Instructional strategies and tactics for the design of introductory computer programming courses in high school

This article offers an examination of instructional strategies and tactics for the design of introductory computer programming courses in high school. We distinguish the Expert, Spiral and Reading approach as groups of instructional strategies that mainly differ in their general design plan to control students' processing load. In order, they emphasize topdown program design, incremental learning, and program modification and amplification. In contrast, tactics are specific design plans that prescribe methods to reach desired learning outcomes under given circumstances. Based on ACT* (Anderson, 1983) and relevant research, we distinguish between declarative and procedural instruction and present six tactics which can be used both to design courses and to evaluate strategies. Three tactics for declarative instruction involve concrete computer models, programming plans and design diagrams; three tactics for procedural instruction involve worked-out examples, practice of basic cognitive skills and task variation. In our evaluation of groups of instructional strategies, the Reading approach has been found to be superior to the Expert and Spiral approaches

REALIZING THE GREAT NATION THROUGH CULTURAL LITERACY

Mastery of literacy in all aspects of life become the backbone of the progress of civilization of a nation. It is impossible to become a great nation, if only relying on oral culture in the institutions of learning coloring school. We know that the level of literacy among school less attractive to students. Literacy-based language learning in Indonesia still looks very low compared to developed countries, so that the need for concrete steps to be able to align your learning-based literacy. Initial steps for the beginner students is through learning by writing down what's being heard, either in the form of words, sentences, or paragraphs in accordance with rule writing. Through these activities, students are expected to write according to the ideas and his creativity. Teachers understand that writing is often developed simultaneously and can help cultivate talent and learning interest of students. Needed strategic ways to build the next generation has the knowledge and ability in literacy. The alternative is to improve the quality of human resources in Indonesia. It will certainly be a factor supporting the progress of national education to compete internationally. One of the biggest challenges the nation of Indonesia to realize the nation's mood towards literacy is leaving the oral tradition (orality) to enter the reading tradition of writing (literacy). It was time of cultural literacy should be inculcated from an early age so that children can get to know the reading materials and master the world of writing.There was great a nation if its people cultivate literacy

Supporting the N Gen learner by integrating e-resources within a university VLE

E-learning has become an integral part of many students learning experience. Over the last three years the availability of e-books and e-journals has increased dramatically and in many higher education libraries there has been a steady movement from print to electronic materials. At Bournemouth University over 50% of the total Library budget is now spent on electronic resources. In some Schools within the University it is in the region of 70 %. The ways in which students are using the resources are changing. In 2005, the number of electronic downloads from databases, e-books and e-journals, far exceeded the number of books borrowed. Statistics gathered from the Athens authentication service make it clear that many students access the resources remotely, and some rarely visit the Library. In 2005 Bournemouth University decided to implement a single VLE across the University and following many discussions and an extensive tendering process Blackboard was selected. The aim was to approach the potential of Blackboard from the perspective of our learners and so chose the unit of study as our standard for integration, which is the equivalent of a course in Blackboard. Thus the focus was on providing the materials where they would be most accessible to the students. The first phase of the implementation, involving the roll-out of the Blackboard to four Schools, presented an opportunity to review the Library provision and identify what could be done better at the unit level. There were several areas which had presented challenges for some time, namely the provision of reading lists, management of the Short Loan Collection and the storage of past exam papers. Implementing Blackboard gave us an ideal opportunity to address these problems. This paper will look at what has been done in these areas, and how the use of Blackboard can be tied in with the information skills sessions already being delivered by the Library Subject Teams and materials already available on the Library web page. It will also consider the second phase of the implementation and the opportunities it will present