Hindering and enabling factors towards ICT integration in schools: A developing country perspective

ICT in education has emerged as a widespread phenomenon and has been widely considered and explored. While remarkable achievement in ICT use in the teaching and learning process has been observed in the developed part of the world, schools in the developing countries still fail to do so. Pakistan, as a less developed country, has still been in its infancy stage of ICT integration in schools. The purpose of this paper was thus, to explore the existing state of affairs in relation to ICT integration in schools via reviewing both the hindering and enabling factors. The study employed a systemic review method to review the available research, conducted in Pakistan, in the last ten years. The results inform about several fundamental issues and provide a way forward towards effective ICT integration in the process of teaching and learning.

Spectrum of electroencephalogram finding in Children with newly diagnosed epilepsy –an Experience at a tertiary care hospital.

Epilepsy is the most common neurological disorders that affect all age groups. It is characterized by at least two unprovoked seizures more than 24 hours apart. The most common investigation used for both diagnosis and management is an Electroencephalogram (EEG), which is relatively cheap and easy to perform. However, EEG requires technical expertise and is prone to misinterpretation. Objective: To determine the frequency of abnormal EEG findings in children with newly diagnosed epilepsy at tertiary care hospital

Role of the head teacher in fostering collaborative learning among teachers in a government secondary school

Recently the concept of the collaborative teacher learning has emerged as a popular and powerful strategy for teachers\u27 professional development. The strength of collaborative teacher learning is that it encourages workplace learning and develops a sense of continuous professional growth among teachers. More importantly, the role of the headteacher in bringing about any kind of change in the school premises is found to be very crucial. Due to their position, authority and influence within the school, they can bring improvement in their own practices and also encourage and involve other colleagues to do the same. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of a headteacher in fostering collaborative learning among teachers in a government boys\u27 secondary school in Karachi, Pakistan. For this study, the case study design was employed under the qualitative research paradigm. Research participants included the headteacher of the school as the main research participant and four teachers from different grade levels, with different experiences. The purpose of selecting such teachers was to generate data from various perspectives. Data were collected through interviews, observations, document analysis and informal talks. All the recorded data were first transcribed, analyzed by coding and categorized during the fieldwork. After the fieldwork, summative data analysis was employed. The study reveals that the headteacher plays a very significant role in fostering collaborative learning among teachers. He has created such an environment that provides teachers opportunities to learn from each other by involving them in activities that require working together as a team, guiding and supporting each other. The headteacher continuously encouraged teachers to build confidence and helped them in utilizing their own expertise and capabilities through sharing and discussions for better teaching and learning practices. This shows that the concept of collaborative teacher learning can be used as a very successful strategy for teachers\u27 continuous professional development in the government schools in the context of Pakistan, where there are few opportunities for teachers to join professional development institutes

Transcriptome analysis and annotation: SNPs identified from single copy annotated unigenes of three polyploid blueberry crops.

Blueberry is a kind of new rising popular perennial fruit with high healthful quality. It is of utmost importance to develop new blueberry varieties for different climatic zones to satisfy the demand of people in the world. Molecular marker assisted breeding is believed to be an ideal method for the development of new blueberry varieties for its shorter breeding cycle than the conventional breeding. Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) markers are widely used molecular tools for marker assisted breeding, which could be detected at large scale by the transcriptome sequencing. Here, we sequenced the leaves transcriptome of 19 rabbiteye (Vaccinium ashei Reade), 13 southern highbush (Vaccinium. corymbosum L × native southern Vaccinium Spp) and 22 cultivars of northern highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum L) by using next generation sequencing technologies. A total of 80.825 Gb clean data with an average of about 12.525 million reads per cultivar were obtained. We assembled 58,968, 55,973 and 53,887 unigenes by using the clean data from rabbiteye, southern highbush and northern highbush blueberry cultivars, respectively. Among these unigenes, 3599, 3495 and 3513 unigenes were detected as candidate resistance genes in three blueberry crops. Moreover, we identified more than 8756, 9020, and 9198 SSR markers from these unigenes, and 7665, 4861, 13,063 SNPs from the annotated single copy unigenes, respectively. The results will be helpful for the molecular genetics and association analysis of blueberry and the basic molecular information of pest and disease resistance of blueberry, and would also offer huge number of molecular tools for the marker assisted breeding to produce blueberry cultivars with different adaptive characteristics