An investigation into the use of CD-Rom technology by pupils in mainstream primary schools

The 1994 CD-ROM in Primary schools government initiative increased by over two thousand, the number of primary schools who were using CD-ROM technology with their pupils. The investigation focuses of the way that this technology was being introduced, and later used, in four schools in two English shire counties. The findings are compared and contrasted with the results from a postal survey of primary schools, with postal addresses in the same two counties, who received a complete CD-ROM system under that 1994 government initiative as well as the findings of other researchers of the same initiative. The investigation focuses on the organisation and management of the CD-ROM system within the school. The advantages and disadvantages of siting decisions are examined along with the resulting effects upon pupils' use of the system. As the government initiative provided schools with both a system and a package of CD-ROM software, the investigation looks at the titles that proved most (and least) popular with schools. Since very few CD-ROMs were developed for education, teachers' criteria for choosing commercial CD-ROMs to use within the National Curriculum are examined as are the purchasing policies and the decision making processes of the four schools. Having observed the way in which the technology was introduced to pupils in the four schools, the investigation was continued to observe the pattern of use that developed and the way in which that use changed through the primary age range. Although the use by young pupils continued to include multimedia reading books, once pupils had learnt simple ordering skills, they were introduced to the use of CD-ROMs for information collection; eventually using CD-ROMs almost exclusively to supplement, rather than supplant, traditional information sources. Teachers recognised that CDROMs contained vast sources of information but that pupils required search skills in order to access that information. The ways in which teachers attempted to teach these skills using the CD-ROMs that were available to them were investigated. Although standard referencing methods enabled pupils to find information in books using, the task was different, and often more difficult with CD-ROMs, due to the nonstandard organisations of the titles that were designed for the home market and leisured browsing. The investigation looked at the ways in which pupils in the four schools were guided to find information and the ways in which that information was recorded and used within the curriculum. This was compared with the use of traditional source. When CD-ROM technology was introduced into education, it had been expected to make changes both to the delivery of the curriculum and the ways in which pupils both collected and recorded information. The investigation looked for these anticipated changes within the four schools. As two of the schools had units for hearing impaired pupils, the investigation included observation of the ways in which the technology was used by those pupils both within the units and the mainstream classes seeking to discover possible advantages and disadvantages that the use of the technology made for pupils who could not access all of the available media. However, unlike secondary pupils, it would appear from this research that the use of CD-ROM technology brought an additional option of information source for primary pupils, but made little change to the structure of the curriculum.

Toolbox application to support and enhance the mobile device forensics investigation process - breaking through the techniques available

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceOne of the main topics that is discussed today is how can a person leverage on technology on a positive and secure way in order to enhance their daily life, making it a healthier, more productive, joyful and easier. However, with improvements in technology, comes challenges for which there is not yet a stable and safe way to overcome. One of the greatest challenges that people are faced has to do with their concern on their privacy and on the safeguard of their sensitive information that is stored in any device that one uses. In fact, one of the most used technology is the Mobile, which can take several forms, features, shapes, and many other components. In line manner, cybercrime is growing rapidly, targeting the exploitation and retrieval of information from these gadgets. Even so, with a Mobile, comes several challenges including a rapidly dynamic change in its landscape, an everincreasing diversity of mobile phones forms, integration of the information on a Mobile into the Cloud and IoT. As such, it’s vital to have a stable and safe toolbox that will enable a digital investigator to potentially prevent, detect and solve any issue that may be related to Mobile Device Forensics while solving out various investigations, being it criminal, civil, corporate or any other

Using hypermedia to improve the dissemination and accessibility of syllabus documents with particular reference to primary mathematics

The fundamental question that this study set out to investigate was: Can the advantages of hypermedia be extended to curriculum materials that are for the sole use of teachers? To consider this question, three areas needed to be investigated: hypermedia (the medium); teachers (the target) and curriculum documents (the content). Hypermedia has a long history dating back to Bush (1986) who in 1945 imagined his Memex system as building information trails between ideas. However, it was not until the mid 1980s that technology caught up with the theory and hypermedia came of age. The evaluation of hypermedia documents is still in its infancy and design standards are still being formlulated. Social acceptability and usability will be of major concern in the evaluation process of hypermedia. Therefore this study needed to investigate whether this medium of presentation is socially acceptable to teachers? Advances in Information Technology (IT), both in hardware and software in the last few years have brought the potential of hypermedia to the personal computer (PC). Information, be it text, sound, graphics or video, or a mixture of these, can now be presented on the same screen and the movement between screens can be seamless. The movement between screens is no longer limited to sequential movement as it is when the information is presented in a hard copy form, but can be randomly accessed. This access allows the user to move about the information as they would move about within their own minds, that is, by association. Already commercial hypermedia products are being produced for the education and leisure markets. Teachers\u27 work loads are increasing, as they take on more curriculum responsibilities, while at the same time, information is expanding at a rapid rate. The challenge today is to encourage teachers to use new information technology to overcome these problems. However, since their inception into schools fifteen years ago, computers have not delivered the results that had been expected of them. Can the access to hypermedia curriculum documents help teachers to lessen their work load and encourage them to use IT? Firstly, it is important to consider whether curriculum materials for teacher use are suitable for hypermedia presentation. The literature indicated that textual materials that are not meant to be read sequentially like a novel, arc suitable to be presented in hypermedia form. At present, curriculum materials for teachers contain the content in hard copy form but the presentation is lacking in quality. This hard copy material is expensive, hard to correct and slow to update. Hypermedia offers the potential to overcome these limitations and to provide easy access to much more information. This new medium could allow teachers for the first ti.me to truly integrate their teaching programme by enabling them to access multiple curriculum documents. The methodology used in this study was based on two types of descriptive research, survey and correlation methods. The target population for this study was all K-7 teachers using the Western Australia Mathematics syllabus within Western Australia. The instrument was a mailed survey questionnaire that consisted of five parts. The first part consisted of collecting personal data such as age and gender. The second part was the Computer Attitude Scale (CAS), designed by Loyd and Gressard (1984), and was used to measure attitudes towards learning and using computers. The third part consisted of questions that asked teachers for their views and impressions on the social acceptability and utility of the present hard copy. The fourth part consisted of questions on computer experience and use, both in and outside the classroom. The final part consisted questions on the likely acceptance and usefulness of a hypermedia copy of the syllabus. This study found that the likely medium-based anxiety for this type of application is low for the teachers sampled, with 70 percent indicating that they were likely to accept this type of application. The findings indicated that the acceptance rate increased as the teachers\u27 positive attitude towards computers increased. Teachers that rated themselves competent at using a computer were also more likely to accept this type of application. Time spent using a computer at school showed that teachers who frequently use them at least several times a week were more likely to accept this type of application. The study also found that the majority of teachers sampled considered the ability to link the syllabus to other teaching material was very useful. Many of the problems identified by the teachers sampled concerning the usability of the present hard copy could be overcome using a hypermedia version