Este artigo é um relato de experiência do processo de implantação do ambiente virtual de aprendizagem do Programa Primeira Infância Melhor (PIM). O PIM é uma política pública intersetorial de promoção do desenvolvimento integral na primeira infância, implantada no Estado do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil. Entre as atribuições do Governo do Estado está a formação das equipes em mais de 200 municípios. Por causa das restrições impostas pela pandemia de coronavirus, a política deixou de realizar formações presenciais e, de (...) forma emergencial, promoveu formações remotas, utilizando a ferramenta Google Drive. A partir desta experiência, foi decidido implantar uma plataforma de formação online. Para tanto, foi realizado um longo processo de planejamento, com análise dos materiais existentes, adequação aos objetivos pretendidos, criação do ambiente virtual e realização de uma formação piloto na modalidade educação à distância. (shrink)

The study of eye movements is a common way to non-invasively understand and analyze human behavior. However, eye-tracking techniques are very hard to scale, and require expensive equipment and extensive expertise. In the context of web browsing, these issues could be overcome by studying the link between the eye and the computer mouse. Here, we propose new analysis methods, and a more advanced characterization of this link. To this end, we recorded the eye, mouse, and scroll movements of 151 participants (...) exploring 18 dynamic web pages while performing free viewing and visual search tasks for 20 s. The data revealed significant differences of eye, mouse, and scroll parameters over time which stabilize at the end of exploration. This suggests the existence of a task-independent relationship between eye, mouse, and scroll parameters, which are characterized by two distinct patterns: one common pattern for movement parameters and a second for dwelling/fixation parameters. Within these patterns, mouse and eye movements remained consistent with each other, while the scrolling behaved the opposite way. (shrink)

Volume 7 of Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China (SCC) gives the issue of Chinese language in scientific practice pride of place. Its arguments are mainly devised to oppose views, put forward by Marcel Granet in 1920 and then by Derk Bodde in the 1970s, to the effect that the Chinese script (for Granet) or “literary Chinese” (for Bodde) impeded the development of science. The essay outlines the way in which Christoph Harbsmeier, in Part 1 of Volume 7, and (...) then Needham and Kenneth Robinson, in Part 2, expose the fallacies of these views. It suggests that Needham and Robinson’s rebuttals to Bodde’s position, innovative though they might be, share essential features with the latter’s theses. In particular, they all view the Chinese language primarily from the viewpoint of its function of communicating knowledge. The essay argues that Chinese-writing communities of practitioners of mathematics constantly shaped technical languages that drew on but also added to the resources of the Chinese language available to them to pursue their goals. The technical languages thereby shaped were not simply a means of communication with fellow-practitioners; they were also a tool of work. In conclusion, the essay argues that a language and the work done with this language are co-constructed. (shrink)

It is well known that the Ministry of State Security in the former German Democratic Republic was deeply involved in wiretapping and eavesdropping on both foreigners and its citizens. It is less widely known that, against this background, the Stasi developed a keen interest in technologies and techniques of speaker identification, such as the visualization of recorded sound and aural analysis. How exactly did Stasi employees analyze the sound of voices? How did listening become a legitimate way of knowing in (...) this context? And why did speaker identification not become as powerful as the Stasi had hoped? Empirically, this essay draws on documents from the Stasi’s former archives. Theoretically, it builds on “sonic skills” in the sciences to clarify the identification practices and distinguishes between the “logic of forensics” and the “logic of surveillance” to understand why the Stasi ran ashore in its sound analysis endeavor. Finally, it aims to contribute to understanding the information paradox in the Stasi historiography and its implications for the history of science. (shrink)

Responding to the invitation of this special issue of Childhood and Philosophy this paper considers the ethos of facilitation in philosophical enquiry with children, and the spatial-temporal order of the community of enquiry. Within the Philosophy with Children movement, there are differences of thinking and practice on ‘facilitation’ in communities of philosophical enquiry, and we suggest that these have profound implications for the political agency of children. Facilitation can be enacted as a chronological practice of progress and development that works (...) against child, in terms of political agency. This paper theorises practices of facilitation grounded in philosophies of childhood that assume listening to child/ren as equals, as already able to philosophise, and against sameness. We explore the political and ethical implications of the radical posthumanist reconfiguration of the ‘zipped’ body in the light of including the disciplinary, imaginative and enabling energies of chronological time through the concept now/ness. We shift from ethics to ethos, and from ‘zipped’ to ‘unzipped’ bodies, through the notion of affect to explore the temporal and spatial dimensions of facilitation in Philosophy with Children and children’s political agency. We re-turn to David McKee’s Not Now Bernard, getting ‘inside the text’, and attending to the postponement of equality in Philosophy with Children. (shrink)

