and a UD graduate who received a bachelor's degree in 1979 and a master's degree in 1984, welcomed the study and hopes it leads to stronger writing skills in students. "The automated assessment really assists the teachers in providing valuable feedback for students in improving their writing," Holstein said. Story Source: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Delaware. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
|
Assinar:
Postagens (Atom)