Concepciones sobre las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC) y sus implicaciones educativas: un estudio exploratorio con profesorado de la provincia de Ñuble, Chile

El propósito de este estudio fue conocer las concepciones de profesores de educación primaria sobre las tecnologías educativas en dos dimensiones: a) conocimiento de las tecnologías de la información y comunicación; y b) creencias sobre el uso educativo que el profesorado da a estas herramientas. Se opta por un enfoque metodológico cuantitativo y un diseño no-experimental descriptivo del tipo encuesta. El análisis de los datos se realizó mediante paquete estadístico SPSS 14.0 y las técnicas utilizadas fueron descriptivos, frecuencias y porcentajes, técnicas de reducción de datos (análisis factorial) e inferencia estadística (comparación de medias y porcentajes). Los resultados demuestran que la mayoría de los profesores reconocen el interés que las tecnologías despiertan en el alumnado y las oportunidades de aprendizaje que ofrecen principalmente en relación con los diferentes ritmos de aprendizaje y las necesidades educativas especiales. Se identifica la búsqueda de información como una competencia fundamental, así como se evidencia que existe una relación causal entre el nivel de formación, la importancia que el profesor otorga al recurso y el uso educativo. Los resultados hacen aconsejable promover programas de formación continua en esta área y fortalecer la formación inicial docente.

Forensic analysis of buildings affected by mining subsidence based on Differential Interferometry (Part III)

This work presents a forensic analysis of buildings affected by mining subsidence, which is based on deformation data obtained by Differential Interferometry (DInSAR). The proposed test site is La Union village (Murcia, SE Spain) where subsidence was triggered in an industrial area due to the collapse of abandoned underground mining labours occurred in 1998. In the first part of this work the study area was introduced, describing the spatial and temporal evolution of ground subsidence, through the elaboration of a cracks map on the buildings located within the affected area. In the second part, the evolution of the most significant cracks found in the most damaged buildings was monitored using biaxial extensometric units and inclinometers. This article describes the work performed in the third part, where DInSAR processing of satellite radar data, available between 1998 and 2008, has permitted to determine the spatial and temporal evolution of the deformation of all the buildings of the study area in a period when no continuous in situ instrumental data is available. Additionally, the comparison of these results with the forensic data gathered in the 2005–2008 period, reveal that there is a coincidence between damaged buildings, buildings where extensometers register significant movements of cracks, and buildings deformation estimated from radar data. As a result, it has been demonstrated that the integration of DInSAR data into forensic analysis methodologies contributes to improve significantly the assessment of the damages of buildings affected by mining subsidence.

On the decorrelation filtering of RL05 GRACE data for global applications

In autumn 2012, the new release 05 (RL05) of monthly geopotencial spherical harmonics Stokes coefficients (SC) from GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) mission was published. This release reduces the noise in high degree and order SC, but they still need to be filtered. One of the most common filtering processing is the combination of decorrelation and Gaussian filters. Both of them are parameters dependent and must be tuned by the users. Previous studies have analyzed the parameters choice for the RL05 GRACE data for oceanic applications, and for RL04 data for global application. This study updates the latter for RL05 data extending the statistics analysis. The choice of the parameters of the decorrelation filter has been optimized to: (1) balance the noise reduction and the geophysical signal attenuation produced by the filtering process; (2) minimize the differences between GRACE and model-based data; (3) maximize the ratio of variability between continents and oceans. The Gaussian filter has been optimized following the latter criteria. Besides, an anisotropic filter, the fan filter, has been analyzed as an alternative to the Gauss filter, producing better statistics.