Uma solução para geração automática de trilhas em língua brasileira de sinais em conteúdos multimídia

Deaf people have serious difficulties to access information. The support for sign languages is rarely addressed in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Furthermore, in scientific literature, there is a lack of works related to machine translation for sign languages in real-time and open-domain scenarios, such as TV. To minimize these problems, in this work, we propose a solution for automatic generation of Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) video tracks into captioned digital multimedia contents. These tracks are generated from a real-time machine translation strategy, which performs the translation from a Brazilian Portuguese subtitle stream (e.g., a movie subtitle or a closed caption stream). Furthermore, the proposed solution is open-domain and has a set of mechanisms that exploit human computation to generate and maintain their linguistic constructions. Some implementations of the proposed solution were developed for digital TV, Web and Digital Cinema platforms, and a set of experiments with deaf users was developed to evaluate the main aspects of the solution. The results showed that the proposed solution is efficient and able to generate and embed LIBRAS tracks in real-time scenarios and is a practical and feasible alternative to reduce barriers of deaf to access information, especially when human interpreters are not available

A interação nas distâncias: a análise de um processo

Education and technology have always walked side by side. The Information and Communication Technologies are inserted in education as a profile of people from the new era. This research has the objective of understanding the insertion of the use of the Technologies of Information and Communication within the educational context, from the analysis of the process of interactivity among students and teachers of the Portuguese distance course of the Tiradentes University (Unit). For such, the empiric investigation was based on the analysis of academic documents, such as: the Course Pedagogical Project and Class Planning of regular classes, in regular classrooms, as well as interviews, focal groups, and pictures with people who live the history of the course. Direct observations were also conducted. The methodology applied was bibliographic and qualitative research of the exploratory type, using the information that was collected through the interviews. The results of this research demonstrated that the interaction promoted by the ICT represents a process of social change, and therefore, of development for education. It was concluded that the Distance Education has to overcome some fragilities, aiming at contributing to the educational field and to the promotion of interactions among students

Adoção de tecnologias móveis em empresas do Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco e Ceará

One of the best examples of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) evolutions is on the high capability of storing and processing data into smaller devices, creating a new business condition, the mobility . This mobility in a deeper analysis proposes a business remodeling in many different areas (business segmentations), through the Internet anywhere at any time, allowing managers and researchers to think again their actual models that work nowadays in companies and public institutions, modifying the way internal and external clients can be attended. This thesis analyzes issues on mobile business adoption, technological evolutions and the impacts caused by this new reality the access to information anywhere at any time . This research is exploratory and shows a compilation of similar papers and thesis describing how was conducted the survey within 50 companies in the states of Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco and Ceará. The statistics analysis showed the different level of mobile technology usage from simple voice communications to wide band data transmission. The analysis pointed that canonic correlation was the most effective type of analysis to describe the relations among all groups of variables showing which of them are relevant, or not, for mobile technology adoption

Práticas de letramento digital de professores em formação: demandas, saberes e impactos

Over the last decades, the digital inclusion public policies have significantly invested in the purchase of hardwares and softwares in order to offer technology to the Brazilian public teaching institutions, specifically computers and broadband Internet. However, the teachers education to handle these artefacts is put away, even though there is some demand from the information society. With that, this dissertation chooses as an object of study the digital literacy practices performed by 38 (thirty-eight) teachers in initial and continuous education by means of the extension course Literacies and technologies: portuguese language teaching and cyberculture demands. In this direction, we aim at investigating the digital literacy practices of developing teachers in three specific moments: before, while and after this extension action with the intent to (i) delineate the digital literacy practices performed by the collaborators before the formative action; (ii) to narrate the literacy events made possible by the extension course; (iii) to investigate the contributions of the education course to the collaborators teaching practice. We sought theoretical contributions in the literacy studies (BAYNHAM, 1995; KLEIMAN, 1995; HAMILTON; BARTON; IVANIC, 2000), specifically when it comes to digital literacy (COPE, KALANTZIS, 2000; BUZATO, 2001, 2007, 2009; SNYDER, 2002, 2008; LANKSHEAR & KNOBEL, 2002, 2008) and teacher education (PERRENOUD, 2000; SILVA, 2001). Methodologically, this virtual ethnography study (KOZINETS, 1997; HINE, 2000) is inserted into the field of Applied Linguistics and adopts a quali-quantitative research approach (NUNAN, 1992; DÖRNYEI, 2006). The data analysis permitted to evidentiate that (i) before the course, the digital literacy practices focused on the personal and academic dimensions of their realities at the expense of the professional dimension; (ii) during the extension action, the teachers collaboratively took part in the hybrid study sessions, which had a pedagogical focus on the use of ICTs, accomplishing the use of digital literacy practices - unknown before that; (iii) after the course, the attitude of the collaborator teachers concerning the use of ICTs on their regular professional basis had changed, once those teachers started to effectively make use of them, promoting social visibility to what was produced in the school. We also observed that teachers in initial education acted as more experienced peers in collaborative learning process, offering support scaffolding (VYGOTSKY, 1978; BRUNER, 1985) to teachers in continuous education. This occurred because of the undergraduates actualize digital literacy practices were more sophisticated, besides the fact being integrate generation Y (PRENSKY, 2001)

