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STEM-related educational outreach offers students enriching opportunities to become more familiar with science, in terms of how it relates to their daily lives and with respect to possible career paths that they might want to follow. At the same time, graduate student trainees providing that outreach act as important resources for elementary and high school teachers while they hone their teaching skills and build confidence in the classroom. In this paper, six graduate students and recent graduates share their experiences with a variety of outreach programs that link young people with science in both Canada and the United States.

The challenges facing our children in the 21st century are rapidly changing. As a result, schools bear a greater responsibility to prepare students for college, career, and life and must be held accountable for more than just testing and reporting on a narrow set of outcomes aimed at minimum levels of competency. Thus, scholars, educators, and reform advocates are calling for a more meaningful next phase of school accountability, one that promotes continuous support and improvement rather than mere compliance and efforts to avoid punishment (Center for American Progress & CCSSO, 2014; Darling-Hammond, Wilhoit, & Pittenger, 2014). This paper reviews state and district level accountability systems that incorporate a multiple measures approach to accountability and highlights the following features that represent redesigned systems of accountability: 1) broader set of outcome measures, 2) mix of state and local indicators, 3) measures of opportunities to learn, 4) data dashboards, and 5) School Quality Reviews. The paper concludes with guidance for policymakers and practitioners on ways to support the development and implementation of a multiple measures system of accountability so that school accountability becomes synonymous with responsibility for deeper learning and support for continuous improvement.

Northern Canada is warming at 3 times the global rate. Changing diversity and distribution of vectors and pathogens is an increasing health concern. California serogroup (CSG) viruses are mosquitoborne arboviruses; wildlife reservoirs in northern ecosystems have not been identified. We detected CSG virus antibodies in 63% (95% CI 58%-67%) of caribou (n = 517), 4% (95% CI 2%-7%) of Arctic foxes (n = 297), 12% (95% CI 6%-21%) of red foxes (n = 77), and 28% (95% CI 24%-33%) of polar bears (n = 377). Sex, age, and summer temperatures were positively associated with polar bear exposure; location, year, and ecotype were associated with caribou exposure. Exposure was highest in boreal caribou and increased from baseline in polar bears after warmer summers. CSG virus exposure of wildlife is linked to climate change in northern Canada and sustained surveillance might be used to measure human health risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If the notion of public and private spheres seems somehow quaint or old-fashioned, the distinction between public and private corporations will be that much more obscure. Yet Channel One broadcasts in a public school classroom are indisputably the result of a contract between a private corporation (Alloy Media + Marketing) and a public corporation (a local school board). Public school administrators operate within a social and institutional context in which there often appears to be no line between private interests and public interests. The author argues that there is such a line and that public school administrators unwittingly cross it when they make Channel One-type deals. This article examines how the regulatory history of private corporations has shaped the social and institutional context in which public school administrators operate. (Contains 18 notes.)

Faculty have long incorporated students into interdisciplinary research projects to meet increasingly common demands for collaborative research by federal funding agencies. Despite the critical role of experiential learning in building student research skills and capacity, few have explored social interaction mechanisms used to facilitate student experiential learning in an interdisciplinary research team. Drawing upon the New Rural Economy project as a case study, interviews with 13 students from eight Canadian universities were conducted to explore these social interaction mechanisms. While findings revealed an array of social interaction mechanisms used to develop student learning networks, the quality of these mechanisms were mixed; thereby influencing the utilization of these networks for guidance and feedback. As faculty organize social interaction mechanisms, they should consider factors such as previous experience, student and faculty relationships, finances, language, gender, ethnicity, and other issues, that will have an impact on student engagement with experiential learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in emotions in the workplace has accelerated rapidly over the past decade. The impetus has come from several sources and has led to bodies of research on a variety of topics. Although these bodies of work are not yet fully developed, they all show promise, and portend that the study of emotions in the workplace has the potential to add to the understanding of behavior in organizations. In the aggregate, affective experiences contribute to the affective component of attitudes such as job satisfaction, and eventually to judgment-driven behaviors such as a decision to quit a job. Affective Events Theory seems to present a very useful framework for understanding the role of affect in the workplace. The widespread and increasing interest in affect at work is documented by symposia and caucuses at the Academy of Management annual meetings since 1996, the formation by Neal Ashkanasy of the Emonet discussion group and the successful First Conference on Emotions and Organizational Life held in San Diego, California in 1998. This conference has resulted in the forthcoming publication of an edited collection based on the best papers from the conference. A second conference is scheduled to be held in August 2000 in Toronto, Ontario.

