The use of jazz chants to develop year 3 pupils' abilityto construct simple sentences

This action research attempts to improve teacher’s classroom teaching in developing pupils’ ability to construct simple sentences. Jazz chanting was adapted to teach writing skills and was used as the intervention.This research aimed to describe the extent the use of jazz chants was able to develop Year 3 pupils’ ability to construct simple sentences effectively.Three research participants were chosen among year 3 pupils.The participants were purposefully identified as they had encountered difficulties in constructing simple sentences. Three lessons to exploit the intervention were conducted in this research. The data collection methods that were used in this research to gain insights into the effectiveness of the teacher’s teaching strategy were document analysis consisting of worksheets and a pre-test and a post-test, observation and a semi-structured interview with the participants.The research findings revealed that the teaching with the use of the intervention, jazz chanting, was able to positively impact two participants in constructing simple sentences effectively.Meanwhile, triangulation of the various data also indicated that the teaching aided by the intervention failed to have the expected impact on one participant. Discussion of the research findings and conclusion had highlighted the researcher’s pertinent reflection and suggestions for further improvement on the intervention and for future research

Professional learning communities : a participatory approach to OER in Karnataka

The presentation reviews action research and capacity building with a group of 67 Mathematics, Science and Social Science Government High School teachers in Karnataka, India, who are part of a larger professional learning community of teachers created by the ‘Subject Teacher Forum’ in Research in Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) program. Policy recommendations include: 1) Implement Professional Learning Communities (PLC) approach to teacher professional development in in-service teacher education; 2) Implement the Collaboration OER Adoption (COA) model for OER adoption; 3) Copyright policy should make open licensing as the default; 4) Implement a free and open technology environment

Low-Intrusive Consistent Disk Checkpointing: A Tool for Digital Forensics

An important problem in digital forensics is to record a checkpoint of a disk drive mounted as a file system on a host machine without disrupting the disk s normal operations. We present a checkpointing methodology for a disk that has a Unix-like file system. While our algorithm is built around the Unix file system, it can be used to checkpoint disks formatted for other file systems such as NTFS, etc. Our algorithm satisfies several correctness conditions

Teacher professional learning communities: A collaborative OER adoption approach in Karnataka, India (Advance online publication)

This chapter analyses collaborative Open Educational Resources (OER) adoption amongst Indian school teachers by examining the enabling and constraining techno-social, techno-pedagogical and sociocultural factors in an education context characterised by (1) low information and communication technologies (ICT) use in schools; (2) a “textbook culture” in which teachers often act as simply “content transmitters” of officially prescribed texts; and (3) diverse linguistic challenges, in which predominately English language OER may not always be relevant. The study addressed the following research question: Can a collaborative, “bottom-up” approach by teachers working together to create, adapt and share contextually appropriate resources provide a model of OER adoption? This study adopted a mixed-methods approach – primarily through action research – in which the research team collaborated with 67 teachers and teacher educators on an OER adoption process. The team worked with the teachers between June 2013 and December 2015, utilising a combination of face-to-face workshops (19 in total), questionnaires, focus group discussions and online interactions. The participants were selected from different districts of Karnataka state, representing diverse geographic areas of the state and three subject disciplines: mathematics (26), science (18) and social science (23). The impact this collaboration had on teacher practices was compared with a Comparable group made up of 124 teachers who did not participate in the research intervention. Data analysis suggests that teachers are able to use digital methods to adopt OER and to contextualise (revise) OER to suit their needs, if given appropriate training. Their techno-social skills were advanced through greater knowledge and experience with digitally mediated collaborative OER activity. Their techno-pedagogical efficacy improved through greater networking with other colleagues and a sense of openness to having their materials adapted and revised, though teachers acknowledged that linguistic and quality challenges remained. The collaborative OER adoption approach also raised teachers’ sociocultural knowledge concerning copyright and contextually relevant OER. In addition, the OER engagement processes have aided teacher professional development by building a collaborative environment with peers and introducing them to a multiplicity of educational resources. The authors recommend that state education authorities implement a professional learning community approach to teacher professional development within in-service teacher education, implement a collaborative model for OER adoption, suggest that copyright regulations should position open licensing as the default, and implement a Free Open Source Software-based ICT programme in school education

Instantaneous d frame driven shunt active filter for harmonics and reactive power mitigation using Xilinx System Generator

Instantaneous d frame driven Shunt active filter (SAF) alleviate harmonics and reactive power. This control algorithm evolved from elemental synchronous reference frame engenders the fundamental reference signal from the load current with a phase shift of zero angle. The proposed algorithm is tested in harmonic load and reactive load and it is verified by implementing the model in MATLAB Xilinx system generator. The comparison study was carried out for the proposed algorithm and conventional algorithm and the results are presented in this paper. Keywords: Harmonics, Reactive power, Shunt active filter, MATLAB, Xilinx system generato