Redes de educação ambiental: um meio como proposta pedagógica para o mundo entrelaçado

The networks terminology has been growing in different meanings, in which emergent structures coming from one not so recently typology aquired, in the 90 s, fluid shapes impelled by waves without borders of the New Information and Communication Technologies. Ever since, the pattern and the morphology are being multiply and strengthen. With this backdrop, this study deals with the Education for Environment Networks, as a political and social, educative and cultural alternative intervention, as an answer for some contemporary demands. But what are these networks? In wich way they organize themselves to germinate political actions? Where is the core of these actions? What are their limits or potentialities? These are some of the questions that are presented along the study proposed. Therefore, we have in view to unveil the network social and environmental pedagogic dimension, as an alternative proposal towards to the planetary cintzenship formation for persons and coletivity. The study employs the exploration reasearch as the analysis of the organizational reference basis and the dinamics of conections that support the dialogue among the groups that belong to the Education for Environment Networks. We conclude that the networks overcome themselves as a powerfull tool to articulate and moblize people. They establish a potential pedagogic act for political and social intervention, as an alternative proposal for the citizen formation and his world vision. We sinalize that the networks are sometimes limited by the poorness of knowledge that still remains on those who find themselves twisted on them, and on the decreasing optics by those who are absent.

Formação de professores, saberes, reflexividade e apropriação da cultura digital no Projeto Um Computador por Aluno (UCA)

This study investigates teacher training and cognitive practice of teachers in a Basic Education school that adopted the Project One Computer per Student (OCS) in their school routine. Its relevance consists in provide directions for the continuation of training activities on the Project and guide the teachers with their pedagogical practices using the laptop model one to one. The thesis defended is that the educator formation for social using of digital media (specially the laptops from the Project UCA) gives space to establish new sociotechnical relationships, of new social and professionals practices, new identitary components and a process of reflexivity and knowledge reconstruction to teach. We reaffirm the importance of reflexivity and appropriation of digital culture for the better development of teaching practice using the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), giving focus to the aspects of social and professional use of the technology. The study is part of the qualitative aspect and is a procedural tracking based on principles of ethnographic research. As procedures and methodological tools, were used: intensive observation of school environments, documental analysis, focal group, semi-structured questionnaires and semi-structured individual interviews. The research was held in a public school in the city of Parnamirim - RN. The subject sample relates to 17 teachers, coming from the elementary school I and II, Youth and Adult Education and High School, who went through the process of training UCA and having entered the laptops in their teaching. The research corpus is structured based on the messages built into the process of data collection and is analyzed based on principles of Content Analysis, specified by Laurence Bardin (2011). Was taken as theoretical reference studies by Tardif (2000; 2011), Pimenta (2009), Gorz (2004, 2005), Giddens (1991), Dewey, J. (1916), Boudieu (1994; 1999), Freire (1996; 2005), among others. The analysis indicates a process of reconstruction / revision of knowledge to teach and work in digital culture, being these knowledges guided by the experience of the subjects investigated. The reconstructed knowledges will be revealed from a categorization process. The following groups of knowledges: "technical knowledges", "didactic-methodological knowledges and knowledges of professionalization" were built on the assumption of ownership of digital culture in the educational context. The analysis confirms the appearance of new ways of sociability when acquiring other forms of acting and thinking ICTs, despite the environment adverse to the reflexivity shared among the teachers. Also reveals, based on the ownership concept present on the data analysis, the construction of meanings of belonging and transformation of individuals into social routes from the interweaving of the teaching practice with the digital culture. Emphasizes, finally, the importance of a training for use of ICTs that exceeds the instrumentation, in other words, what we call "technical knowledges", but taking on its structural basis the shared reflection, the opening for the ressignificance (new meaning) and reconstruction of new knowledges and practices and that really allows, to the teacher, the living of an experience capable of providing socio-technical transformations of their relationships

