BlueFriends: measuring, analyzing and preventing social exclusion between elementary school students

Social exclusion is a relatively recent term, whose creation is attributed to René Lenoir(Lenoir, 1974). Its concept covers a remarkably wide range of social and economic problems, and can be triggered for various reasons: mentally and physically handicapped, abused children, delinquents, multi-problem households, asocial people, and other social “misfits” (Silver, 1995, pp. 63; Foucault, 1992). With an increasingly multi-cultural population, cultural and social inequalities rapidly ascend, bringing with them the need for educational restructuring. We are living in an evermore diverse world, and children need to be educated to be receptive to the different types of people around them, especially considering social and cultural aspects. It is with these goals that inclusive education has seen an increased trend in today’s academic environment, reminding us that even though children may be taught under the same roof, discriminatory practices might still happen. There are, however, a number of developed tools to assess the various dimensions of social networks. These are mostly based on questionnaires and interviews, which tend to be fastidious and don’t allow for longitudinal, large scale measurement. This thesis introduces BlueFriends, a Bluetooth-based measurement tool for social inclusion/exclusion on elementary school classes. The main goals behind the development of this tool were a) understanding how exclusion manifests in students’ behaviors, and b) motivating pro-social behaviors on children through the use of a persuasive technology. BlueFriends is a distributed application, comprised by an application running on several smartphones, a web-hosted database and a computer providing a visual representation of the data collected on a TV screen, attempting to influence children behaviors. The application makes use of the Bluetooth device present on each phone to continuously sample the RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indication) from other phones, storing the data locally on each phone. All of the stored data is collected, processed and then inserted into the database at the end of each day. At the beginning of each recess, children are reminded of how their behaviors affect others with the help of a visual display, which consists of interactions between dogs. This display illustrates every child’s best friends, as well as which colleagues they don’t interact with as much. Several tips encouraging social interaction and inclusiveness are displayed, inspiring children to change their behaviors towards the colleagues they spend less time with. This thesis documents the process of designing, deploying and analyzing the results of two field studies. On the first study, we assess how the current developed tools are inferior to our measuring tool by deploying a measurement only study, aimed at perceiving how much information can be obtained by the BlueFriends application and attempting to understand how exclusion manifests itself in the school environment. On the second study, we pile on the previous to try and motivate pro-social behaviors on students, with the use of visual cues and recommendations. Ultimately, we confirm that our measurement tool’s results were satisfying towards measuring and changing children’s behaviors, and conclude with our thoughts on possible future work, suggesting a number of possible extensions and improvements.

Relatório de estágio sobre a intervenção pedagógica realizada na Escola Básica do 1º Ciclo com Pré-Escolar da Ajuda

O presente relatório de estágio foi realizado para a obtenção do grau de mestre em Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico. Este tem como objetivo descrever todo o trabalho realizado no estágio do 2º ano do Mestrado. Aqui, serão descritas as práticas realizadas em contexto do Ensino do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico e Educação Pré-Escolar. De forma a complementar todo o trabalho desenvolvido, fazem parte as reflexões e as estratégias adotadas. Ambos os estágios foram realizados na escola EB1/PE da Ajuda. Não obstante, são peças integrantes deste relatório, o contexto educativo e as características das crianças com que tive o prazer de trabalhar. No trabalho realizado foram utilizados diferentes instrumentos, nomeadamente a observação participante, a recolha documental, as conversas informais e ainda o diário de campo. São ainda descritas as intervenções educativas realizadas com a comunidade educativa. Para finalizar, são apresentadas as reflexões finais de toda a intervenção educativa realizada em ambas as valências.

