Investigating Students’ and Teachers’ Perceptions of Using the iPad in an Italian English as a Foreign Language Classroom

Recent research indicates that mobile technologies can support second language learning. However, studies focused on the use of the iPad as a mobile technology to enhance second language learning and teaching in schools are still scarce. This study reports on an action research project that investigated the use of the iPad in the English as a foreign language (EFL) context in an Italian school. The study sought to investigate learners’ and teachers’ perceptions of mobile learning through the use of the iPad. The data was collected through a survey (N=41), classroom observations (N=4), interviews (N=20), and recorded teacher meetings (N=5). Results show a positive impact on student motivation and on the approach to second language learning tasks. We found that within the duration of the study students and teachers became increasingly independent in the use of the iPad for English language learning and teaching. This study provides educators with hints on how to start integrating mobile devices to perform specific language learning/teaching tasks

All hands on deck: CREWED for technology-enabled learning

The University of New South Wales’ (UNSW’s) Faculty of Engineering is introducing a new process for designing and developing blended and fully online (distance) courses, as part of action research to support curriculum renewal. The process, referred to as CREWED (Curriculum Renewal and E-learning Workloads: Embedding in Disciplines), is being used to develop key courses that add flexibility to student progression pathways. By integrating the design of learning activities with the planning and organization of teaching and support work, CREWED addresses some of the known barriers to embedding innovative use of learning technologies within disciplines. CREWED incorporates key features of two course development models from the UK, one emphasising team building and the other emphasising pedagogical planning. It has been piloted in priority curriculum development projects, to ensure that the disciplinary organizational context is supportive. One pilot is a fully online distance version of a postgraduate course. The other is a blended version of an undergraduate course. Both are core (required) courses in accredited professional engineering degree programs and were previously available only in face-to-face mode. The UNSW pilots have confirmed the importance of articulating clear pedagogical models, and of planning ahead for the resources required to put these models into practice, as part of departmental capacity building, especially where teaching has primarily been treated as an individual classroom-based activity that competes with disciplinary research for academic staff time and resources

A community-based approach to new medium integration in South African education : a combination of ICT4D process approach and ethnographic action research techniques

Includes bibliographical references.Our initial study indicates that successful integration of new communication medium into South African schools is not only challenging from the financial point of view, but also in terms of designing tools that fit within educational goals, as well as the training and support of relevant personnel in order to use the new medium effectively. Training and support effort, however, are often seen as top-down or outside-in approach that many teachers and past integration efforts have identified as being one of the contributing factors to integration failure. By looking at past integration efforts, as well as through our own initial study and in the field, we recognise similar results and challenges in efforts to introduce information and communication technologies into developing communities. Work done by Heeks et al. (Heeks & Molla, 2009) (Walton & Heeks, 2011) identified the Process approach as a contributing factor towards successful Information and communication technologies for development projects. We developed a novel approach to medium integration in education by combining the Process approach with Ethnographical Action Research techniques as well as taking into account recommendations made by past medium integration in education. To evaluate our approach we implemented the Process approach at an Ethnographical Action Research site with the researcher as one of the teachers with the objective of integrating the mobile medium into the school

Telemedicine using mobile telecommunication: towards syntactic interoperability in teleexpertise

Telemedicine allows collaborative activities between health professionals for the deployment of medical procedures carried out remotely by means of device using information and communication technologies. This article focuses on the Teleexpertise that allows collaboration between medical professionals in order to share knowledge and expert advices used as explanation elements for decision support. We propose a conceptual model integrating the FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents) Contract Net Protocol which permits to collect medical professionals’ answers for a request for teleexpertise in an efficient manner. Our model satisfies four requirements (coverage, QoS (Quality of Service) guarantees and prioritisation, mobility and roaming, service usability) on the configuration and operation of the underlying network and the services. Therefore, we provide an operational assistance by improvement of the networks quality of service via interoperable web services. Finally, we hope to bring a tangible contribution on the implementation of this suggested conceptualization that will allow to generate relevant and action-oriented finding

Vanishing Borders: Protecting the Planet in the Age of Globalization--Ch. 7-10

As the twenty-first century dawns, goods, money, people, ideas, and pollution are traveling around the world with unprecedented speed and scale, producing transnational environmental problems, from climate change to the soaring trade in commodities like timber and shrimp. In Vanishing Borders, author Hilary French provides people concerned about the future of the planet with a clear plan of action for ensuring environmental stability in the wake of globalization. French argues for integrating ecological considerations into the still-nascent rules of global commerce by reforming international treaties and institutions. She shows that new communications technologies are making it possible for nongovernmental organizations to mobilize powerful coalitions of private citizens to force government and corporate decision-makers to take global environmental issues into account. She finds that some forward-thinking businesses have begun to support environmental codes of conduct and other international standards that international institutions, nongovernmental organizations, and the business community are forging innovative partnerships to reverse ecological decline

