Digital learning resources and ubiquitous technologies in education

This research explores the educators' attitudes and perceptions about their utilisation of digital learning technologies. The methodology integrates measures from ‘the pace of technological innovativeness’ and the ‘technology acceptance model’ to understand the rationale for further ICT investment in compulsory education. A quantitative study was carried out amongst two hundred forty-one educators in Malta. It has investigated the costs and benefits of using digital learning resources in schools from the educator’s perspective. Principal component analysis has indicated that the educators were committed to using digital technologies. In addition, a step-wise regression analysis has shown that the younger teachers were increasingly engaging in digital learning resources. Following this study’s empirical findings educational stakeholders are better informed about how innovative technologies can support our students. In conclusion, this paper puts forward key implications and recommendations for regulatory authorities and policy makers for better curricula and educational outcomes.peer-reviewe

Dropping off the edge 2015: persistent communal disadvantage in Australia

This report shows that complex and entrenched disadvantage is experienced by a small but persistent number of locations in each state and territory across Australia. Foreword In 2007, Jesuit Social Services and Catholic Social Services Australia commissioned ground-breaking research into place-based disadvantage across the nation. The resulting report, Dropping off the edge, built on previous work that Jesuit Social Services had engaged Professor Tony Vinson to undertake on its behalf and quickly became a critical resource for governments, service providers and communities attempting to address the challenge of entrenched and often complex geographical disadvantage. That report received over 284 scholarly citations and supported the establishment of the Australian Social Inclusion Board – a body charged with identifying long-term strategies to end poverty in Australia. Since the publication of Dropping off the edge, our organisations have received many requests to update the findings and produce a new report tracking the wellbeing of communities in Australia over the intervening time. Sadly, the current report drives home the enormous challenge that lies in front of our policy makers and service providers, as many communities identified as disadvantaged in 2007 once again head the list in each state and territory. As a society we cannot, and should not, turn away from the challenge of persistent and entrenched locational disadvantage, no matter how difficult it may be to solve the problem. We call on government, community and business to come together to work alongside these communities to ensure long term sustainable change. We hold hope that the young people and future generations in these communities will have a better outlook and life opportunities than is currently available to them. It is our belief that every Australian should have access to the opportunities in life that will enable them to flourish – to complete their education, to get a job, to access safe and affordable housing, to raise their children in safe communities and to see the next generation thrive. Jesuit Social Services and Catholic Social Services Australia are indebted to the dedication and perseverance of Professor Tony Vinson in leading this important research and analysis over the past 15 years. Julie Edwards Chief Executive Officer Jesuit Social Services Marcelle Mogg Chief Executive Officer Catholic Social Services Australi

Visualization as a guidance to classification for large datasets

Data visualization has gained a lot of attention after the stressing need to make sense of the huge amounts of data that we collect every day. Lower dimensional embedding techniques such as IsoMap, Locally Linear Embedding and t-SNE help us visualize high dimensional data by projecting it on a two or three-dimensional space. t-SNE, or t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding proved to be successful in providing lower dimensional data mappings that makes interpreting the underlying structure of data easier for our human brains. We wanted to test the hypothesis that this simple visualization that human beings can easily understand will also simplify the job of the classification models and boost their performance. In order to test this hypothesis, we reduce the dimensionality of a student performance dataset using t-SNE into 2D and 3D and feed the calculated 2D and 3D feature vectors into a classifier to classify students according to their predicted performance. We compare the classifier performance before and after the dimensionality reduction. Our experiments showed that t-SNE helps improve classification accuracy of NN and KNN on a benchmarking dataset as well as a user-curated dataset on performance of students at our home institution. We also visually compared the 2D and 3D mapping of t-SNE and PCA. Our comparison favored t-SNE\u27s visualization over PC\u27s. This was also reflected in the classification accuracy of all classifiers used, scoring higher on t-SNE\u27s mapping than on the PCA\u27s mapping

Studying alone: How is IT affecting the manner we learn musical instruments

Music has always been and will always be an important cultural instrument which is not affected by country or region where it is produced. Overtime, the learning of the tools required to make it has suffered alterations, either improvements or step backs. Since Mozart to Michael Jackson it has been taught through traditional methodologies, in a small room with a teacher demonstrating how to play a certain instrument or how to read a musical score. With the rise of the internet and other technological tools people now can learn from the comfort of their homes through apps or websites specifically developed with the intent of sharing musical scores or how to play certain music. The aim of the project, in this setting, is to find how the modern situation of music and most importantly how it is taught. To achieve the goal, a questionnaire was created for self-taught students, focusing on understanding how information technologies affect the class so as to facilitate musical learning and advantages and disadvantages.A música sempre foi e sempre será um importante instrumento cultural, não obstante o país, ou região, onde esta é produzida. Ao longo dos tempos a aprendizagem das suas ferramentas sofrendo alterações, desde os tempos de Mozart até aos tempos de Michael Jackson, esta foi ensinada através de métodos tradicionais, numa pequena sala com um professor a demonstrar como se toca um certo instrumento ou como se lê uma pauta musical. Com o aumento de utilização da internet e de outras ferramentas tecnológicas abriram-se novas portas no que toca à aprendizagem musical, as pessoas passaram a conseguir aprender sozinhas no conforto de sua casa através de aplicações ou sítios web desenvolvidos primariamente com o objetivo de partilhar pautas de músicas ou como se tocam certas músicas. Neste contexto, o projeto pretende encontrar como a situação atual se encontra no que toca à forma como os indivíduos aprendem sozinhos a tocar os seus instrumentos. Para o alcançar foi realizado um estudo por questionário com alunos autodidactas, com foco em perceber quais as tecnologias e métodos que consideram como influentes, bem como as vantagens e desvantagens que lhes reconhecem

Reports Of Conferences, Institutes, And Seminars

This quarter\u27s column offers coverage of multiple sessions from the 2016 Electronic Resources & Libraries (ER&L) Conference, held April 3–6, 2016, in Austin, Texas. Topics in serials acquisitions dominate the column, including reports on altmetrics, cost per use, demand-driven acquisitions, and scholarly communications and the use of subscriptions agents; ERMS, access, and knowledgebases are also featured

Pre-service Teachers\u27 Science and Web 2.0 Affect and Aspiration: A Survey Study

Teachers’ affect and aptitude towards science and technology influence their students through their teaching, other activities, and informal interactions. The study explored and understand Ontario pre-service teachers’ affects toward science and Web 2.0 by designing and validating a questionnaire that includes demographic, usage, and scale questions; and by surveying 134 B.Ed. students. The science part of the survey was validated and analyzed, the Web 2.0 scale items were excluded because of low correlation. The results indicate that: (1) Pre-service teachers have overall high motivation, high self-efficacy, a positive attitude, and medium aspiration towards science. (2) Science motivation, self-efficacy, attitude, and aspiration scores in the survey can be predicted by other categories; however, self-efficacy and aspiration do not predict each other. (3) Five variables – time spent on learning about science, time using Web 2.0 to learn science, educational background, science-related university major, and teaching option – influence pre-service teachers’ science motivation, self-efficacy, attitude, and aspiration

Futures Studies in the Interactive Society

This book consists of papers which were prepared within the framework of the research project (No. T 048539) entitled Futures Studies in the Interactive Society (project leader: Éva Hideg) and funded by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) between 2005 and 2009. Some discuss the theoretical and methodological questions of futures studies and foresight; others present new approaches to or procedures of certain questions which are very important and topical from the perspective of forecast and foresight practice. Each study was conducted in pursuit of improvement in futures fields