Olympic education experiences: the sponsorship in the promotion of Olympic values

This text was presented at the 16th International Seminar on Olympic Studies for Postgraduate Students that was organised by the International Olympic Academy in Ancient Olympia, from 1st to 30th July 2008. First here are reported, fundamental concepts on Olympics such as the Olympic values and the educational mandate of Pierre de Coubertin, the Olympic brand and symbols, the sponsorship and the Olympic partner programme. Then there is a chapter regarding the Top sponsors educational initiatives on Olympic values, and specially, describing the Olympic sponsors involvement in education and Top sponsors educational activities. And finally, the author analyses the sponsorship role in the promotion of Olympic Values Education, providing conclusions, comments on future and perspectives and some recommendations.

Schooling in the Network Society : Internet in Primary and Secondary Education. Research report (synthesis document)

Aquest projecte té la intenció d'identificar i analitzar els efectes de la introducció d'Internet a les escoles catalanes (educació primària i secundària). L'objectiu és posar de manifest la manera com s'utilitza la xarxa en aquest àmbit i en quina mesura contribueix a l'aparició, en els centres educatius, d'una nova cultura adaptada a les necessitats de la societat xarxa. Amb aquest propòsit, aquest projecte desplega les seves línies d'anàlisi per a fer atenció al procés d'incorporació d'Internet, principalment, en tres direccions: la pràctica pedagògica, les formes d'organització i gestió dels centres educatius i la seva vinculació amb la comunitat i el territori. Aquesta investigació ha estat desenvolupada pel grup de recerca ENS (Education and Network Society). Amb una perspectiva comparativa, el treball d'aquest grup vol contribuir, sobre la base de dades empíriques, a interpretar la transformació de l'àmbit educatiu no universitari en els paràmetres que estableix, avui dia, la nostra societat.

Joint determinants of education enrolment and first birth timing in France and West Germany

We examined the reciprocal influence between educational decisions and the timing of first births, using the Family and Fertility Surveys of France and West Germany. Since these two processes are potentially endogenous, we modelled them jointly, using event history models. We hypothesise that the reciprocal impact of educational and fertility careers, as well as the impact of the common determinants of both processes, are gender specific and context specific.The results show a significant endogeneity for women and men in both countries. This endogeneity is stronger for women than for men, while no substantial differences are found between the two countries. Removing this shared and unobserved heterogeneity, the results show a stronger reciprocal impact between the processes for women than for men. A similar impact of being enrolled in education on first birth in both countries is found, while the effect of the birth (and especially of the pregnancy) of the first child on terminating one’s education appeared to be more marked in West Gernany than in France.

Network characteristics of film tourism websites in Catalonia: an application of network analysis in tourism

This master thesis presents a research on the analysis of film tourism stakeholders in Catalonia applying the network analysis approach. The research aims to provide an analysis of the relations between local tourism stakeholders with local film offices through their websites. Therefore, the development of the present work involved the review of literature on the themes of film tourism and network analysis. Then the main stakeholders of film and tourism of Catalonia were identified and their websites analyzed. The measures indicators for network analysis such as centrality, closeness and betweenness degree have been applied on the analysis of the websites to determine the extent of the relations of film and tourism stakeholders in Catalonia. Results and conclusions are presented on the referred sections

Teaching how to learn with a wiki in Primary Education: what classroom interaction can tell us

Understanding how wikis are used to support collaborative learning is an important concern for researchers and teachers. Adopting a discourse analytic approach, this paper attempts to understand the teaching processes when a wiki is embedded in a science project in primary education to foster collaborative learning. Through studying interaction between the teacher and students, our findings identify ways in which the teacher prompts collaborative learning but also shed light on the difficulties for the teacher in supporting student collective collaboration. It is argued that technological wiki features supporting collaborative learning can only be realized if teacher talk and pedagogy are aligned with the characteristics of wiki collaborative work: the freedom of students to organize and participate by themselves, creating dialogic space and promoting student participation. We argue that a dialogic approach for examining interaction can be used to help to design a more effective pedagogic approach in the use of wikis in education, to shift into Web 2.0 learning paradigm and to equip learners with the competences they need to participate in knowledge co-construction.

Wiki-supported collaborative learning in primary education. How a dialogic space is created for thinking together

This paper explores how wikis may be used to support primary education students’ collaborative interaction and how such an interaction process can be characterised. The overall aim of this study is to analyse the collaborative processes of students working together in a wiki environment, in order to see how primary students can actively create a shared context for learning in the wiki. Educational literature has already reported that wikis may support collaborative knowledge-construction processes, but in our study we claim that a dialogic perspective is needed to accomplish this. Students must develop an intersubjective orientation towards each others’ perspectives, to co-construct knowledge about a topic. For this purpose, our project utilised a ‘Thinking Together’ approach to help students develop an intersubjective orientation towards one another and to support the creation of a ‘dialogic space’ to co-construct new understanding in a wiki science project. The students’ asynchronous interaction process in a primary classroom -- which led to the creation of a science text in the wiki -- was analysed and characterised, using a dialogic approach to the study of CSCL practices. Our results illustrate how the Thinking Together approach became embedded within the wiki environment and in the students’ collaborative processes. We argue that a dialogic approach for examining interaction can be used to help design more effective pedagogic approaches related to the use of wikis in education and to equip learners with the competences they need to participate in the global knowledge-construction era.

