Curriculum implementation exploratory studies: Final report

Throughout the history of schooling in New Zealand the national curriculum has been revised at fairly regular intervals. Consequently, schools are periodically faced with having to accommodate to new curriculum. In between major changes other specifically-focused changes may arise; for example, the increased recent emphasis upon numeracy and literacy

Communicating Auditory Impairments Using Electroacoustic Composition

Changes in human sensory perception can occur for a variety of reasons. In the case of distortions or transformations in the human auditory system, the aetiology may include factors such as medical conditions affecting cognition or physiology, interaction of the ears with mechanical waves, or stem from chemically induced sources, such the consumption of alcohol. These changes may be permanent, intermittent, or temporary. In order to communicate such effects to an audience in an accessible, and easily understood manner, a series of electroacoustic compositions were produced. This concept follows on from previous work on the theme of representing auditory hallucinations. Specifically, these compositions relate to auditory impairments that humans can experience due to tinnitus or through the consumption of alcohol. In the case of tinnitus, whilst much is known about the causes and symptoms, the experience of what it is like to live with tinnitus is less explored and those who have acquired the condition may often feel frustration when trying to convey the experience of ‘what it is like’ for them. In terms of impairment from alcohol consumption, whilst there is much hearsay, little research exists on the immediate and short-term effects of alcohol consumption on the human auditory system, despite over half of the UK population reported as consuming alcohol in 2017. The methodology employed to design these compositions draws upon scientific research findings, including experimental and explorative studies involving human participants, coupled with electroacoustic composition techniques. The pieces are typically constructed by mixing field recordings with synthesised materials and incorporating a range of temporal and frequency domain manipulations to the elements therein. In this way, the listener is able to experience the phenomenon in a recognisable context, where distortions of reality can be emulated to varying degrees. It is intended that these compositions can serve as easily accessible and understood examples of auditory impairments and that they might find utility in the communication of symptoms to those who have never experienced the underlying causes or conditions. This presents opportunities for pieces like these to be used in scenarios such as education and public health awareness campaigns

Sustainable education in the western corridor: the research roadmap ahead

The primary purpose of this research is to inform strategies that will enhance learning of students in the Western Corridor by identifying issues related to retention and progression. Ideally this will aid the development of interventions and quality teaching methods. Specifically, this project will offer a research program and a set of propositions that will identify predictors for higher education progression and retention and their impact on higher educational pathways for persons in the Western Corridor and similar regional centres. This will be the basis for the research agenda for moving forwards. The outcomes of the research ideally will aid in the preparation of a roadmap for the future

Sustainable education in the western corridor: Establishing the research agenda and roadmap ahead

The primary purpose of this research is to inform strategies that will enhance learning of students in the Western Corridor by identifying issues related to retention and progression. Ideally this will aid the development of interventions and quality teaching methods. Specifically, this project will offer a research program and a set of propositions that will identify predictors for higher education progression and retention and their impact on higher educational pathways for persons in the Western Corridor and similar regional centres. This will be the basis for the research agenda for moving forwards. The outcomes of the research ideally will aid in the preparation of a roadmap for the future

BonFIRE: a multi-cloud experimentation-as-a-service ecosystem

The demand for ways to explore and understand how applications and services behave in a shared software defined infrastructures is increasing. Completely new applications are emerging, alongside “Big Data” and the convergence of services with mobile networks and the Internet of Things (IoT) all exploiting Cloud scalability and flexibility along with integration with software defined networks. These innovative technologies are creating opportunities for industry that requires a new collaborative approach to product and services that combines, commercial and funded research, early-stage and close-to-market applications, but always at the cutting edge of ideas

Sustainable education in the western corridor: Establishing the research agenda and roadmap ahead

The primary purpose of this research is to inform strategies that will enhance learning of students in the Western Corridor by identifying issues related to retention and progression. Ideally this will aid the development of interventions and quality teaching methods. Specifically, this project will offer a research program and a set of propositions that will identify predictors for higher education progression and retention and their impact on higher educational pathways for persons in the Western Corridor and similar regional centres. This will be the basis for the research agenda for moving forwards. The outcomes of the research ideally will aid in the preparation of a roadmap for the future

Experiences of designing and implementing grid database services in the ogsa-dai project

This paper describes the experiences of the OGSA-DAI team in designing and building a database access layer using the OGSI and the emerging DAIS GGF recommendations. This middleware is designed for enabling other UK e-Science projects that require database access and providing the basic primitives for higher-level services such as Distributed Query Processing. OGSA-DAI also intends to produce one of the required reference implementations of the DAIS specification once this becomes a proposed recommendation and, until then, scope out their ideas, provide feedback as well as directly contributing to the GGF working group. This paper enumerates the issues that have arisen in tracking the DAIS and OGSI specifications whilst developing a software distribution using the Grid services model; trying to serve the needs of the various target communities; and using the Globus Toolkit OGSI core distribution. The OGSA-DAI software distribution and more details are available from the project web site a