Share and share alike: Encouraging the reuse of academic resources through the Scottish electronic staff development library

This paper reports on the findings of a consultancy procedure conducted within the Scottish Higher Education staff development community and focusing on the reuse and sharing of communications and information technology resources for teaching and learning. While this consultancy was conducted primarily to inform the development of the Scottish electronic Staff Development Library (SeSDL), its findings, will be of relevance to colleagues working in the fields of staff development and C&IT and all those involved in the creation of shared teaching and learning resources. The consultancy identified general staff development demands, specific pedagogical requirements, and concerns relating to the provision, reuse and sharing of staff development resources. The SeSDL Project will attempt to address these demands through the development of a Web‐based resource centre, which will facilitate the reuse and sharing of high‐quality staff development resources. Library materials are stored in the form of granules which are branded with IMS compatible metadata and which are classified using a controlled educational taxonomy. Staff developers will be able to assemble these granular components to build customized lessons tailored to meet the needs of their own departments and institutions

Notes made whilst travelling and at repose (Book One) / by Yuan Zhongdao (1570-1624), translated by Duncan Campbell.

Translator’s Introduction Thus it is that, for the six years now since the Wushen year [1608], I have spent much of my time aboard a junk. As one junk fell into disrepair, I have had another built. Whenever I live in town I become as inflamed as if being cauterised with moxa, only finding release when I climb upon a junk. If when studying at home I can understand not a word of what I happen to be reading, on board a junk I become intoxicated with the copiousness of my reading notes. Or if I haven’t written a line of poetry during the course of a year spent on land, my poetic inspiration surges up again like a spring the moment I find myself within the cabin of a junk ... Such is the power of living on a junk. Yuan Zhongdao, ‘Hou Fanfu ji’ [Record of My Second “Floating Wild Duck” Junk] Yuan Zhongdao, the youngest of the three famous Yuan brothers of the late Ming period, never quite achieved either the official success of his eldest brother, Yuan Zongdao (1560-1600), or the literary reputation of the most famous of the three, Yuan Hongdao (1568-1610). To the mind of his earliest biographer, the great Qian Qianyi (1582-1664), his problem in the latter respect was certainly not due to any lack of talent. "Both your poetry and your prose", Qian records himself as telling Yuan on one occasion, "suffer from an excess of talent. Your travel records, for instance, if only you were to edit them severely, deleting more than half their text, could well stand alongside those of the ancients". "Excellent advice", Yuan had responded, "but although you may well be able to do this to them, I cannot, and I am myself forever fearful of the extent to which the gush of my inspiration tends to overflow the banks". Yuan Zhongdao's diary, entitled Youju feilu [Notes Made Whilst Travelling and at Repose], Book One of which is translated here, is a remarkable work, perhaps in part by virtue of the superfluity spoken of by Qian Qianyi. Its thirteen books provide a detailed record of the years 1608-18,a period during which both Yuan Zhongdao's father and his beloved brother Hongdao died, whilst Zhongdao himself belatedly achieved the examination success long expected of him and took up the first of his official posts. Above all, the diary tells of the pleasure Yuan derived from his riverine travels throughout some of the most scenically beautiful parts of southern China, of the friends he encountered along his way and the private collections of painting and calligraphy that he was given access to. As such, it affords us a unique glimpse into the material, social and emotional world of a noted member of the scholarly elite of the late imperial period in China. Yuan Zhongdao's collected works, entitled Kexuezhai ji [Collection of the Snowy White Jade Studio] and including his diary, was first published in his own lifetime, in 1618. The present translation is based on the version found in Qian Bocheng (ed.), Kexuezhai ji (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1989). Reference has also been made to a recently published and lightly annotated version of the diary, Bu Wenying (ed.), Youju feilu (Shanghai: Yuandong chubanshe, 1996). A partial translation of Book One of this diary is included in Stephen Owen (trans.), An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911 (New York & London: W.W. Norton, 1996), pp. 823-26

Evaluation of the Scottish Borders Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) programme

In the light of decades of worldwide research that implies that the Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) programme has potential to enhance learning and attainment (Romney and Samuels, 2001) a pilot programme was launched in Scottish Borders Council schools in September 2005. Since the programme includes activities to help pupils to control impulsive behaviour, most pupils selected for the programme had a history of underachieving due to social, emotional or behavioural problems. The FIE programme is described in Section 1. There are two strands to the pilot project: one is equipping teachers to deliver the FIE programme to the most vulnerable pupils, the other is the adoption of the Feuerstein approach to mediating learning across schools. While the first strand is very resource intensive, the second strand can operate with more modest investment. In 2005-2006, 32 primary and secondary teachers, including members of school Senior Management Teams, volunteered for the Feuerstein accredited training and began to deliver the FIE programme with the selected pupils for around 80 minutes per week. Scottish Borders Newly Qualified Teachers (probationers) also participated for three days in the area of the Feuerstein training that deals specifically with mediated learning. Since there is extensive research evidence that the quality of the teacher’s mediation is a major influence on learning, early career training in mediation was thought likely to yield long-term dividends. This evaluation is one of many of FIE programmes. The Scottish Borders programme is a pilot project that had been operational for around six months (excluding school holiday weeks) when the evaluation began. Typically, published evaluations are of FIE programmes that have been running for at least two years and often these programmes provided more lessons than in the Borders pilot project

Massive black holes in stellar systems: 'quiescent' accretion and luminosity

Only a small fraction of local galaxies harbor an accreting black hole, classified as an active galactic nucleus (AGN). However, many stellar systems are plausibly expected to host black holes, from globular clusters to nuclear star clusters, to massive galaxies. The mere presence of stars in the vicinity of a black hole provides a source of fuel via mass loss of evolved stars. In this paper we assess the expected luminosities of black holes embedded in stellar systems of different sizes and properties, spanning a large range of masses. We model the distribution of stars and derive the amount of gas available to a central black hole through a geometrical model. We estimate the luminosity of the black holes under simple, but physically grounded, assumptions on the accretion flow. Finally we discuss the detectability of 'quiescent' black holes in the local Universe.Comment: ApJ in pres

Mortal Ancestors, Immortal Images: Zhang Dai’s Biographical Portraits

Towards the end of his long life, the prolific late-Ming historian and essayist Zhang Dai 張岱 (1597-?1684) completed a book that he had been working on for many years. Entitled Portraits of the Eminent and Worthy Immortals of Zhejiang During the Ming Dynasty (You Ming yuyue san bu xiu tuzan 有明於越三不朽名賢圖贊) the book included the short biographies (with poetic panegyrics) and portraits of 109 men and women of Zhang Dai’s hometown of Shaoxing, one of the epicentres of China’s élite cultural life. The book was organised according to the “Three Immortalities of Life”: moral force, meritorious service, and wise words. Zhang also included a number of his own friends and family members in this collection. This paper discusses aspects the relationship between text and image in this late-imperial Chinese work, both in the context of Zhang Dai’s practice as a biographer who had a strong visual sense and in regard to his particular historical plight as someone who had survived the collapse of one dynasty and who had lived on under its successor regime