One of the major issues in development economics is whether dependence on the export of one or a few primary products--a characteristic of less developed economies--tends to promote or retard the economic development of these countries It is alleged on the one hand that through various multipliers, linkages, demonstration, and leakage effects, such primary-product exports act positively; and it is argued, on the contrary, that through instabilities associated with fluctuations in primary-product prices and because, perhaps, of some inherent inferiority allegedly associated with primary production, concentration on such production retards development. The predominant attitude in the less developed countries, judging by the economic policies they pursue, is one of distrust of dependence on primary production. This skeptical view is supported by reference to such examples as rice in the case of Burma and tin in the case of Bolivia. In this paper we set up a model indicating a possible method of measuring the effects of staple production upon per capita income, and apply that model to make the indicated measurements for a classic staple period, that of the wheat boom on the Canadian prairies between 1901 and 1911.[3] Our finding is that, even under the most generous interpretation of "wheat boom" and the most favorable assumptions about the magnitude of its effect, that effect could have amounted to no more than 8.40 per cent of the total increase in per capita income during the period; under a less favorable, but more reasonable, set of assumptions the effect was only some 5.20 per cent of the rise in per capita income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown principal support to be a critical variable for implementing and sustaining evidence-based practices. However, there remains little understanding of the factors that may influence a principal's personal decision to support a practice. The purpose of the current study was to examine events that influenced principals' support for a widely-used approach to behavior in schools, school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS). In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 school administrators who self-reported that they were initially opposed to or not supportive of PBIS but became stronger supporters over time. Qualitative analysis using the Enhanced Critical Incident Technique revealed eight helping and three hindering categories of experiences in change in support, as well as two categories of early experiences that they reported might have built their support from the beginning. Implications for enhancing administrator support are provided. [This paper was published in "Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions" (EJ1092466).]

The Salton basin is a closed, subsea level basin located in extreme southeastern California. At the center of the basin lies the Salton Sea, the state's largest inland lake, which is surrounded by a desert landscape characterized by paleo lakebed surfaces, dry washes, alluvial fans, and interdunes. Dust storms are common occurrence in this region. However, despite the regularity of dust outbreaks here, little is known about the meteorological processes responsible for these storms. Here I use observations and output from reanalysis to elucidate the meteorological controls on dust emission events in the Salton basin during 2015–18. Analysis of surface and upper-air observations, satellite data, and reanalysis, suggest that the largest dust storms in the region are associated with an upper-level low centered near the coastline of western Canada, which directs a zonal low-level jet over the region. Flow blocking by a coastal mountain range results in isentropic drawdown of air in the lee of these mountains. Once surface warming at the floor of the Salton basin is sufficient such that the density of the descending air is greater than that of the ambient air at the surface, the downslope windstorm reaches the desert floor and initiates dust emission. This process may also be accompanied by a downwind propagating hydraulic jump. These processes appear to be similar to those responsible for the strongest dust events in the Owens Valley, and may represent the main mechanisms for emission from other closed basins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are currently over 80 species of mosquito endemic in Canada-although only a few of these carry pathogens that can cause disease in humans. West Nile virus, Eastern equine encephalitis virus and the California serogroup viruses (including the Jamestown Canyon and snowshoe hare viruses) are mosquito-borne viruses that have been found to cause human infections in North America, including in Canada. Over the last 20 years, the incidence of most of these endemic mosquito-borne diseases (MBD) has increased approximately 10% in Canada, due in large part to climate change. It is anticipated that both the mosquito lifecycle and virus transmission patterns will be affected by climate change, resulting in an increase in both the range and local abundance of several important mosquito species. Laboratory studies and mathematical modelling suggest that increased ambient temperatures, changes in precipitation and extreme weather events associated with climate change will likely continue to drive mosquito vector and MBD range expansion, increasing the duration of transmission seasons and leading to MBD-related epidemics. Furthermore, Canada's endemic MBDs have complex transmission cycles, involving multiple reservoir hosts (birds and mammals), multiple pathogens and multiple mosquito species-all of which may be sensitive to climate and other environmental changes, and making forecasting of potential emerging trends difficult. These expected climate-induced changes in mosquitoes and MBDs underline the need for continued (and expanded) surveillance and research to ensure timely and accurate evaluation of the risks to the public health of Canadians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open online courses (OOC) with a massive number of students have represented an important development for online education in the past years. A course on artificial intelligence, CS221, at the University of Stanford was offered in the fall of 2011 free and online which attracted 160,000 registered students. It was one of three offered as an experiment by the Stanford computer science department to extend technology knowledge and skills to the entire world. The instructors were two of the best known experts in the subject of artificial intelligence. Although students would not get Stanford University grades or credit, 20,000 from 190 countries finished the course successfully receiving a "statement of accomplishment" from the tutors Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig. Udacity is a start-up from the authors of CS221 delivering similar massive free online courses. EdX, a joint partnership between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University to offer online learning to millions of people around the world, is one of the most recent proposals in this realm. Massive open online courses known as connectivist MOOCs (c MOOCs) on the other hand have been delivered since 2008. They are based on the explicit principles of connectivism (autonomy, diversity, openness and interactivity) and on the activities of aggregation, remixing, repurposing and feeding forward the resources and learning. In the research literature, newspaper and magazine articles both types of OOCs, AI Stanford like courses (AI) and c-MOOCs, have been identified in many occasions as equivalent. Distance education (DE) pedagogy can be classified through the evolution of three categories: cognitive-behaviourist, social constructivist, and connectivist. These three current and future generations of DE pedagogy have an important place in a well-rounded educational experience. To a large extent, the generations have evolved in tandem with the technologies and all three models are very much in existence today and are categorized by a set of conditions. In this paper we study in detail representative courses from AI and c MOOC formats. We establish that although they share the use of distributed networks the format associated with c-MOOCs, which are defined by a participative pedagogical model, are unique and different from AI. We further assign to the AI to a cognitive-behaviourist (with some small contribution of social constructivist) and MOOCs to connectivist pedagogy. (Contains 2 tables and 4 figures.)