Integrating Mobile Web 2.0 within tertiary education

Based on three years of innovative pedagogical development and guided by a participatory action research methodology, this paper outlines an approach to integrating mobile web 2.0 within a tertiary education course, based on a social constructivist pedagogy. The goal is to facilitate a student-centred, collaborative, flexible, context-bridging learning environment that empowers students as content producers and learning context generators, guided by lecturers who effectively model the use of the technology. We illustrate how the introduction of mobile web 2.0 has disrupted the underlying pedagogy of the course from a traditional Attelier model (face-to-face apprenticeship model), and has been successfully transformed into a context independent social constructivist model. Two mobile web 2.0 learning scenarios are outlined, including; a sustainable house design project (involving the collaboration of four departments in three faculties and three diverse groups of students), and the implementation of a weekly ‘nomadic studio session'. Students and lecturers use the latest generation of smartphones to collaborate, communicate, capture and share critical and reflective learning events. Students and lecturers use mobile friendly web 2.0 tools to create this environment, including: blogs, social networks, location aware (geotagged) image and video sharing, instant messaging, microblogging etc… Feedback from students and lecturers has been extremely positive

Vanishing Borders: Protecting the Planet in the Age of Globalization--Ch. 1-6

As the twenty-first century dawns, goods, money, people, ideas, and pollution are traveling around the world with unprecedented speed and scale, producing transnational environmental problems, from climate change to the soaring trade in commodities like timber and shrimp. In Vanishing Borders, author Hilary French provides people concerned about the future of the planet with a clear plan of action for ensuring environmental stability in the wake of globalization. French argues for integrating ecological considerations into the still-nascent rules of global commerce by reforming international treaties and institutions. She shows that new communications technologies are making it possible for nongovernmental organizations to mobilize powerful coalitions of private citizens to force government and corporate decision-makers to take global environmental issues into account. She finds that some forward-thinking businesses have begun to support environmental codes of conduct and other international standards that international institutions, nongovernmental organizations, and the business community are forging innovative partnerships to reverse ecological decline

Transforming pedagogy using mobile Web 2.0

Blogs, wikis, podcasting, and a host of free, easy to use Web 2.0 social software provide opportunities for creating social constructivist learning environments focusing on student-centred learning and end-user content creation and sharing. Building on this foundation, mobile Web 2.0 has emerged as a viable teaching and learning tool, facilitating engaging learning environments that bridge multiple contexts. Today’s dual 3G and wifi-enabled smartphones provide a ubiquitous connection to mobile Web 2.0 social software and the ability to view, create, edit, upload, and share user generated Web 2.0 content. This article outlines how a Product Design course has moved from a traditional face-to-face, studio-based learning environment to one using mobile Web 2.0 technologies to enhance and engage students in a social constructivist learning paradigm. Keywords: m-learning; Web 2.0; pedagogy 2.0; social constructivism; product desig

Optimizing the Structure and Scale of Urban Water Infrastructure: Integrating Distributed Systems

Large-scale, centralized water infrastructure has provided clean drinking water, wastewater treatment, stormwater management and flood protection for U.S. cities and towns for many decades, protecting public health, safety and environmental quality. To accommodate increasing demands driven by population growth and industrial needs, municipalities and utilities have typically expanded centralized water systems with longer distribution and collection networks. This approach achieves financial and institutional economies of scale and allows for centralized management. It comes with tradeoffs, however, including higher energy demands for longdistance transport; extensive maintenance needs; and disruption of the hydrologic cycle, including the large-scale transfer of freshwater resources to estuarine and saline environments.While smaller-scale distributed water infrastructure has been available for quite some time, it has yet to be widely adopted in urban areas of the United States. However, interest in rethinking how to best meet our water and sanitation needs has been building. Recent technological developments and concerns about sustainability and community resilience have prompted experts to view distributed systems as complementary to centralized infrastructure, and in some situations the preferred alternative.In March 2014, the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread partnered with the Water Environment Federation and the Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida to convene a diverse group of experts to examine the potential for distributed water infrastructure systems to be integrated with or substituted for more traditional water infrastructure, with a focus on right-sizing the structure and scale of systems and services to optimize water, energy and sanitation management while achieving long-term sustainability and resilience

Challenges to the Integration of Renewable Resources at High System Penetration

Successfully integrating renewable resources into the electric grid at penetration levels to meet a 33 percent Renewables Portfolio Standard for California presents diverse technical and organizational challenges. This report characterizes these challenges by coordinating problems in time and space, balancing electric power on a range of scales from microseconds to decades and from individual homes to hundreds of miles. Crucial research needs were identified related to grid operation, standards and procedures, system design and analysis, and incentives, and public engagement in each scale of analysis. Performing this coordination on more refined scales of time and space independent of any particular technology, is defined as a “smart grid.” “Smart” coordination of the grid should mitigate technical difficulties associated with intermittent and distributed generation, support grid stability and reliability, and maximize benefits to California ratepayers by using the most economic technologies, design and operating approaches