Decision Makers\u27 Thinking During the Design and Implementation of a K-5 High-Computer-Access (HCA) Program

As present trends in education indicate, learning with technology is increasingly being considered as a means of instructional delivery for K-1 2 learners. Educational leaders must be informed of how to provide the experiences, skills, and knowledge required of the learners for whom they are responsible. This qualitative study examined the conceptualization of a school district\u27s attempt to design and implement a high-computer-access (HCA) program. Research methodologies included interview, observation, and analysis of related documents. The results comprised the thinking of the HCA program designers and how they viewed learning theory and effective instruction principles in relationship to the HCA environments they were creating. The findings from this study indicated that designing and implementing an HCA program into a school district involves several issues. These issues were organized into the following themes: (a) goals and assumptions; (b) appropriation; (c) transformative teaching; (d) child-centered instruction; and (e) logistics. The goals and assumptions theme addressed the participants\u27 thinking about the organization\u27s and the designers\u27 goals that evolved during the design phase. The appropriations theme encompassed the use of computer as a learning and teaching tool. Reported changes in instructional planning and delivery are represented in the transformative teaching theme. The child-centered instruction theme resulted from participants\u27 numerous references to learning theory. The fifth theme, logistics, included the procurement, maintenance, and knowledge acquisition inherent in HCA environments. Further investigation of these themes may assist educational leaders who would choose to implement HCA environments into their schools

Developing a Guide to Implement a Program through the Library Resource Center for Academically Talented at the Elementary Level

To provide for the unmet needs of the academically talented at Southgate Elementary School in Kennewick, Washington, a pull-out program was written and implemented through the library resource center. Research related to gifted/talented characteristics, identification and selection techniques, curriculum development, and teachers of the gifted was evaluated and applied to the program organization. Benefits of the program to students, parents, staff, and the cormnunity were numerous. Suggestions were made for application in other school settings using the developed guide as a resource

Supporting feature-level software maintenance

Software maintenance is the process of modifying a software system to fix defects, improve performance, add new functionality, or adapt the system to a new environment. A maintenance task is often initiated by a bug report or a request for new functionality. Bug reports typically describe problems with incorrect behaviors or functionalities. These behaviors or functionalities are known as features. Even in very well-designed systems, the source code that implements features is often not completely modularized. The delocalized nature of features makes maintaining them challenging. Since maintenance tasks are expressed in terms of features, the goal of this dissertation is to support software maintenance at the feature-level. We focus on two tasks in particular: feature location and impact analysis via feature coupling.;Feature location is the process of identifying the source code that implements a feature, and it is an essential first step to any maintenance task. There are many existing techniques for feature location that incorporate various types of analyses such as static, dynamic, and textual. In this dissertation, we recognize the advantages of leveraging several types of analyses and introduce a new approach to feature location based on combining dynamic analysis, textual analysis, and web mining algorithms applied to software. The use of web mining for feature location is a novel contribution, and we show that our new techniques based on web mining are significantly more effective than the current state of the art.;After using feature location to identify a feature\u27s source code, maintenance can be completed on that feature. Impact analysis should then be performed to revalidate the system and determine which other features may have been affected by the modifications. We define three feature coupling metrics that capture the relationship between features based on structural information, textual information, and their combination. Our novel feature coupling metrics can be used for impact analysis to quantify the strength of coupling between pairs of features. We performed three empirical studies on open-source software systems to assess the feature coupling metrics and established three major results. First, there is a moderate to strong statistically significant correlation between feature coupling and faults. Second, feature coupling can be used to correctly determine about half of the other features that would be affected by a change to a given feature. Finally, we found that the metrics align with developers\u27 opinions about pairs of features that are actually coupled

ASTRAL PROJECTION: THEORIES OF METAPHOR, PHILOSOPHIES OF SCIENCE, AND THE ART O F SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION

This thesis provides an intellectual context for my work in computational scientific visualization for large-scale public outreach in venues such as digitaldome planetarium shows and high-definition public television documentaries. In my associated practicum, a DVD that provides video excerpts, 1 focus especially on work I have created with my Advanced Visualization Laboratory team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (Champaign, Illinois) from 2002-2007. 1 make three main contributions to knowledge within the field of computational scientific visualization. Firstly, I share the unique process 1 have pioneered for collaboratively producing and exhibiting this data-driven art when aimed at popular science education. The message of the art complements its means of production: Renaissance Team collaborations enact a cooperative paradigm of evolutionary sympathetic adaptation and co-creation. Secondly, 1 open up a positive, new space within computational scientific visualization's practice for artistic expression—especially in providing a theory of digi-epistemology that accounts for how this is possible given the limitations imposed by the demands of mapping numerical data and the computational models derived from them onto visual forms. I am concerned not only with liberating artists to enrich audience's aesthetic experiences of scientific visualization, to contribute their own vision, but also with conceiving of audiences as co-creators of the aesthetic significance of the work, to re-envision and re-circulate what they encounter there. Even more commonly than in the age of traditional media, on-line social computing and digital tools have empowered the public to capture and repurpose visual metaphors, circulating them within new contexts and telling new stories with them. Thirdly, I demonstrate the creative power of visaphors (see footnote, p. 1) to provide novel embodied experiences through my practicum as well as my thesis discussion. Specifically, I describe how the visaphors my Renaissance Teams and I create enrich the Environmentalist Story of Science, essentially promoting a counter-narrative to the Enlightenment Story of Science through articulating how humanity participates in an evolving universal consciousness through our embodied interaction and cooperative interdependence within nested, self-producing (autopoetic) systems, from the micro- to the macroscopic. This contemporary account of the natural world, its inter-related systems, and their dynamics may be understood as expressing a creative and generative energy—a kind of consciousness-that transcends the human yet also encompasses it

