Interactive Teaching Across Culture and Technology

Remember the time when you had a teacher in front of a blackboard endlessly talking, sometimes in a rambling way to students? Those days are gone. This project is a proof of that and aims at palliating students’ boredom. Interactive Teaching Materials across Culture and Technology (INTACT) intends to present an alternative way in the teaching paradigm as it intends to be a resourceful tool in the teaching/learning process. Both teachers and students can work together cooperatively and collaboratively, two different ways well explained by Mary Glynn and Ildikó Szabó further ahead. Teachers will no longer become the centre of learning but they will become guides and facilitators throughout all the learning process. Students can learn from their teachers but the latter can also learn from the former. The novelty here is that learners are engaged online in a different set of activities and among students. Therefore, the INTACT platform caters for an online collaborative learning community comprised of both students and teachers. As Sarolta Lipóczi so well puts it, the crux of the matter is ‘learning to learn too’. The teaching paradigm is changing and we are witnessing different approaches and techniques in pedagogical matters. In this context, at the basis of the INTACT project is a display of a wide array of new techniques and methodologies that account for active learning based on multimodal teaching and learning resources. Students will thus interact cognitively and in a constructivist way with different materials, such as visuals, texts, audio, to name a few. INTACT offers students and teachers options so that they can choose several actions in the course of the learning unit, for instance watch, browse, select, compare and manipulate all the resources available. Bearing in mind this short introduction to the project, in Part 2 Mary Glynn and Ildikó Szabó give us a better definition of INTACT and the educational arguments underlying its foundation. They also focus on the difference between collaborative and cooperative learning and on the importance of bilingualism and the advantages of CLIL, now one of the trendiest bilingual teaching methods, In part 2, we find a sample of resources ranging from Biology to second language learning. In the first learning unit, Toni Cramer and Steffen Schaal from the University of Education-Ludwigsburg, Germany, conceived an 8-lesson unit plan on the Human Immune System. Through these 8 lessons, students will learn how to explain blood types, to describe the parts of the human immune system model and collect data and interpret the spreading of diseases using adequate simulations, among other useful knowledge. The second and the third learning units are targeted at primary school students. The authors’ main purpose, Mary Glynn, from St. Patrick’s College in Dublin and Mariangeles Caballero from Universidad Complutense – Faculty of Education in Madrid, respectively, is to enhance students’ knowledge on science and technology by exploring and applying scientific ideas and concepts. Magnetism and the Human Circulatory system are therefore the proposals presented by the authors. Framed in the Geography programme of the 7th grade of the 3rd cycle of the basic education, for a target audience aged 12-13 years old, Maria Antónia Martins, from Emídio Garcia Secondary School in Bragança-Portugal, conceived the fourth learning unit on Elements and Climate factors regarding the Translational Motion and the Seasons of the Year. The temperature element was chosen to be studied throughout 3 lessons. In the course of these, students should not only be capable of relating the diurnal and annual variation of the temperature according to the movements of the earth but also to understand the relation between the annual variation of the temperature and the latitude of the place. The fifth and the sixth learning units aim at improving foreign language and social skills while at the same time students are taken back in time, thus broadening their knowledge on culture and history. Through the most suggestive title: ‘Legends and heroes – To be a Knight in King Arthur’s court’, Ildikó Szabó, from the Kecskemét College, Teacher Training Faculty in Hungary, takes us on a tour through medieval times meeting the needs of several learning styles, such as acoustic, kinaesthetic and visual. Sarolta Lipóczi, also from the Kecskemét College, Teacher Training Faculty, conceived the sixth learning unit titled ‘Mozart as a child and his travels’ a way to learn German as a foreign language. In this unit, primary school students are given the story of a famous musician born in Austria. Students thus develop cultural knowledge and language competences through exciting learning objects and activities. In part 3, Birgit May, Annika Jokiaho and Vítor Gonçalves, with the collaboration of José Exposto make a brief overview of the INTACT platform, explaining the methods adopted and highlighting more technical issues related to results achieved during the the project. Subchapter 3.2. reflects on good practices resulting from the whole project. It also records the national teams’ experience in working with the others for accomplishing the various tasks as well as the numerous unexpected and unavoidable problems that came up in the three years during which the project was completed. Being all said, we truly hope that this ebook can become an appetiser to the project, largely to make both students and teachers frequent users of the interactive platform

Covid-19 Pandemic: Impact on skill improvement of the Indonesian teachers in using online learning applications

The Covid-19 outbreak was first confirmed to have infected 2 Indonesians on March 2, 2020. Indonesian schools began to close in mid-March, face-to-face teaching, and the learning process turned into online learning. Since then, the use of online learning applications increased significantly. The objective of this study was to investigate the benefits of using online learning applications for Indonesian teachers. Data collection by distributing online questionnaires in Google form to teachers joining online training, online exam preparation questions organized by the LPPPTK KPTK, opened the link on May 14 and closed on May 27, 2020. 911 participants giving responses came from 32 provinces of 34 in Indonesia. Data were processed with SPSS software version 26.0. A univariate analysis was chosen to describe the frequency distribution and percentage of each variable. Spearman's correlation coefficient, r, was used to evaluate the association among the variables, and a two-tailed p < 0.05 was considered the statistically significant relationship between sample characteristics, the benefit of online training substance, and the developing teacher skills in using several online learning applications during the Covid-19 pandemic. Respondent areas mapping used geographic information system (GIS), assisted by ArcGIS 10.3 software. The results confirmed that 748 (82.11%) teachers said that more learning applications were mastered during the pandemic compared to before Covid-19 infection. The gender, education, school level, and region didn’t influence skill improvement in using online learning applications. But it was largely determined by the online training substance, the significance value < 0.05, and the degree of relationship 0.90