Indoor air quality assessment of elementary schools in Curitiba, Brazil

The promotion of good indoor air quality in schools is of particular public concern for two main reasons: (1) school-age children spend at least 30% of their time inside classrooms and (2) indoor air quality in urban areas is substantially influenced by the outdoor pollutants, exposing tenants to potentially toxic substances. Two schools in Curitiba, Brazil, were selected to characterize the gaseous compounds indoor and outdoor of the classrooms. The concentrations of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and the isomers xylenes (BTEX); NO2; SO2; O3; acetic acid (HAc); and formic acid (HFor) were assessed using passive diffusion tubes. BTEX were analyzed by gas chromatography-ion trap mass spectrometry and other collected gasses by ion chromatography. The concentration of NO2 varied between 9.5 and 23 μg m-3, whereas SO2 showed an interval from 0.1 to 4.8 μg m-3. Within the schools, BTEX concentrations were predominant. Formic and acetic acids inside the classrooms revealed intermediate concentrations of 1.5 μg m-3 and 1.2 μg m-3, respectively. © Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009.

Indústria cultural e infância: uma análise da relação entre as propagandas midiáticas, o consumo e o processo formativo das crianças

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Prevalência do uso de substâncias psicoativas entre estudantes do ensino fundamental e médio de um municipio do interior: reavaliação apos 10 anos

Pós-graduação em Saúde Coletiva - FMB

Leitura, literatura infantil e estratégias de leitura no contexto escolar: concepções e práticas

Pós-graduação em Educação - FFC

Síndrome de down: situação escolar no ensino fundamental e médio da cidade de Araraquara-SP

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

The modern math movement(s): an essay on how elementary school teachers in Brazil gave meaning to it

The main goal of this paper is to discuss the production of meaning of the Modern Math Movement. The main sources were data available in school archives and interviews with former teachers that we use in order to focus on the diversity of perspectives -that complement it or oppose it-, which comes up when teachers refer to the Movement. Using this process of signification, teachers whether accept it, invalidate it or adapt it to guidelines imposed to them in their teaching activities. We establish a methodology by following the premises of Oral History to gather oral testimonies. The theoretical foundations in which this article is written are the guidelines of Paul Ricoeur's Hermeneutics, John Thompson's Depth Hermeneutics and Bolivar's narrative analysis.

Tutoria em leitura e escrita baseado no modelo de RTI – resposta à intervenção em crianças com dislexia do desenvolvimento

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

The interactive whiteboard in primary school: a case study of a brazilian district school

Interactive whiteboards (IWB) consist of a set of technological equipment organized in order to fulfill a specific task, enabling the development of didactic activities. Because they are associated to computers’ potentiality, interactive whiteboards can provide bigger interactivity between: teacher and students, students and content, and among students. This work’s main objective is to present some of the results yielded from a research related to the way students perceive interactive whiteboards in the classroom. In order to analyze the IWB usage dynamics, some educational applications in the field of mathematics were applied in the 3rd grade of elementary school. Aside from observation, video recordings were made and students were interviewed about the interactive whiteboard, in order to understand how these students observe and engage with the technological tool. IWB do not transform classroom’s reality by themselves, however, their physical presence and usage amount to external reinforcement can change student’s behavior positively.

A literatura no Ensino Fundamental - anos iniciais: entre o prazer emancipatório e o escolar pragmático

The Children's Literature is an invaluable tool for human formation, ethics, aesthetics and politics, as well as serves as an instrument for the formation of interdiscourse and transforms teaching procedures of text written production. Then, the investigation of how the literature is being worked in school. Therefore, in this work, constitutes the general objective, to investigate how the teaching of Children's Literature is organized in the early years of elementary school and if that organization promotes the development of literary literacy of the student, and language skills written and the reader behavior, making it critical on several topics. The question that served as a north to the research was the following one: is Teaching Children's Literature, in the early years of elementary school, organized to develop the literary literacy while acting as a catalyst tool for learning to read and write? Have been established the following objectives: a) describe how the teaching of children's literature is organized (teaching routine) in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th years of elementary school ; b) identify the literary genres that have worked in each school year, describe how they are worked out, analyze whether this work is related to the teaching of writing and the nature of that relation ship; c) verify if the Children's Literature teaching procedure seeks ways to articulate literary activities with the establishment of the interdiscourse as content for writing the textual production. The methodology that was included was the field research, from a qualitative interpretation approach and it had as direct data source the natural environment in which it was developed the teaching of Children's Literature. The work presents data results analyzed according to the concepts of Aesthetics of Reception (Iser, 1977; Jauss, 1977), and the functions of Literature, according to Candido (2000), Yasuda (2004), among others. From the results were extracted