The driving premise of this paper is that students should be schooled in built and natural environments that afford them ways of understanding of how their daily physical actions and social choices affect the earth. Views of prominent philosophers and scholars in support of this premise are described. Next, four cases illustrate how schools can provide students with opportunities to develop ecological mindfulness through practical activities that are enhanced by natural and built environments. The examples--from Canada, the United States, and Australia--span the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of education. It is concluded that schools and curricula that focus on a sense of place are able to support the practical activities that lead to meaningful relationships between members of the community, and between people and the land.

The article discusses possible connections between judicial reform and police procedures in wrongfully convicted exonerations in the California judicial system. It presents statistics concerning wrongful convictions in California, the concept of misidentification in wrongful convictions, false confessions, and misleading DNA and forensic evidence.

Ungulates impact woody species' growth and abundance but little is understood about the comparative impacts of different ungulate species on forest expansion in savanna environments. Replacement of native herbivore guilds with livestock [i.e., beef cattle ( Bos taurus)] has been hypothesized as a factor facilitating trembling aspen ( Populus tremuloides Michx.) encroachment into grasslands of the Northern Great Plains. We used a controlled herbivory study in the Parklands of western Canada to compare the impact of native ungulates and cattle on aspen saplings. Native ungulate treatments included a mixed species guild and sequences of herbivory by different ungulates [bison ( Bison bison subsp. bison), elk ( Cervus elaphus) then deer ( Odocoileus hemionus); or deer, elk, then bison]. Herbivory treatments were replicated in three pastures, within which sets of 40 marked aspen saplings (<1.8 m) were tracked along permanent transects at 2-week intervals, and compared to a non-grazed aspen stand. Stems were assessed for mortality and incremental damage (herbivory, leader breakage, stem abrasion and trampling). Final mortality was greater with exposure to any type of herbivore, but remained similar between ungulate treatments. However, among all treatments, the growth of aspen was highest with exposure only to cattle. Herbivory of aspen was attributed primarily to elk within the native ungulate treatments, with other forms of physical damage, and ultimately sapling mortality, associated with exposure to bison. Overall, these results indicate that native ungulates, specifically elk and bison, have more negative impacts on aspen saplings and provide evidence that native and domestic ungulates can have different functional effects on woody plant dynamics in savanna ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A broader view of literacy has emerged as part of the larger debate about educational reform across the globe. Many now argue that availing children with additional skills in technological and media literacy will foster creativity, motivate youth, and improve their economic opportunities while increasing the core of high skilled labourers available to meet the needs of the "knowledge" economy. From Canada and England to Australia and New Zealand, media literacy has become part of the core curriculum. Within the U.S., implementation of reform in this vein has been slow and a number of informal education institutions have stepped in to meet the perceived need, augmenting the core curriculum with media literacy and production opportunities. Yet there are serious questions about what skills the children are actually learning and whether the literacy discourse is yet another attempt at ignoring persistent educational inequalities along the lines of gender, race, and class. In this paper, we consider the viability of combining critical media literacy with standpoint theory to strengthen the multiliteracies movement, offering a more critical and empowering pedagogy. To this end, we analyze an exemplary site of this approach in Los Angeles. (Contains 4 notes.)