This essay examines how internationalization has been a part of the history of the History of Science Society (HSS) from its establishment in 1924 to the present. Although the HSS remains a US-based society and its annual meetings are held primarily in the US, attended by mostly US-based scholars, we argue that there has always been a strong commitment to internationalism that continues to this day. We walk through the hundred years of the Society in four phases, namely the Sarton (...) years (1924–52), the coming-of-age of the field in America (1953–88), the opening up of the HSS to the world (1989–99), and the new millennium (2000–present). We end with a concluding section to elucidate how the Society has transitioned beyond Sarton as it goes into its second centenary. Our sources of evidence include interviews with select past HSS presidents, founders and chairs of HSS interest groups and forums, statistics of HSS membership to be found in the Smithsonian archives and HSS Newsletters, and distribution and patterns of Society-awarded prizes. We also take note of the growing numbers of roundtables and panels on global and non-Western history of science at HSS annual meetings since the 2010s. As we celebrate the HSS Centennial, it is important to reflect on the one hundred years of the Society’s engagement with internationalizing the history of science. (shrink)

Do farmers in the southern Mexican highlands practice science? The anthropologist Roberto González argues that they do in his well‐written and solidly researched account of Zapotec farmers' cultivation of corn, sugarcane, and coffee. This book speaks to enduring questions concerning the nature of science through its focus on the often‐overlooked sophistication of traditional farming. Historians of science interested in agriculture, international development, and definitions of science more broadly will find in Zapotec Science a rich store of wide‐ranging questions and provocative (...) answers.González aims to move beyond the limitations of many sociological and anthropological studies of traditional societies. Many ignore international “cosmopolitan” influences, and most that do deal explicitly with these treat the traditional and the cosmopolitan as separate spheres. González finds no reason to treat these categories as nonoverlapping, as he documents how Zapotec farmers have experimented with and adopted techniques, implements, and crop varieties from many parts of the globe. And the flow goes both ways. Many so‐called cosmopolitan scientists are beginning to recognize the importance of traditional knowledge for solving problems in industrialized nations. But though the boundaries may be blurred, González argues that the conceptual bases of Zapotec agriculture are “culturally incommensurable with those predominating in industrialized societies” .In Chapter 1, González elaborates his position relative to other anthropological work on local science and traditional ecological knowledge and poses comparative questions about Zapotec and cosmopolitan science. Chapters 2 and 3 richly detail the daily practice of Zapotec agriculture and its environmental and geographical, cultural, and historical contexts. González emphasizes campesinos' craft, the refined skills that underlie every aspect of home, community, and agricultural life.González's research comes to the fore in the middle chapters on maize, sugarcane, and coffee cultivation. Here he clearly illustrates how Zapotec farming is founded on five fundamental values: household maintenance , mutual aid among families, personification of the earth and supernatural beings, an understanding of physical work as normal and desirable, and an emphasis on the quality of food over its quantity. For each crop he shows how present agricultural practices have emerged from an evolving balance between local crop development over hundreds or thousands of years and carefully weighed periodic opportunities to adopt new practices or plant varieties. Sugarcane cultivation, for example, illustrates how Zapotec farmers' decisions grow out of the five core values rather than a more narrow “economic rationality.” Zapotec communities do not consume cheap, white, processed sugar; rather, they produce and use an older, less processed, more expensive form called panela. Panela's persistence in their diet is due to its role in reciprocal social relationships and to Zapotecs' preference for high‐quality, good‐tasting food. The book concludes with a critique of Green Revolution development strategies and a lively discussion of the fertile borderlands between traditional and cosmopolitan knowledges.González's definition of science, closely related to Bronislaw Malinowski's, centers on practical knowledge. González argues that Zapotec farmers practiced science as they experimented with new techniques and implements from beyond Oaxaca's borders. Although traditional and cosmopolitan knowledge are conceptually distant, the author places great weight on what they share: both are systematic searches for practical knowledge. Traditional agriculture offers materials and methods that cosmopolitan scientists increasingly need.This book's strength lies, not surprisingly, near González's expertise: his careful description and analysis of Zapotec farmers' practices, logic, and values. As with all ambitious and worthwhile projects that pull together scientific enterprises that are culturally, geographically, and conceptually distant, González's book leaves questions unanswered. His characterization of cosmopolitan science is at times contradictory and often narrow. While Zapotec scientists are said to consider a variety of procedures and techniques and “adopt what seems to work according to their own categories, and reject what does not,” cosmopolitan scientists operate according to “one view, one procedure” . A more thorough characterization of cosmopolitan science would strengthen the comparisons with Zapotec farming and would complement the direct treatment that González provides for cosmopolitan science's exceptions, sustainable agriculture and alternative medicine. This would also help to clarify differences between natural scientists and development economists, whose values are often not distinguished. Furthermore, cosmopolitan science seems to dwell outside of Mexico. What would it look like to widen the lens to include the Mexican urban academic scientific community? How does this book speak to the wider literature on scientific practice that largely focuses on cosmopolitan science?Zapotec Science is an important contribution to our understanding of nonindustrialized agriculture outside of the United States. It will, I hope, prompt historians to delve into the historical relationships among people who employ agricultural knowledge toward divergent goals: scientists, farmers, and government leaders dwelling in different national and professional cultures. (shrink)