Why do video games fascinate kids so much that they will spend hours pursuing a difficult skill? Why don't they apply this kind of intensity to their school work? In their most penetrating and important work in years, these two leaders in the field of brain-based education build a bridge to the future of education with a dynamic model of teaching that works for all grade levels and in all cultural and ethnic groups. The authors' education model, the "Guided Experience Approach," is based on the way that biologists see learning as a totally natural, continuous interaction between perception and action. Natural Learning for a Connected World provides a practical, step-by-step description and successful examples from practice of this perception action cycle so that we can finally provide the learning environments essential for our children to thrive in the knowledge age.

This special issue of the journal Environmental Education Research addresses a topical area of importance - human behaviour towards the environment. The book explores the economic metaphor of 'natural capital' in this context arguing that the currently dominant model of sustainable development, underpinned by a particular understanding of this metaphor, is impeding progress towards genuine sustainability, and secondly that it will continue to do so until the metaphor can be reworked in both thought and practice. This book explores an alternative economic model of natural capital value, based on recent 'real options' thinking which reworks the natural capital idea and provides a framework for articulating two major and closely-related shifts of emphasis.

It has become clear to researchers in robotics and adaptive behaviour that current approaches are yielding systems with limited autonomy and capacity for self-improvement. To learn autonomously and in a cumulative fashion is one of the hallmarks of intelligence, and we know that higher mammals engage in exploratory activities that are not directed to pursue goals of immediate relevance for survival and reproduction but are instead driven by intrinsic motivations such as curiosity, interest in novel stimuli or surprising events, and interest in learning new behaviours. The adaptive value of such intrinsically motivated activities lies in the fact that they allow the cumulative acquisition of knowledge and skills that can be used later to accomplish fitness-enhancing goals. Intrinsic motivations continue during adulthood, and in humans they underlie lifelong learning, artistic creativity, and scientific discovery, while they are also the basis for processes that strongly affect human well-being, such as the sense of competence, self-determination, and self-esteem. This book has two aims: to present the state of the art in research on intrinsically motivated learning, and to identify the related scientific and technological open challenges and most promising research directions. The book introduces the concept of intrinsic motivation in artificial systems, reviews the relevant literature, offers insights from the neural and behavioural sciences, and presents novel tools for research. The book is organized into six parts: the chapters in Part I give general overviews on the concept of intrinsic motivations, their function, and possible mechanisms for implementing them; Parts II, III, and IV focus on three classes of intrinsic motivation mechanisms, those based on predictors, on novelty, and on competence; Part V discusses mechanisms that are complementary to intrinsic motivations; and Part VI introduces tools and experimental frameworks for investigating intrinsic motivations. The contributing authors are among the pioneers carrying out fundamental work on this topic, drawn from related disciplines such as artificial intelligence, robotics, artificial life, evolution, machine learning, developmental psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience. The book will be of value to graduate students and academic researchers in these domains, and to engineers engaged with the design of autonomous, adaptive robots. The contributing authors are among the pioneers carrying out fundamental work on this topic, drawn from related disciplines such as artificial intelligence, robotics, artificial life, evolution, machine learning, developmental psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience. The book will be of value to graduate students and academic researchers in these domains, and to engineers engaged with the design of autonomous, adaptive robots.

In recent years, deep learning has fundamentally changed the landscapes of a number of areas in artificial intelligence, including speech, vision, natural language, robotics, and game playing. In particular, the striking success of deep learning in a wide variety of natural language processing (NLP) applications has served as a benchmark for the advances in one of the most important tasks in artificial intelligence. This book reviews the state of the art of deep learning research and its successful applications to major NLP tasks, including speech recognition and understanding, dialogue systems, lexical analysis, parsing, knowledge graphs, machine translation, question answering, sentiment analysis, social computing, and natural language generation from images. Outlining and analyzing various research frontiers of NLP in the deep learning era, it features self-contained, comprehensive chapters written by leading researchers in the field. A glossary of technical terms and commonly used acronyms in the intersection of deep learning and NLP is also provided. The book appeals to advanced undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, lecturers and industrial researchers, as well as anyone interested in deep learning and natural language processing.

