Lessons From New York City's Universal Pre-K Expansion: How a focus on diversity could make it even better

This brief is divided into two parts. The first provides background on how universal pre-K programs fit into the national landscape of early childhood policy, outlines the main features of New York City's current Universal Prekindergarten Program (UPK) expansion efforts, and draws lessons for other cities and states interested in expanding their programs. The second part provides an in-depth look at the issue of preschool classroom diversity in UPK, highlighting the opportunities and obstacles for integration embedded in current policies and recommending policy changes to address this issue in New York City and beyond

Embodied memory and curatorship in children’s digital video production

Digital video production in schools is often theorised, researched and written about in two ways: either as a part of media studies practice or as a technological innovation, bringing new, “creative”, digital tools into the curriculum. Using frameworks for analysis derived from multimodality theory, new literacy studies and theories of embodied identity, this study examines a video production made by two children who were taking part in a video project on the theme of self-representation and identity. Evidence was collected in the form of production notes, video interviews and the media text itself. The findings suggest that this way of working in new media can be thought of as a new literacy practice, metaphorically conceived as a form of “curatorship” of children’s own lives in the uses of multimodal editing tools for the intertextual organisation of digital media assets and their subsequent exhibition to peer groups and beyond

A Queer Perspective on Melodrama’s Social Life

A review of Jonathan Goldberg. 2016,' Melodrama: An Aesthetics of Impossibility', Durham, NC: Duke University Press

Gender Swapping in World of Warcraft: A look into personal relationships and gender identity in the gaming environment

Massively multi player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are virtual environments that allow thousands of players to come together at one time to interact, fight monsters, and solve challenges. Role-playing in particular offers some unique benefits and opportunities that are not spared in its virtual equivalent. Gender-swapping, that is when a player chooses to play as a character that is the opposite gender of him or her is one of those benefits. This study will explore the phenomenon of gender-swapping, looking for the diverse reasons players may have to assume an identity so extremely opposite of their own. The purpose of this research is to answer the question “Why do people gender-swap in MMORPGs and how does that effect their interpersonal relationships within the game?” In order to answer this question it has been broken into three parts. First, how does gender-swapping affect the player in a casual group? Second this study looks at how gender swapping affects a closer group; in game these groups are called guilds. Last will be a quick analysis of class, the chosen job (i.e. Mage, Priest) taken on by a player in order to perform within their group; and group roll, the players job as either one who takes damage, deals damage or heals the group; as a form of non-verbal communication within the game

Exploring rail futures using scenarios: experience and potential

In 1995 the author of this paper undertook a scenario exercise for British Rail to identify priorities for rail science and technology developments under the new privatised regime. Four marketbased 2010 scenarios were developed for UK rail transport: 1) cost driven; 2) quality driven, 3)technology driven and 4) environmentally driven. These helped to identify areas of strategic R&D that were needed to improve rail’s competitiveness. It is now over a decade since this scenario exercise took place. This paper, updating an earlier review (Potter and Roy, 2000), revisits the 1995 scenarios and compares them to what actual market strategies emerged within the privatised railway industry. It explores whether the four scenarios did succeed in capturing the range of market responses that emerged from rail privatisation and what lessons this contains for the use of scenarios transport research

The challenge of sustainable suburbia

This paper explores issues raised with the expansion of Milton Keynes and the dilemmas in seeking to plan for sustainable travel behaviour. The 1970 design of Milton Keynes was for a car-oriented low density land use pattern served by a one-kilometre grid of dual carriageway roads. Today, bus services in Milton Keynes are the poorest for any town of its size and the low density design makes most trips too long to walk and cycle. Hence Milton Keynes has a level of car use more characteristic of a rural shire than an aspiring city. Furthermore traffic is even starting to overwhelm the grid roads in a casebook SACTRA manner. Today the Plan for Milton Keynes would be viewed as environmentally irresponsible, economically extravagant and socially divisive, so proposals for the town’s expansion involve medium-density developments in new areas served not by 70 mph grid roads but 20-30mph ‘city streets’ with bus priority measures and maximising facilities within walking and cycling distance. These proposals have sparked a big local debate. A widespread view is that this will throw away what has made Milton Keynes good and economically successful, and many advocate retaining the ethos of a ‘city built for the car’. A counter expansion plan, backed by an e-petition, proposes a continuation of low density development and grid roads. This raises questions that have a generic application in the transport debate. Is there only one way for places like Milton Keynes to move towards transport sustainability? There seems to be a single model for transport sustainability based around high density living and traditional forms of public transport, but for the majority of suburban and semi-urban Britain perhaps more emphasis is needed on institutional initiatives rather than highly compact urban forms

Re-designing an MA module to foster agency, engagement and production in online social software

This article describes the process of re-designing a module on the MA in Media, Culture and Communication at the Institute of Education (IOE), University of London. This process took place as part of the “Pedagogic Research to Embedded E-Learning” (PREEL) project at the IOE and involved moving a module largely concerned with offline production of teaching resources into online engagement with Internet culture. Course participants were encouraged to think about issues around production in social software in ways which were relevant to their professional and personal activity online. The early stages of the re-design process were recorded in a course tutor blog and there were further attempts to reflect on the process using two evaluations, one in the middle of a pilot version of the course and the other at the end. The article concludes with a series of lessons learned which can be taken forward during the revalidation process

Novel horn antenna reduces side lobes, improves radiation pattern

A horn antenna, combining two propagation modes at selected power ratios, reduces side lobes, and improves the radiation characteristics. Noise and unwanted signals are considerably suppressed