The effectiveness of the creativity trigger module in achieving higher levels of creative thinking among prospective teachers

The unoptimised level of creative thinking is seen as an issue among Semester 8 prospective teachers in Malaysian Teacher-Education Institutes (IPG). This could impede their teaching of creative thinking as one of the four components of 21st century skills in schools. In relation to this, this study sets out to investigate prior creativity levels of IPG prospective teachers and develop the Creativity Trigger Module (CTM) as a training module for enhancing their creativity. The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) was used to compare the prior creativity levels of four respondent groups and test the effectiveness of the CTM on five dimensions of figural creativity, namely fluency, originality, elaboration, resistance to premature closure, abstractness of titles, and their overall creativity. A two-stage cluster sampling technique identified two IPGs with 68 respondents in the state of Johor namely, IPG-Kampus Tun Hussein Onn, Batu Pahat (IPGKTHO) as the control group site (34 respondents), and IPG- Kampus Temenggong Ibrahim, Johor Bahru (IPGKTI) as the treatment group site (34 respondents). Mathematics (MT) and Design and Technology (RBT) are the only two specialist subject combinations that provided enough sample size at both test sites. A quasi-experimental research design was used and this involved intact classes. Data analysis was carried out as follows: ANOVA, ANCOVA, and Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test analysis for TTCT scores while data analysis based on the NVivo software was used for the focus group interviews. Findings on prior creativity levels showed average or low creativity levels among all 4 test groups with IPGKTHO and RBT options having significantly higher posttest marks as compared to IPGKTI and MT option respectively. The CTM was found to improve significantly respondents’ posttest marks for the treatment group in all the five dimensions of figural creativity and, their overall creativity. Feedback from respondents revealed positive support for the CTM. In conclusion, the prior creativity of IPG prospective teachers was at an unoptimised level before treatment but the CTM has been successfully developed as an effective resource for enhancing the creative thinking levels among IPG prospective teachers

System Support for Bandwidth Management and Content Adaptation in Internet Applications

This paper describes the implementation and evaluation of an operating system module, the Congestion Manager (CM), which provides integrated network flow management and exports a convenient programming interface that allows applications to be notified of, and adapt to, changing network conditions. We describe the API by which applications interface with the CM, and the architectural considerations that factored into the design. To evaluate the architecture and API, we describe our implementations of TCP; a streaming layered audio/video application; and an interactive audio application using the CM, and show that they achieve adaptive behavior without incurring much end-system overhead. All flows including TCP benefit from the sharing of congestion information, and applications are able to incorporate new functionality such as congestion control and adaptive behavior.Comment: 14 pages, appeared in OSDI 200

Efficient memory management in VOD disk array servers usingPer-Storage-Device buffering

We present a buffering technique that reduces video-on-demand server memory requirements in more than one order of magnitude. This technique, Per-Storage-Device Buffering (PSDB), is based on the allocation of a fixed number of buffers per storage device, as opposed to existing solutions based on per-stream buffering allocation. The combination of this technique with disk array servers is studied in detail, as well as the influence of Variable Bit Streams. We also present an interleaved data placement strategy, Constant Time Length Declustering, that results in optimal performance in the service of VBR streams. PSDB is evaluated by extensive simulation of a disk array server model that incorporates a simulation based admission test.This research was supported in part by the National R&D Program of Spain, Project Number TIC97-0438.Publicad

EVEREST IST - 2002 - 00185 : D23 : final report

Deliverable públic del projecte europeu EVERESTThis deliverable constitutes the final report of the project IST-2002-001858 EVEREST. After its successful completion, the project presents this document that firstly summarizes the context, goal and the approach objective of the project. Then it presents a concise summary of the major goals and results, as well as highlights the most valuable lessons derived form the project work. A list of deliverables and publications is included in the annex.Postprint (published version

Desktop Sharing Portal

Desktop sharing technologies have existed since the late 80s. It is often used in scenarios where collaborative computing is beneficial to participants in the shared environment by the control of the more knowledgeable party. But the steps required in establishing a session is often cumbersome to many. Selection of a sharing method, obtaining sharing target’s network address, sharing tool’s desired ports, and firewall issues are major hurdles for a typical non-IT user. In this project, I have constructed a web-portal that helps collaborators to easily locate each other and initialize sharing sessions. The portal that I developed enables collaborated sessions to start as easily as browsing to a URL of the sharing service provider, with no need to download or follow installation instructions on either party’s end. In addition, I have added video conferencing and audio streaming capability to bring better collaborative and multimedia experience

CLEVER: a cooperative and cross-layer approach to video streaming in HetNets

We investigate the problem of providing a video streaming service to mobile users in an heterogeneous cellular network composed of micro e-NodeBs (eNBs) and macro e-NodeBs (MeNBs). More in detail, we target a cross-layer dynamic allocation of the bandwidth resources available over a set of eNBs and one MeNB, with the goal of reducing the delay per chunk experienced by users. After optimally formulating the problem of minimizing the chunk delay, we detail the Cross LayEr Video stReaming (CLEVER) algorithm, to practically tackle it. CLEVER makes allocation decisions on the basis of information retrieved from the application layer aswell as from lower layers. Results, obtained over two representative case studies, show that CLEVER is able to limit the chunk delay, while also reducing the amount of bandwidth reserved for offloaded users on the MeNB, as well as the number of offloaded users. In addition, we show that CLEVER performs clearly better than two selected reference algorithms, while being very close to a best bound. Finally, we show that our solution is able to achieve high fairness indexes and good levels of Quality of Experience (QoE)