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\"This book brings professional development out of the industrial age and into the digital age and improves the effectiveness of professional development by taking a continuum, rather than a piecemeal, approach\"-- Provided by publisher.

This book focuses on themes related to special education, inclusive practices, individualized instruction, and assistive technology. It is particularly relevant to undergraduate students in education and special education, providing them with a comprehensive understanding of the tools, concepts, and strategies needed to support children with diverse learning needs. Practitioners in special education gain practical insights into designing and implementing effective individualized education plans (IEPs) and leveraging assistive technologies to enhance learning outcomes. Policymakers can draw from this knowledge to develop inclusive education policies that prioritize the needs of children with disabilities, and the general public becomes more aware of the importance of inclusive and supportive educational practices for all children.

This study investigates the relation between leisure activities and the social status of the elderly based on a heterogeneous sample of the Dutch population. Close relationships are also analyzed to identify which people could serve as successful stimulators of leisure participation. The social profile confirms that older people have fewer social contacts and often feel lonely. This study shows that leisure activities explain a significant part of older people's social connectedness. Voluntary work, cultural activities, holiday, sports, reading books, hobbies and shopping are found to be successful predictors for social connectedness of older people. Watching TV, listening to the radio, and spending time behind the computer (passive activities) were not associated with social connectedness. Friends correlate positively to participation in leisure activities. Partners play a role in participation in cultural activities and sports; parents play a role in participation in voluntary work and holidays; siblings play a role in voluntary work and sports; and children play a role in cultural activities, reading books, and shopping. Local communities can use these close relationships and develop special programs to increase social connectedness and hence improve quality of life for older adults.

Duke University Chapel will collect and publish stories of Black alumni at four universities in North and South Carolina. The “Counting It All Joy!” initiative aims to better understand and to make more visible the narratives of Black people who have attended Davidson College, Duke University, Furman University, and Johnson C. Smith University between 1990 […]

This article analyzes, based on the formulation and implementation of the Special Program for Remote Activities (Reanp), the controversies of these processes, and the associations and translations of public, private, and technological actors during the COVID-19 pandemic. To track the actors and understand their connections, we considered approximately six thousand comments posted in virtual environments (Google Play Store and Facebook) and 37 interviews with education professionals, members of the State Department of Education (SEE/MG), and state schools. The study demonstrates that sociotechnical networks were shaped by dependence on technologies widely provided by private companies. The implementation of Reanp was disjointed, and the agency of private actors was expanded, without SEE/MG and school bureaucrats adequately appropriating its content and implementing it effectively. The relationships observed through Reanp allow us to understand how a process of intensification of virtual interactions occurred, with the mobilization of device functionality to become indispensable work tools, generating a logic of dependence on private corporations mobilized by the network, such as Meta and Alphabet, reinforcing the platformization of education, which was already underway before the pandemic.  

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is a federal nutrition assistance program for low-income, food-insecure mothers and young children in the United States. Despite its intended goals, many eligible individuals forgo WIC benefits, in part due to administrative burden-defined as the complex, often frustrating processes encountered when navigating public benefit programs. In response, a range of digital interventions and policy waivers were introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, but their effectiveness in reducing barriers remains unclear. Drawing from administrative burden theory and human-computer interaction research, this study examined user reviews of WIC smartphone apps (WIC Apps) used by local agencies. Specifically, it investigated (1) how obstacles to WIC access manifested in daily app use, (2) how user experiences shifted after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and (3) how these changes were associated with app ratings. An original dataset of user reviews (Nreview=28,212) was compiled for 26 WIC Apps between 2013 and 2024. Structural topic modeling identified 8 key themes, and sentiment was examined with Robustly Optimized Bidirectional Encoder Representations From Transformers Pretraining Approach. Analyses compared topic prevalence and sentiment distributions before and after COVID-19. Mixed-effects models examined the relationship between topics, sentiment, and app ratings. Technical concerns related to account authentication and login, document upload, and app updates were among the most prevalent themes. These issues were typically expressed with negative sentiment and appeared more frequently in pre-COVID-19 reviews than in post-COVID-19 reviews. Although reliability problems (eg, outages and maintenance) persisted, post-COVID-19 reviews increasingly emphasized features that facilitated program tracking, shopping and benefit redemption, and general ease of use, which were generally described with positive sentiment. Mixed-effects analyses indicated that these post-COVID-19 topics were significantly associated with higher app ratings (program tracking: B=0.21, SE=0.06; P=.001; shopping and redemption: B=0.18, SE=0.07; P=.01; and ease of use: B=0.10, SE=0.05; P=.04), whereas pre-COVID-19 concerns were not associated with ratings (Ps>.05). When sentiment was added to the mixed-effect model, it became the dominant factor: negative sentiment was associated with lower ratings (B=-1.71, SE=0.03; P<.001), and positive sentiment was associated with higher ratings (B=1.78, SE=0.03; P<.001). After accounting for sentiment, no individual topic was significantly associated with ratings (Ps>.05), suggesting that sentiment contributed to much of the variance previously linked to topics. User-centered digital interventions, such as WIC Apps, have the potential to support WIC access and participation.

This theory-based article explored the role of educational and learning capitals in the education of gifted learners in Lebanon. The article introduced the educational system in Lebanon, the impact of the Syrian crisis, refugee challenges to gifted education in Lebanon, the conception of giftedness, expenditures on schools, and higher education institutions. The paper provided a comprehensive categorization of learning resources including ten educational and learning capitals in relation to gifted education in Lebanon. Evidence-based literature was constructed on each of the educational and learning capitals. Several conclusions and implications were introduced in relation to gifted education expenditures, gifted conceptions and identification, gifted teacher preparation, and gifted learning resources management.

As the West Virginia State Organization president (2019-2021), Wait's intent was to visit all 25 chapters in person. She was able to do more than half in person until the pandemic started; then she visited the rest virtually. At every visitation, she talked about growth as it relates to their members. Growth is as much about experimenting as it is about plowing forward. Stepping outside their comfort zone, embracing change, and sustaining efforts over an extended period of time are challenging. Often, they are confronted with obstacles, doubt, and even failure while trying to seek new members, new ideas. and chapter growth. In such situations, a significant factor needs to be considered. That factor is grit. Five characteristics are often associated with grit: courage, conscientiousness, perseverance, resilience, and passion. All can demonstrate or develop grit when reaching out to their members and possible new members. Courage presents when they take a chance as a DKG member to reach out and invite others who may be different to join them in supporting women educators and staying the course when some are ready to abandonship.