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Guide your students through the fascinating world of engineering, and how to draw inspiration from Nature’s genius to create, make, and innovate a better human-built world. Studded with more than 150 illustrations of natural phenomena and engineering concepts, this fascinating and practical book clearly demonstrates how engineering design is broadly relevant for all students, not just those who may become scientists or engineers. Mr. Stier describes clever, engaging activities for students at every grade level to grasp engineering concepts by exploring the everyday design genius of the natural world around us. Students will love learning about structural engineering while standing on eggs; investigating concepts in sustainable design by manufacturing cement out of car exhaust; and coming to understand how ant behavior has revolutionized the way computer programs, robots, movies, and video games are designed today. You will come away with an understanding of engineering and Nature unlike any you’ve had before, while taking your ability to engage students to a whole new level. Engineering Education for the Next Generation is a wonderful introduction to the topic for any teacher who wants to understand more about engineering design in particular, its relation to the larger subjects of STEM/STEAM, and how to engage students from all backgrounds in a way that meaningfully transforms their outlook on the world and their own creativity in a lifelong way. · Fun to read, comprehensive exploration of cutting-edge approaches to K-12 engineering education · Detailed descriptions and explanations to help teachers create activities and lessons · An emphasis on engaging students with broad and diverse interests and backgrounds · Insights from a leading, award-winning K-12 engineering curriculum that has reached thousands of teachers and students in the U.S. and beyond · Additional support website (www.LearningWithNature.org) providing more background, videos, curricula, slide decks, and other supplemental materials

Dr.R.GNANAJEYARAMAN, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Saveetha School of Engineering, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences, Saveetha University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Dr.U.ARUL, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Saveetha School of Engineering, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences, Saveetha University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Dr.M.RAMA MOORTHY, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Saveetha School of Engineering, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences, Saveetha University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Dr.CARMEL MARY BELINDA.M.J, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Saveetha School of Engineering, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences, Saveetha University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.

Prompted by the ongoing debate among science educators over ‘nature of science’, and its importance in school and university curricula, this book is a clarion call for a broad re-conceptualizing of nature of science in science education. The authors draw on the ‘family resemblance’ approach popularized by Wittgenstein, defining science as a cognitive-epistemic and social-institutional system whose heterogeneous characteristics and influences should be more thoroughly reflected in science education. They seek wherever possible to clarify their developing thesis with visual tools that illustrate how their ideas can be practically applied in science education. The volume’s holistic representation of science, which includes the aims and values, knowledge, practices, techniques, and methodological rules (as well as science’s social and institutional contexts), mirrors its core aim to synthesize perspectives from the fields of philosophy of science and science education. The authors believe that this more integrated conception of nature of science in science education is both innovative and beneficial. They discuss in detail the implications for curriculum content, pedagogy, and learning outcomes, deploy numerous real-life examples, and detail the links between their ideas and curriculum policy more generally.

Environmental issues continue to divide opinion, sometimes in extreme ways. Almost everyone agrees that education has a role to play in ensuring the future of humanity on Earth. Some think we should all learn to leave a minimal environmental footprint; others argue that education should promote economic growth, because only growth can generate the capital needed to develop solutions to environmental problems. Advocates on each side often find the views of their opponents simply incredible, giving rise to accusations of bad faith or poor science. This book explores the foundations of the debate by examining human interrelations with Nature. It takes an educational perspective, but also draws on evidence from anthropology, economics, ecology, policy sciences and natural history. The case presented is that any coherent view of the purposes and potential of education requires a theory of human society in the natural world. For such a theory, education (and, more broadly, learning) must be more than an instrument for the achievement of personal or policy goals. Rather, it is an integral, continuing and necessary component of personal and policy development. On this basis, a novel approach to curriculum design and implementation is outlined.