Data-driven agriculture for rural smallholdings

Spatial information science has a critical role to play in meeting the major challenges facing society in the coming decades, including feeding a population of 10 billion by 2050, addressing environmental degradation, and acting on climate change. Agriculture and agri-food value-chains, dependent on spatial information, are also central. Due to agriculture\u27s dual role as not only a producer of food, fibre and fuel, but also as a major land, water and energy consumer, agriculture is at the centre of both the food-water-energy-environment nexus and resource security debates. The recent confluence of a number of advances in data analytics, cloud computing, remote sensing, computer vision, robotic and drone platforms, and IoT sensors and networks have lead to a significant reduction in the cost of acquiring and processing data for decision support in the agricultural sector. When combined with cost-effective automation through development of swarm farming technologies, the technology has the potential to decouple productivity and cost efficiency from economies of size, reducing the need to increase farm size to remain economically viable. We argue that these pressures and opportunities are driving agricultural value-chains towards high-resolution data-driven decision-making, where even decisions made by small rural landowners can be data-driven. We survey recent innovations in data, especially focusing on sensor, spatial and data mining technologies with a view to their agricultural application; discuss economic feasibility for small farmers; and identify some technical challenges that need to be solved to reap the benefits. Flexibly composable information resources, coupled with sophisticated data sharing technologies, and machine learning with transparently embedded spatial and aspatial methods are all required

Designing for Divorce: New Rituls and Artifacts for an Evolving World

Our interactions with objects build cultural codes, reflecting lifestyles, values, and identities beyond functional expectations. With open connectivity in the contemporary consumer environments, we have access to homogenized material cultures not only for daily activities but also for ceremonies and rituals to mark important events, such as birth, marriage, and death. What will happen to our cultural codes and diverse traditions when various cultural norms meet, exchange, clash, hybridize, and evolve? In this research, globalized material cultures were investigated to discover metaphoric comparisons, to formulate conceptual frameworks, and to develop informed design, which can address evolving cultural conditions appropriately, in comparison with commercialized goods. Considering we often ritualize sequential stages of life course or challenging events, but rarely divorce, I explored the socio-cultural norms of marriage and divorce in the current social construct to anticipate globally evolving divorce phenomena. My thesis focused on relatively unknown material cultures in ritualizing divorce by combining speculative design with semiotic, hybrid, idiosyncratic approaches to communicate desirable future scenarios for the emerging multi-cultural context. This research aims to explore how artifacts and rituals can help people cope with transitional events and how design practices can provide meaningful and reflective material cultures

TEACHERS’ CHALLENGES TO INTEGRATE ICT IN EFL TEACHING AND LEARNING ACTIVITIES

By means of the innovations in Information and Communication Technology, people are able to rapidly learn and transfer information.. Keeping up with those innovations, the integration of ICT in education is the demand of time at present as ICT is being used in many other sectors all over the world. It urges the teachers to be skillful in operating ICT during their teaching.  However, there are some barriers for the teachers that prevent them to use ICT in the classroom. This paper is intended to explore the challenges of English teachers in integrating ICT into their teaching. To gain an in-depth result, this case study focuses on the interview of some English teachers in a certain school in Surakarta. The analysis of the data revealed that the barriers of English teachers in integrating ICT are lack of: ICT integration training, competence, equipment, and appropriate software and materials

THE AWARENESS OF ICT USE FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS EFFECTIVELY

Information, Communication, and Technologies (ICT) are always influence allaspects of life. The use of ICT has an importance role in work places, business,entertainment, moreover in education. It is as a certain thing which is needed due tosupport teaching and learning process. ICT can also create student-centered learningsetting to be more active and creative. Besides, ICT can also develop the quality,accessibility, and learning motivation in education. Therefore, teachers have a verybig role due to know how to integrate the technology into classroom practices. Thispaper discusses the importance of ICT use, benefits of ICT use, and barriersintegration of ICT use in the class-room practiced. Therefore, the main purpose ofthis study is to develop teachers’ and students’ awareness of ICT integration due toachieve successful learning