Departmentalization in the 5th Grade Classroom: Re-thinking the Elementary School Model

In this action research study of my 5th grade classroom, I investigated the benefits of a modified block schedule and departmentalization. The research consisted of dividing the 5th grade curriculum into three blocks. Each block consisted of two primary subject areas: Mathematics was paired with Social Studies, Reading was paired with Health, and Writing was paired with Science. These groupings were designed to accommodate district time-allotment requirements and the strengths of each teacher within the 5th grade team. Thus, one teacher taught all of the Mathematics and Social Studies, another all of the Reading and Health, and another all of the Writing and Science. Students had classes with each teacher, each school day. I discovered that this departmentalization had many benefits to both students and teachers. As a result of this research, we plan to continue with our new schedule and further develop it to more fully exploit the educational and professional advantages we found to be a part of the project.

A literatura no Ensino Fundamental - anos iniciais: entre o prazer emancipatório e o escolar pragmático

The Children's Literature is an invaluable tool for human formation, ethics, aesthetics and politics, as well as serves as an instrument for the formation of interdiscourse and transforms teaching procedures of text written production. Then, the investigation of how the literature is being worked in school. Therefore, in this work, constitutes the general objective, to investigate how the teaching of Children's Literature is organized in the early years of elementary school and if that organization promotes the development of literary literacy of the student, and language skills written and the reader behavior, making it critical on several topics. The question that served as a north to the research was the following one: is Teaching Children's Literature, in the early years of elementary school, organized to develop the literary literacy while acting as a catalyst tool for learning to read and write? Have been established the following objectives: a) describe how the teaching of children's literature is organized (teaching routine) in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th years of elementary school ; b) identify the literary genres that have worked in each school year, describe how they are worked out, analyze whether this work is related to the teaching of writing and the nature of that relation ship; c) verify if the Children's Literature teaching procedure seeks ways to articulate literary activities with the establishment of the interdiscourse as content for writing the textual production. The methodology that was included was the field research, from a qualitative interpretation approach and it had as direct data source the natural environment in which it was developed the teaching of Children's Literature. The work presents data results analyzed according to the concepts of Aesthetics of Reception (Iser, 1977; Jauss, 1977), and the functions of Literature, according to Candido (2000), Yasuda (2004), among others. From the results were extracted

Approach to Food and Nutrition issues in Teaching Materials in Elementary School: interface with food and nutritional security and national curriculum parameters

Food and Nutrition Security (FNS) must be ensured to everybody. The school environment is favorable to the formation of healthy habits and citizenship. The National Curriculum Parameters (PCNs) guide the promotion of health concepts in a transversal way in the school curriculum. This study aimed to identify and analyze the approach used for food and nutrition themes in Fundamental Education's teaching material and its interface with the concept of FNS and the PCNs. Documental research was conducted on the teaching material from 5th to 8th grades of Fundamental Education in Public School of the state of Sao Paulo. The diffuse presence of food and nutrition themes was found in most disciplines in all bimesters in the four series, which shows the interdisciplinarity in health. It was found that the PCNs are related to the concept of SAN in its various aspects and that most subjects include topics that approach this relationship. In the correlation between themes, there is emphasis to health promotion and food production. The methodology used in the teaching material presents the theme, but not the correspondent content, what made the analysis of its suitability impossible. We conclude that there is the approach of the issues related to food and nutrition in the teaching material, some of them in an inconsistent way; it is the educators' task to select the contents and the appropriate strategy, doing an effort of constant update. This isbeing proposed by the State, however it is not accessible to all professionals and therefore still depends on the initiative of each teacher.