The PPIC Statewide Survey was inaugurated in 1998 to provide a way for Californians to express their views on important public policy issues. The survey provides timely, relevant, nonpartisan information on Californians' political, social, and economic opinions. It seeks to inform and improve state policymaking, raise awareness, and encourage…

Capacity-building family-centered practices are a fundamental component of Early Intervention (EI) service delivery, yet their adoption by EI practitioners remains inconsistent. Lack of sufficient practitioner training and overly broad recommended practices for practitioners are cited as potential barriers to their implementation. The triadic…

Background: An extensive and international evidence base positions professional learning communities (PLCs) as an effective continued professional development (CPD) mechanism that can impact on teachers' practices and, in turn, students' learning. The landscape of teacher PLCs is continuously developing; notably through teachers' uses of social…

Optical fibre communication enables the global internet, but few youths ever learn about how it works, even at a basic level, until tertiary education. While some middle school curricula might include simple geometrical optics concepts like reflection and refraction, they often lack contextual linkage to worldwide telecommunications. Through our…

Background: With its growing popularity, inclusion of image and text, and user-friendly interface, Instagram is uniquely positioned for exploring health behaviors and sources and types of informational exposure related to the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. Aims: To characterize public Instagram posts about the HPV vaccine and quantify the…

Background: Research regarding students' ideas about the nature of sound reveals a variety of conceptions about sound. In order to reconstruct these ideas and explain sound phenomena, researchers' teaching interventions often make use of everyday-life contexts. However existing research on sound only partially addresses the correlation between the…

Backward design is a well-established design strategy that has been used to produce educational curriculum for decades. While traditionally used to plan and create classroom-based curriculum, in this paper we explore the use of backward design as a design strategy for the development of an educational mobile application, "BiblioTech"™…

This current article is drawn from a qualitative study investigating the motivations and uses of digital devices of Singapore parents with their toddlers and preschoolers (age range: 1-5-year-old children). The article focuses on three prominent empirical findings. First, parent participants tend to try using a digital device with children to…

The era of mobile media has placed communications convergence at a new stage. The importance of studies about mobile communications has been growing increasingly over the last years. This growth is connected to the increase in the access to contents through new devices. The last ten years have seen a process of acceleration in mobile technology…

Introduction: Hookah smoking is becoming increasingly popular worldwide, especially among young adults. The growth of social media has also enabled sharing of opinions, experiences, and marketing related to hookah via user-generated content. Aim: To evaluate the portrayal and promotion of hookah on Instagram and to highlight public health…

Despite the fundamental importance of plants to our very survival, student interest in plant biology is in decline as technology draws us further away from nature. Here we introduce "Plant Tracer" (http://www.planttracer.com), a Matlab-based program, which can quantify time-lapse videos of plant movement. We demonstrate that Plant Tracer…

Home is a vital setting for children learning in the context of everyday routines of family life. As technological developments create new opportunities for children to make use of domestic spaces and materials, families must reconfigure their homes, learning, and busy schedules. This dissertation examines ethnographically how families are…

Sexting is recognized as a common public issue as well as a prominent issue among researchers. Authors usually define sexting as sending, receiving, or forwarding sexually explicit messages or nude, partially nude, or sexually suggestive digital images of one's self or others via a cell phone, e-mail, Internet, or Social Networking Service (Brown,…

Parents' reactions to toddlers' emotions were examined in relation to toddler shyness and gender in a sample of 103 parents (99 mothers, 4 fathers) of 2 year olds. Toddlers were grouped as shy (N = 52; 23 boys) or non-shy (N = 51; 25 boys) using a temperament survey administered by phone, then parents completed questionnaires regarding their…

Objective: Lack of understanding regarding the function of sleep and lack of education regarding healthy sleep practices may hinder college students from getting sufficient quality sleep. The current study examines the effect of a text message based educational intervention aimed at improving sleep quality and sleep hygiene behaviors in freshman…