Literacy: Varied, Dynamic, and Multidimensional

This article examines the complex nature of literacy through a variety of lenses. The linguistic lens focuses on literacy as a language and multimodal process. The cognitive reveals the mental processes and strategies readers and writers employ to construct meanings through the linguistic and multimodal dimension. Not just a linguistic and cognitive process, the sociocultural lens examines literacy use within social and cultural contexts. Finally, the developmental lens explores the very active nature of literacy learners and their mediators

Representations and representation learning for image aesthetics prediction and image enhancement

With the continual improvement in cell phone cameras and improvements in the connectivity of mobile devices, we have seen an exponential increase in the images that are captured, stored and shared on social media. For example, as of July 1st 2017 Instagram had over 715 million registered users which had posted just shy of 35 billion images. This represented approximately seven and nine-fold increase in the number of users and photos present on Instagram since 2012. Whether the images are stored on personal computers or reside on social networks (e.g. Instagram, Flickr), the sheer number of images calls for methods to determine various image properties, such as object presence or appeal, for the purpose of automatic image management and curation. One of the central problems in consumer photography centers around determining the aesthetic appeal of an image and motivates us to explore questions related to understanding aesthetic preferences, image enhancement and the possibility of using such models on devices with constrained resources. In this dissertation, we present our work on exploring representations and representation learning approaches for aesthetic inference, composition ranking and its application to image enhancement. Firstly, we discuss early representations that mainly consisted of expert features, and their possibility to enhance Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). Secondly, we discuss the ability of resource-constrained CNNs, and the different architecture choices (inputs size and layer depth) in solving various aesthetic inference tasks: binary classification, regression, and image cropping. We show that if trained for solving fine-grained aesthetics inference, such models can rival the cropping performance of other aesthetics-based croppers, however they fall short in comparison to models trained for composition ranking. Lastly, we discuss our work on exploring and identifying the design choices in training composition ranking functions, with the goal of using them for image composition enhancement

In Praise of Miscues and the Comprehension of Complex Texts

The reading of complex texts is a critical dimension of the Common Core State Standards. We have little knowledge, however, of the impact of reader miscues on the comprehension of such texts. This issue is explored through a look at fourth graders transactions with literary and scientific texts. The impact of two types of reading behaviors on comprehension are examined: (1) portions of text read with no miscues and (2) portions of text read with meaning maintaining miscues. It was found that readers were significantly more likely to comprehend and recall information that was read with meaning maintaining miscues than when read with no miscues whatsoever. Such behaviors were more likely to occur with the less familiar scientific text

The Response Strategies of Proficient Readers When Correcting and Attempting to Correct Miscues on a Complex Scientific Text

This study examines the strategies that proficient fourth grade readers employ when responding to their miscues. Thirty-four students orally read a complex expository scientific text. The text was part of the fourth grade science curriculum. Reader response strategies to their miscues—corrections and attempts to correct—were identified. It was discovered that response strategies were either graphic or contextual in nature. As measured by Chi-squares, readers varied their use of these strategies. This variation was statistically significant at the p \u3c .001 level for both correction and attempt to correct strategies. For both, the primary focus was on the word level. Existing research documents that as text complexity increases, readers have a tendency to rely on sounding out as a default strategy. As readers progress across the grades, teachers will therefore need to prompt the use more than graphic strategies when readers respond to their miscues. This is particularly the case due to the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. Students are being introduced to complex disciplinary texts in which the use of context is critical to their understanding of new language forms and concepts

Into the Field: Learning About English Language Learners In Newcomer Programs

This research examines the impact of field experiences with English language learners on the conceptual and emotional development of preservice disciplinary students. For one semester, preservice university students worked with English language learners enrolled in middle and high school Newcomer Programs. During this time the university students wrote reflection papers and grand learnings/lingering questions essays linking the field experiences with course readings and in-class activities. A qualitative analysis of these reflections found four critical content-based learnings related to English Language Learners emerged from these field experiences: (1) the distinction between content, language, and activity challenges, (2) conversational versus academic language, (3) code switching with the use of the home language in the classroom, and (4) increased confidence, empathy, and advocacy of the preservice teachers for English language learners. Suggestions for those instructors wishing to provide similar experiences to their preservice students conclude the research

Dry Etching for High Aspect Ratio Silicon Fins

The aim of this project is to develop a dry etching process that could be utilized to realize high aspect ratio fins. The traditional planar silicon transistor has seen amazing development ever since it became the workhorse of the semi conductor industry and the dominant way of realizing logic and analog circuits. However as its gate channels length is scaled down, the transistor encounters issues termed short channel effects and which has sprouted an extensive research into future replacements for the planar MOSFET. One of such devices is the Fin Field Effect Transistor or FinFET. Most of the FinFET fabrication processes rely heavily on a highly anisotropic etching process to realize very thin fins. This report details the investigation into the possible chemistries used for anisotropic etching, further exploration and improvement of the process on wafers pieces. In the end, the report describes the transfer of the Silicon etch from the wafer pieces to a full six inch wafer

Reshaping Curriculum to Enhance the Relevance of Literary Competence in Children's Education06

Twenty-first century learners face a multi-literacy landscape as they strive to acquire the cognitive skills needed for independent learning, apply linguistic skills to other knowledge base, and become computer literate. This article envisions a combination of skill sets and knowledge bases as the foundation of a literary competence-based curriculum. Such a curriculum would have the goal of enhancing young learners"critical thinking abilities; this would also help them take charge of the cognitive,linguistic, and sociocultural dimensions of written and spoken language in order to make learning transferable and applicable to the real world

The Role of PETE in Developing and Sustaining Physical Literacy Informed Practitioners

This paper discusses teacher preparation in relation to encouraging and empowering future teachers to appreciate the potential and value of adopting physical literacy as the goal of PE. The paper addresses the issue of the role of schools and teacher training programs in developing the next generation of PE teachers entering PE Teacher Education (PETE) with respect to thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and beliefs that underpin the concept of physical literacy, and providing high quality learning experiences that are crucial to continuing physical activity throughout the life course for all children, not just those that have a natural aptitude in this area. Many advocates for radical change in physical education have repeatedly argued that physical education curricula around the world are too focused on a traditional, one size fits all, sport technique based, multi-activity form. Others have argued that the traditional curricula have a primary focus on physical competence in running, jumping, and balls skills rather than providing experience in a wide range of physical activities including, inter alia, those with a focus on aesthetic awareness and those related to outdoor adventure

DeepPatent2: A Large-Scale Benchmarking Corpus for Technical Drawing Understanding

Recent advances in computer vision (CV) and natural language processing have been driven by exploiting big data on practical applications. However, these research fields are still limited by the sheer volume, versatility, and diversity of the available datasets. CV tasks, such as image captioning, which has primarily been carried out on natural images, still struggle to produce accurate and meaningful captions on sketched images often included in scientific and technical documents. The advancement of other tasks such as 3D reconstruction from 2D images requires larger datasets with multiple viewpoints. We introduce DeepPatent2, a large-scale dataset, providing more than 2.7 million technical drawings with 132,890 object names and 22,394 viewpoints extracted from 14 years of US design patent documents. We demonstrate the usefulness of DeepPatent2 with conceptual captioning. We further provide the potential usefulness of our dataset to facilitate other research areas such as 3D image reconstruction and image retrieval