The Section 504 Process in Middle Schools: Perspectives of Parents, Teachers, and Section 504 Coordinators

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions, experiences, and actions/interactions of teachers, parents, and Section 504 coordinators regarding the development and implementation of the Section 504 process for children in middle schools who have attention deficit disorder (ADD), attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), or central auditory processing disorder (CAPD). This study provided an opportunity to explain or predict specific aspects of the Section 504 process, offer insight, enhance understanding, and provide a meaning for those involved in the Section 504 process. This qualitative study utilized methodologies associated with a grounded theory approach through in-depth interviews. The first research question explored participants’ understanding of the development, implementation, and support of individualized accommodation plans (IAPs) for students with ADD/ADHD and/or CAPD in middle schools. The second research question addressed the contextual and intervening conditions that influenced the development, implementation, and support of Section 504 IAPs. The third research question investigated the consequences that were derived from the contextual and intervening conditions that affected the development, implementation, and support of IAPs for middle school students with ADD/ADHD and/or CAPD. The participants in this study included four parents of middle school age children who were diagnosed with ADD/ADHD or CAPD and had a Section 504 IAP. In addition to the parents, three middle school teachers and three Section 504 coordinators were selected for this study. Based on the findings of this study, three broad based conclusions are offered: 1. Parents and teachers lack a clear understanding of the Section 504 process and sometimes feel frustrated during the development, implementation, or review of a student’s IAP. 2. Parents of children with ADD/ADHD or CAPD do not feel valued as a team member in the development and implementation of tl eir child’s IAP. 3. The issue of lack of time within a teacher’s schedule was a major barrier to collaboration and communication with parents. Recommendations were made for those involved in the Section 504 process. In addition, recommendations were made for educators, parents, and those interested in conducting further research

Breaking : password entry is fine

In our digital world, we have become well acquainted with the login form – username shown as plaintext, password shown as asterisks or dots. This design dates back to the early days of terminal computing, and despite huge changes in nearly every other area, the humble login form remains largely untouched. When coupled with the ubiquity of smartphones, this means we often find ourselves entering complex passwords on a tiny touchscreen keyboard with little or no visual feedback on what has been typed. This paper explores how password masking on mobile devices affects the error rate for password entry. We created an app where users entered selected passwords into masked and unmasked password fields, measuring things like typing speed, error rate, and number of backspaces. We then did an exploratory data analysis for the data, and our findings show that, perhaps unexpectedly, there is no significant difference between masked and unmasked passwords for any of these metrics

Elimination Theory for Nonlinear Parameter Estimation

The work presented here exploits elimination theory (solving systems of polynomial equations in several variables) [1][2] to perform nonlinear parameter identification. In particular show how this technique can be used to estimate the rotor time constant and the stator resistance values of an induction machine. Although the example here is restricted to an induction machine, parameter estimation is applicable to many practical engineering problems. In [3], L. Ljung has outlined many of the challenges of nonlinear system identification as well as its particular importance for biological systems. In these types of problems, the model developed for analysis is typically a nonlinear state space model with unknown parameter values. The typical situation is that only a few of the state variables are measurable requiring that the system be reformulated as a nonlinear input-output model. In turn, resulting the nonlinear input-output model is almost always nonlinear in the parameters. Towards that end, differential algebra tools for analysis of nonlinear systems have been developed by Michel Fliess [4][5] and Diop [6]. Moreover, Ollivier [7] as well as Ljung and Glad [8] have developed the use of the characteristic set of an ideal as a tool for identification problems. The use of these differential algebraic methods for system identification have also been considered in [9], [10]. The focus of their research has been the determination of a priori identifiability of a given system model. However, as stated in [10], the development of an efficient algorithm using these differential algebraic techniques is still unknown. Here, in contrast, a method for which one can actually numerically obtain the numerical value of the parameters is presented. We also point out that [11] has also done work applying elimination theory to systems problems

A second look at the usability of click-based graphical passwords

Click-based graphical passwords, which involve clicking a set of user-selected points, have been proposed as a usable alternative to text passwords. We conducted two user studies: an initial lab study to revisit these usability claims, explore for the first time the impact on usability of a wide-range of images, and gather information about the points selected by users; and a large-scale field study to examine how click-based graphical passwords work in practice. No such prior field studies have been reported in the literature. We found significant differences in the usability results of the two studies, providing empirical evidence that relying solely on lab studies for security interfaces can be problematic. We also present a first look at whether interference from having multiple graphical passwords affects usability and whether more memorable passwords are necessarily weaker in terms of security

Exploring Effect of Location Number on Map-Based Graphical Password Authentication

Information security and privacy : 22nd Australasian Conference, ACISP 2017, Auckland, New Zealand, July 3-5, 2017Graphical passwords (GPs) that authenticate users using images are considered as one potential alternative to overcome the issues of traditional textual passwords. Based on the idea of utilizing an extremely large image, map-based GPs like PassMap and GeoPass have been developed, where users can select their secrets (geographical points) on a world map. In particular, PassMap allows users to select two locations on a map, while GeoPass reduces the number of locations to only one. At first glance, selecting one location is more vulnerable to attacks, while increasing the location number may add burden on users. In the literature, there is no research exploring this issue. Motivated by this, our purpose in this work is to explore the effect of location number (the number of geographical points) and compare two schemes of PassMap and GeoPass in terms of users’ performance and feedback. In this work, we develop a generic and open platform for realizing map-based schemes, and conduct a user study with 60 participants. The study reveals that selecting two locations would not degrade the scheme performance. Our effort aims to complement exiting research studies in this area.Department of Computing2016-2017 > Academic research: refereed > Chapter in an edited book (author)bcw

From nosy little brothers to stranger-danger: Children and parents' perception of mobile threats

The rise in mobile media use by children has heightened parents' concerns for their online safety. Through semi-structured interviews of parent-child dyads, we explore the perceived privacy and security threats faced by children aged seven to eleven along with the protection mechanisms employed. We identified four models of privacy held by children. Furthermore, we found that children's concerns fit into four child-adversary threat models: child-peers, child-media, child-strangers, and child-parents. Their concerns differed from the five threat models held by the parents: child-peers, child-media, child-strangers, child-technology, and child-self. Parents used a variety of protection strategies to minimize children's exposure to external threats. In reality, however, our results suggest that security and privacy risks from an internal family member or a friend are far more common than harm from outsiders

Influencing users towards better passwords: Persuasive cued click-points

Usable security has unique usability challenges because the need for security often means that standard human-computerinteraction approaches cannot be directly applied. An important usability goal for authentication systems is to support users in selecting better passwords, thus increasing security by expanding the effective password space. In click-based graphical passwords, poorly chosen passwords lead to the emergence of hotspots ' portions of the image where users are more likely to select click-points, allowing attackers to mount more successful dictionary attacks. We use persuasion to influence user choice in click-based graphical passwords, encouraging users to select more random, and hence more secure, click-points. Our approach is to introduce persuasion to the Cued Click-Points graphical password scheme (Chiasson, van Oorschot, Biddle, 2007). Our resulting scheme significantly reduces hotspots while still maintaining its usability

Persuasive cued click-points: Design, implementation, and evaluation of a knowledge-based authentication mechanism

This paper presents an integrated evaluation of the Persuasive Cued Click-Points graphical password scheme, including usability and security evaluations, and implementation considerations. An important usability goal for knowledge-based authentication systems is to support users in selecting passwords of higher security, in the sense of being from an expanded effective security space. We use persuasion to influence user choice in click-based graphical passwords, encouraging users to select more random, and hence more difficult to guess, click-points