Qualitative social differentiation in tertiary education in Spain

[cat] En aquest treball, s'estudia si la hipòtesi de la desigualtat efectivament mantinguda “effectively maintained inequality” es cumpleix a Espanya. Es postula que en les transicions terciàries a Espanya, les influències dels pares no es manifesten tant a través de la probabilitat de fer la transició, sinó més aviat a través de les diferències qualitatives associades a aquesta transició en termes de les qualitats dels programes educatius. Analitzem dues característiques qualitatives dels estudis universitaris: la durada del programa i el seu prestigi acadèmic. Identifiquem per a quins individus la influència parental és més important en cada cas.

Qualitative social differentiation in tertiary education in Spain

[cat] En aquest treball, s'estudia si la hipòtesi de la desigualtat efectivament mantinguda “effectively maintained inequality” es cumpleix a Espanya. Es postula que en les transicions terciàries a Espanya, les influències dels pares no es manifesten tant a través de la probabilitat de fer la transició, sinó més aviat a través de les diferències qualitatives associades a aquesta transició en termes de les qualitats dels programes educatius. Analitzem dues característiques qualitatives dels estudis universitaris: la durada del programa i el seu prestigi acadèmic. Identifiquem per a quins individus la influència parental és més important en cada cas.

Catalan law in the European context

The article provides an overview of the Catalan law at the European context. How the Catalan institutions can tackle on the Spanish Government policies and decisions in front of the European Union. And how the European Union Law and policies are implemented in a decentralized country such Spain where Autonomous Communities have their own Governments and Parliaments. There is also examined how this Spanish territorial decentralized structure affects the implementation of such EU norms and its control. Finally, there is exposed how Catalan institutions manage to participate in front of the European Union institutions. Which are the instruments that can guarantee this participation and which are the EU responses to them.

How to improve the formal analytic reasoning and scientific motivation in the intellectual training of medical students

A review article of the The New England Journal of Medicine refers that almost a century ago, Abraham Flexner, a research scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, undertook an assessment of medical education in 155 medical schools in operation in the United States and Canada. Flexner’s report emphasized the nonscientific approach of American medical schools to preparation for the profession, which contrasted with the university-based system of medical education in Germany. At the core of Flexner’s view was the notion that formal analytic reasoning, the kind of thinking integral to the natural sciences, should hold pride of place in the intellectual training of physicians. This idea was pioneered at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania in the 1880s, but was most fully expressed in the educational program at Johns Hopkins University, which Flexner regarded as the ideal for medical education. (...)

Per què Harry Potter i no Harriet Potter?

Les pel·lícules i sèries de ficció més vistes a Espanya durant el 2008 en clau de gènere.

Xoà, literatura i cinema

Aquest treball de final de carrera tracta sobre les diferents perspectives i aproximacions a l'Holocaust nazi per part de la literatura i el cinema. La Xoà, forma que els jueus utilitzen per anomenar l'Holocaust, és un dels moments més importants de la història europea. Ens agradaria veure si aquest tema tan delicat és tractat des de diferents perspectives i aproximacions en la literatura i el cinema. També voldríem esbrinar quina pel·lícula és millor per ensenyar què va ser l'Holocaust a una persona adulta, a un grup d'adolescents, a uns infants, etc. i si hi ha alguna pel·lícula o novel·la que vagi més enllà, en el sentit que tracti l'Holocaust des d'un punt de vista més simbòlic que no pas realista, d'arrel kafkiana, com en el cas de "L'incinerador de cadàvers". Per trobar aquestes diferents perspectives (més realistes i veristes o bé més simbòliques) caldrà observar diversos tipus de literatura (biogràfica, semibiogràfica i de ficció), pel·lícules (bèl·liques, drames, biogràfiques, etc.), articles... Analitzarem al mateix temps què diuen diferents autors sobre l'holocaust com un fet inenarrable. Compararem els dos o tres punts de vista (torturats, torturadors i testimonis).

Underwater SLAM in a marina environment

This paper describes a navigation system for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in partially structured environments, such as dams, harbors, marinas or marine platforms. A mechanical scanning imaging sonar is used to obtain information about the location of planar structures present in such environments. A modified version of the Hough transform has been developed to extract line features, together with their uncertainty, from the continuous sonar dataflow. The information obtained is incorporated into a feature-based SLAM algorithm running an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). Simultaneously, the AUV's position estimate is provided to the feature extraction algorithm to correct the distortions that the vehicle motion produces in the acoustic images. Experiments carried out in a marina located in the Costa Brava (Spain) with the Ictineu AUV show the viability of the proposed approach

Casal de cinema

El treball que es presenta a continuació és resultat de les pràctiques de Psicopedagogia realitzades al Museu del Cinema de Girona des del febrer fins al maig de 2012. El treball és, bàsicament, una proposta didàctica per a la realització d'un Casal d'estiu sobre cinema per a la institució anteriorment esmentada

Passive modernization? the new human development index and its components in Italy’s regions (1871-2007)

The article presents and discusses estimates of social and economic indicators for Italy’s regions in benchmark years roughly from Unification to the present day: life expectancy, education, GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, and the new Human Development Index (HDI). A broad interpretative hypothesis, based on the distinction between passive and active modernization, is proposed to account for the evolution of regional imbalances over the long-run. In the lack of active modernization, Southern Italy converged thanks to passive modernization, i.e., State intervention: however, this was more effective in life expectancy, less successful in education, expensive and as a whole ineffective in GDP. As a consequence, convergence in the HDI occurred from the late XIX century to the 1970s, but came to a sudden halt in the last decades of the XX century.