Práticas de letramento digital de professores em formação: demandas, saberes e impactos

Over the last decades, the digital inclusion public policies have significantly invested in the purchase of hardwares and softwares in order to offer technology to the Brazilian public teaching institutions, specifically computers and broadband Internet. However, the teachers education to handle these artefacts is put away, even though there is some demand from the information society. With that, this dissertation chooses as an object of study the digital literacy practices performed by 38 (thirty-eight) teachers in initial and continuous education by means of the extension course Literacies and technologies: portuguese language teaching and cyberculture demands. In this direction, we aim at investigating the digital literacy practices of developing teachers in three specific moments: before, while and after this extension action with the intent to (i) delineate the digital literacy practices performed by the collaborators before the formative action; (ii) to narrate the literacy events made possible by the extension course; (iii) to investigate the contributions of the education course to the collaborators teaching practice. We sought theoretical contributions in the literacy studies (BAYNHAM, 1995; KLEIMAN, 1995; HAMILTON; BARTON; IVANIC, 2000), specifically when it comes to digital literacy (COPE, KALANTZIS, 2000; BUZATO, 2001, 2007, 2009; SNYDER, 2002, 2008; LANKSHEAR & KNOBEL, 2002, 2008) and teacher education (PERRENOUD, 2000; SILVA, 2001). Methodologically, this virtual ethnography study (KOZINETS, 1997; HINE, 2000) is inserted into the field of Applied Linguistics and adopts a quali-quantitative research approach (NUNAN, 1992; DÖRNYEI, 2006). The data analysis permitted to evidentiate that (i) before the course, the digital literacy practices focused on the personal and academic dimensions of their realities at the expense of the professional dimension; (ii) during the extension action, the teachers collaboratively took part in the hybrid study sessions, which had a pedagogical focus on the use of ICTs, accomplishing the use of digital literacy practices - unknown before that; (iii) after the course, the attitude of the collaborator teachers concerning the use of ICTs on their regular professional basis had changed, once those teachers started to effectively make use of them, promoting social visibility to what was produced in the school. We also observed that teachers in initial education acted as more experienced peers in collaborative learning process, offering support scaffolding (VYGOTSKY, 1978; BRUNER, 1985) to teachers in continuous education. This occurred because of the undergraduates actualize digital literacy practices were more sophisticated, besides the fact being integrate generation Y (PRENSKY, 2001)

Narrativas de professores em formação sobre a didatização de podcasts para o ensino de inglês na floresta

Considering the following conditions: (1) the fluency demands of students in an undergraduate program in Languages and Literatures/English in the Amazon region; (2) the listening and speaking needs of pre-service teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL); (3) my continuing education as a professor of EFL and my academic literacy as a teacher-researcher and pre-service-teacher trainer, this study, which is based on Narrative Inquiry, reports on a teacher experience of working didactically with oral genres through podcasting an activity that emerged with the advent of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Through this process, I engage with some theorists who promote teaching as a process that is driven by a concept of language as social practice. Subsequently, I make use of the notions of context of culture and context of situation, derived from Systemic Functional Linguistics, as well as the concept of genre and register derived from the perspective of this theory. Based on these principles and beliefs, the Amazon region constitutes the register (situation) of the genres used in this study. These principles also provide, opportunities for building learning strategies appropriate to this local context, and also to teach listening and speaking skills from a task-based approach. During the experience, based on the reflective teacher-education model, the participants produced narratives about the process, which I then analyzed according to Ely, Vinz, Downing and Anzul (2001), who propose possibilities of composing meanings in Narrative Inquiry. Based on this perspective, I discuss the following topics, which were highly emphasized in the participants narratives: the lack of didactic activities using oral genres; the relevance of context within teacher education; and collaborative work as a strategy to overcome gaps in digital literacy, language fluency and teaching skills. The meanings I thereby compose point to a paradigm shift in English language teaching within this context. I also argue for a pedagogical practice that is engaged with historical and socio-cultural issues, and with the development of language skills, also one that promotes the implementation of ICTs at the very start of teacher training programs, adopting teaching and learning strategies that correspond to the demands of fluency in this particular context, and deficiencies imposed by geographical isolation