Latin American perspectives to internationalize undergraduate information technology education

The computing education community expects modern curricular guidelines for information technology (IT) undergraduate degree programs by 2017. The authors of this work focus on eliciting and analyzing Latin American academic and industry perspectives on IT undergraduate education. The objective is to ensure that the IT curricular framework in the IT2017 report articulates the relationship between academic preparation and the work environment of IT graduates in light of current technological and educational trends in Latin America and elsewhere. Activities focus on soliciting and analyzing survey data collected from institutions and consortia in IT education and IT professional and educational societies in Latin America; these activities also include garnering the expertise of the authors. Findings show that IT degree programs are making progress in bridging the academic-industry gap, but more work remains

Written output of the deaf and hard of hearing primary school students learning English as a foreign language

Contemporarily learning foreign languages it is a must for anybody who wants to acquire high quality education and be competitive on the job market. It is also true for the students who are deaf and hard of hearing. Their language disability makes it much more difficult to become a proficient foreign language user. The aim of the paper is to present the preliminary effects of the process of teaching and learning English as a foreign language to the deaf and hard of hearing students. The research presented was conducted in several primary Special Schools for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing around Poland. The study concentrates mainly on the deaf and hard of hearing students’ writing skills in English. Students’ written works were linguistically analyzed by the author of this research and also presented to “competent judges” – adult native English speakers. The results show that deaf and hard of hearing student are able to construct meaningful texts in English. However, they are very simple in their form and content. This problem needs further analysis, also the comparative ones

Internet Predictions

More than a dozen leading experts give their opinions on where the Internet is headed and where it will be in the next decade in terms of technology, policy, and applications. They cover topics ranging from the Internet of Things to climate change to the digital storage of the future. A summary of the articles is available in the Web extras section

Los sitcoms como herramienta para el aprendizaje cultural en el aula de inglés

Con la llegada de la globalización y la consolidación definitiva del inglés como lengua internacional, el lugar de la cultura en el proceso de aprendizaje de esta lengua también ha cambiado. De este modo, focalizar la enseñanza en hechos culturales de países anglófonos resulta insuficiente en el mundo en el que vivimos, donde la amplia mayoría de las interacciones en inglés se producen entre hablantes no nativos. Desde un punto de vista culturalmente descentralizado (Holliday, 2009), el desarrollo de la competencia intercultural y la conciencia crítica deben constituir una parte esencial del aprendizaje de idiomas (Byram, 2014). Sin embargo, la mayoría de los libros de texto utilizados no promueven este aprendizaje (inter)cultural. En este trabajo, proponemos que la televisión sea un recurso pedagógico complementario para lograr este objetivo. Nos hemos centrado en “sitcoms” (comedias de situación) para elaborar una lista de episodios que pueden ser utilizados en el entorno de la Educación Superior para desarrollar esta competencia cultural.With the emergence of globalization and English becoming a lingua franca for international communication, the place for culture in the language learning process has shifted as well. Thus, concentrating on cultural facts about English-speaking countries is insufficient for today’s world, where the vast majority of interactions happen among non-native speakers. From a culturally decentered standpoint (Holliday, 2009), intercultural competence and critical awareness constitute an essential part of language learning (Byram, 2014). However, most ELT textbooks do not promote complete (inter) cultural learning. In this article, we argue that TV can be an additional pedagogical tool to help achieve this goal. We focus on sitcoms compiling a list of episodes that can be used at tertiary level to develop cultural competence

Flexible and Affordable Foreign Language Learning Environment based on Web 2.0 Technologies

Web technologies and educational platforms have greatly evolved over the past decade. One of the most significant factors contributing to education on the Internet has been the development of Web 2.0 technologies. These technologies, socially interactive in nature, have much to contribute to the area of Computer Assisted Language Leaning. Unfortunately, Web 2.0 technologies for the most part have been used in an ad hoc manner, permitting language learners acquire knowledge through interaction, but not through a more structured manner as these technologies were not developed to help lean languages as such. The goal of our work is to research and develop an environment, which employs Web 2.0 technology plus online language learning tools to provide a more integrated language learning environment. This paper will explore the technologies and provide information about how tools can be better integrated to provide a more productive working environment for language learners. A first working proof of concept based on our approach introduced is promising supporting modern language requirements and first findings and space for improvements are discussed

Social media analytics: a survey of techniques, tools and platforms

This paper is written for (social science) researchers seeking to analyze the wealth of social media now available. It presents a comprehensive review of software tools for social networking media, wikis, really simple syndication feeds, blogs, newsgroups, chat and news feeds. For completeness, it also includes introductions to social media scraping, storage, data cleaning and sentiment analysis. Although principally a review, the paper also provides a methodology and a critique of social media tools. Analyzing social media, in particular Twitter feeds for sentiment analysis, has become a major research and business activity due to the availability of web-based application programming interfaces (APIs) provided by Twitter, Facebook and News services. This has led to an ‘explosion’ of data services, software tools for scraping and analysis and social media analytics platforms. It is also a research area undergoing rapid change and evolution due to commercial pressures and the potential for using social media data for computational (social science) research. Using a simple taxonomy, this paper provides a review of leading software tools and how to use them to scrape, cleanse and analyze the spectrum of social media. In addition, it discussed the requirement of an experimental computational environment for social media research and presents as an illustration the system architecture of a social media (analytics) platform built by University College London. The principal contribution of this paper is to provide an overview (including code fragments) for scientists seeking to utilize social media scraping and analytics either in their research or business. The data retrieval techniques that are presented in this paper are valid at the time of writing this paper (June 2014), but they are subject to change since social media data scraping APIs are rapidly changing

The CPTPP and Digital Trade: Embracing E-Commerce Opportunities for SMEs in Japan and Canada

One of the most innovative features of the CPTPP is its material on digital trade, especially its chapter on e-commerce which contains a number of provisions aimed at enhancing this vital sector of the economy by eliminating distortive trade barriers such as restrictions on data transfer and data localization requirements. Such provisions should be important to the CPTPP’s two largest parties: Canada and Japan, both of which are highly advanced economies seeking to enhance their digital trade capacity across the Pacific Rim. This paper explores the main features of the CPTPP concerning digital trade from the perspective of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Canada and Japan. Such businesses have a poor track record of e-commerce uptake and may be disadvantaged relative to their larger competitors which enjoy dominance in the online marketplace. Whether or not the CPTPP will assist these businesses while striking the right balance between an open internet and safeguarding of issues such as privacy is a matter of some debate