Physics Virtual Learning

Discovery Learning aims to obtain and construct knowledge about a domain by performing experiments and inferring rules and properties ofthe domain from the results ofthose experiments. It is based on the secondary students' needs within limits as well as carefully prepared environment which required students to act in the same manner as scientist when discovering the properties and relations of the domain that is simulated. The objectives ofthis project is to develop Virtual Physics Lab supported with discovery learning method in a way that providing students with exploratory learning environment. Besides, it will determine the effectiveness of scientific discovery learning approach adapted incomputer simulation compared to other learning theories. It is also an effective solution for cost and time while highly support distance education as the technology grows. The development of Virtual Physics Lab supported by discovery leaning would improve the effectiveness of the simulation-based learning outcomes. Through Software Development Life Cycle and prototype approach, it will be developed using Easy Java Simulation which is tools designed for creation of computer simulation. Based on findings and observation, it is believed that learning support in a simulation environment should be directed to invite meaningful, systematic andreflective discovery learning. I

An exploration of Waldorf education principles in a public school bilingual program for gifted students.

This research explored the effects of implementing a curriculum based on important principles of Waldorf education with a Latino student population enrolled in a Transitional Bilingual Education program for gifted Hispanic students attending a public school in central Massachusetts. Qualitative research methods were employed in order to record how the students interpreted specific experiences and to gain insight and understanding concerning the impact of a curriculum based on Waldorf education principles used with bilingual/bicultural students. The study focused on two groups of bilingual gifted classrooms--a sixth grade in a Magnet school and a fourth grade in a community school. All of the students were Puerto Rican with the exception of one girl from El Salvador. Data used for this research study were collected for a period of four months through observation, videotaping, audiotaping, student interviews, and field notes. The finished products of the students were also considered data. The research revealed that the students became connected to the curriculum in three stages--social, physical, and cognitive. The cognitive connection to the curriculum occurred most successfully when artistic activities preceded the introduction of intellectual concepts. This finding is compatible with the research of Martin L. Albert, Lorraine K. Obler, and Kenji Hakuta concerning language formation in bilingual individuals. Increased use of verbal language in the native and second language of the students, a positive sense of self, and increased motivation to learn were noted as results from the students\u27 involvement with the curriculum. Recommendations were made by the researcher to reform traditional public school teaching practices so that a culturally and educationally relevant curriculum might be developed for language and culture minority Latino students

The Effects of Critical Thinking Skills Training on Student Performance in an Educational Psychology Class

Critical thinking skills have become an important part of current educational practices. However, there is little empirical evidence comparing the effectiveness of the programs teaching these skills. In addition, there are questions as to whether the skills should be taught within the class content or separate from the class content. This study assigned students attending labs as part of an educational psychology class to two experimental conditions (content-based and content-free) and a control condition. Measures were scores on lab papers and test scores for the class. In addition, an attitude survey was used to assess student attitudes to each condition, and the overall quality of the labs was assessed. An analysis of variance was performed on the data. Results indicated little difference between experimental and control conditions

A review and assessment of novice learning tools for problem solving and program development

There is a great demand for the development of novice learning tools to supplement classroom instruction in the areas of problem solving and program development. Research in the area of pedagogy, the psychology of programming, human-computer interaction, and cognition have provided valuable input to the development of new methodologies, paradigms, programming languages, and novice learning tools to answer this demand. Based on the cognitive needs of novices, it is possible to postulate a set of characteristics that should comprise the components an effective novice-learning tool. This thesis will discover these characteristics and provide recommendations for the development of new learning tools. This will be accomplished with a review of the challenges that novices face, an in-depth discussion on modem learning tools and the challenges that they address, and the identification and discussion of the vital characteristics that constitute an effective learning tool based on these tools and personal ideas

Internal Executive Coaching Program: Exploring the Experiences, Benefits, and Recommendations for Participants and Organizations

Organizations are searching for ways to enhance leadership skills to meet strategic goals. Executive coaching is one method used by organizations to improve communication, job satisfaction, staff retention and overall productivity. While external coaching programs have been used for years, internal coaching programs are a more recent development and little research has been conducted to examine their effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to examine the experience of managers who participated in an internal executive coaching program in order to explore the benefits and recommendations for participants and organizations. A case study of one organization\u27s Internal Executive Coaching Program was used and data were collected from participants through interviews and surveys. Results of the study describe the program\u27s effectiveness in improving leadership skills and employee satisfaction