2023.0413
An Accomplice to Alzheimer's Disease: Protein TDP-43
Of all patients with dementia across the globe, approximately 60-70% are confirmed cases of Alzheimer’s disease, the vast majority of which are seniors over the age of 65. New studies have suggested that around 30-57% of Alzheimer's patients were found to have abnormal levels of protein TDP-43 inclusions, which presents faster disease progression and greater brain atrophy. To this day, treatments for Alzheimer’s disease continue to be limited. Therefore, in order to develop better treatment strategies and gain a further understanding of the disease, the importance of TDP-43 must not be overlooked.
2023.0412
Helping Taiwanese Children Cultivate Strong Emotional Skills
Emotional intelligence forms the foundation for a happy life, and is an important aspect of lifelong education. The preschool years are a particularly crucial period for the development of a child’s emotional abilities, and as research has consistently shown, family environment has a strong influence on their cultivation. How can parents and caregivers ensure that their homes are conducive to nurturing emotional development? Below, members of the “Kids in Taiwan: National Longitudinal Study of Child Development and Care” research team, led by Professor Chien-ju Chang of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at National Taiwan Normal University, will share some insights on the development process of preschool children’s emotional abilities, as well as some of the key factors involved in cultivating emotional intelligence. The researchers encourage parents to pay attention to their children’s social-emotional skills, and urge relevant government departments to cooperate to prioritize parenting education.
2023.0331
NTNU and Japanese Scholars Co-organize Emerging Technology Workshops
Department of Technology Application and Human Resource Development and office of International Affairs from National Taiwan Normal University (henceforth referred to as the Dept. of TAHRD) conducted a Virtual Worlds teaching workshop on February 4, 2023 in cooperation with Prof. Irina Kuznetcova from Akita University, Japan. The workshop was organized by Yi-Yao Hsu, a senior from the Dept. of TAHRD, and assistant, Chia-Ju Chou, and was a continuation of the ICT workshop previously held by the Dept. of TAHRD for the School of Teacher Education. In this 5-hour workshop, participants learned practical applications of Unity, a game development engine along with the theoretical foundations of integrating virtual worlds created in Unity in teaching. Participants were tasked with designing a lesson plan integrating pedagogical theories and technology. Yi-Yao Hsu and Prof. Kuznetcova noted that the workshop was quite challenging because most of the participants had no experience with Unity.
2023.0303
Fun Learning Contexts are Key to Mixed-reality Location-based Game Design
Context-aware location-based games are able to integrate learners into mixed reality situations and increase the sense of presence in local culture learning, which make learning joyful and allow learners to be presented in the real local cultural environments. For the past several years, our research team has conducted in-depth studies on the crucial elements of context-aware location-based game learning, the game mechanism, and the individual characteristics of learners' presence and perception. We have confirmed the relationships between these individual characteristics and the effectiveness of location-based game learning. However, no previous research has addressed the issue of how to design and develop a fun and effective adaptive game.
2023.0202