The European Space: Borders and Issues

Beyond the establishment of the European Union, in a context where nationalism of the nineteenth century continues to have real success in the twentieth century, debates about the historical past and the future of this important actor on the international scene are always present in the current political environment and the European academia and beyond. The analysis on the character of the EU, the essence of the European integration process, the many types of internal and external borders are in a constant change under the impact of numerous factors of influence of all kinds, and this is the very topic of this volume. Not coincidentally chosen by the editors, this volume titled The European Space. Borders and Issues brings together a collection of articles and studies that combine, for a scientific purpose, the authors’ concerns regarding the exceptional scientific work of Professor Ioan Horga. Complex analyzes of the European space are crowned by an overview of European realities, the capacity to see beyond the historical realities of European prospects. It took into account the historical perspective on European space, whether it was bent on present realities, Professor Ioan Horga vocation is leading the research, the ability to see both the general and the particular. Either that he has taken into account the historical perspective on the European space or he has been preoccupied with the present realities, Professor Ioan Horga’s vocation is leading the research, the ability to see both the general and the particular

Computational Intelligence and Human- Computer Interaction: Modern Methods and Applications

The present book contains all of the articles that were accepted and published in the Special Issue of MDPI’s journal Mathematics titled "Computational Intelligence and Human–Computer Interaction: Modern Methods and Applications". This Special Issue covered a wide range of topics connected to the theory and application of different computational intelligence techniques to the domain of human–computer interaction, such as automatic speech recognition, speech processing and analysis, virtual reality, emotion-aware applications, digital storytelling, natural language processing, smart cars and devices, and online learning. We hope that this book will be interesting and useful for those working in various areas of artificial intelligence, human–computer interaction, and software engineering as well as for those who are interested in how these domains are connected in real-life situations

European Perspectives for Public Administration

Strategies and priorities for the public sector in Europe The public sector in our society has over the past two decades undergone substantial changes, as has the academic field studying Public Administration (PA). In the next twenty years major shifts are further expected to occur in the way futures are anticipated and different cultures are integrated. Practice will be handled in a relevant way, and more disciplines will be engaging in the field of Public Administration. The prominent scholars contributing to this book put forward research strategies and focus on priorities in the field of Public Administration. The volume will also give guidance on how to redesign teaching programmes in the field. This book will provide useful insights to compare and contrast European PA with PA in Europe, and with developments in other parts of the world. Contributors: Geert Bouckaert (KU Leuven), Werner Jann (University of Potsdam), Jana Bertels (University of Potsdam), Paul Joyce (University of Birmingham), Meelis Kitsing (Estonian Business School, Tallinn), Thurid Hustedt (Hertie School of Governance, Berlin), Tiina Randma-Liiv (Tallinn University of Technology), Martin Burgi (Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich), Philippe Bezès (Science Po Paris; CNRS), Salvador Parrado (Spanish Distance Learning University (UNED), Madrid), Mark Bovens (Utrecht University; WRR), Roel Jennissen (WRR), Godfried Engbersen (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Meike Bokhorst (WRR), Bogdana Neamtu (Babes Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca), Christopher Pollitt (KU Leuven), Edoardo Ongaro (Open University UK, Milton Keynes), Raffaella Saporito (Bocconi University, Milan), Per Laegreid (University of Bergen), Philip Marcel Karré (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Thomas Schillemans (Utrecht University), Martijn Van de Steen (Nederlandse School voor Openbaar Bestuur), Zeger van de Wal (National University of Singapore), Michael Bauer (University of Speyer), Stefan Becker (University of Speyer), Jean-Michel Eymeri-Douzans (Université de Toulouse), Filipe Teles (University of Aveiro), Denita Cepiku (Tor Vergata University of Rome), Marco Meneguzzo (Tor Vergata University of Rome), Külli Sarapuu (Tallinn University of Technology), Leno Saarniit (Tallinn University of Technology), Gyorgy Hajnal (Corvinus University of Budapest; Centre for Social Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN ROMANIA

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main opportunities and limitations of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The survey was defined with the aim to involve the highest possible number of relevant CSR topics and give the issue a more wholesome perspective. It provides a basis for further comprehension and deeper analyses of specific CSR areas. The conditions determining the success of CSR in Romania have been defined in the paper on the basis of the previously cumulative knowledge as well as the results of various researches. This paper provides knowledge which may be useful in the programs promoting CSR.Corporate social responsibility, Supportive policies, Romania

European Perspectives for Public Administration

"The public sector in our society has over the past two decades undergone substantial changes, as has the academic field studying Public Administration (PA). In the next twenty years major shifts are further expected to occur in the way futures are anticipated and different cultures are integrated. Practice will be handled in a relevant way, and more disciplines will be engaging in the field of Public Administration. The prominent scholars contributing to this book put forward research strategies and focus on priorities in the field of Public Administration. The volume will also give guidance on how to redesign teaching programmes in the field. This book will provide useful insights to compare and contrast European PA with PA in Europe, and with developments in other parts of the world.