Reflecting on our own learning: incorporating diverse worldviews into teaching and learning activities.

CONTEXT The teacher’s experience is frequently overlooked as a source of useful data on teaching practice. Nelson (2003, p. 85) points out that “every class is potentially an experiment from which the data are either discarded or never gathered.” This paper presents two academics’ reflections on the impact of their training in te reo Maori and tikanga Maori on their teaching activities. PURPOSE To reflect on academics’ learning of Maori language and culture in order to design teaching and learning activities that incorporate Maori language and the Maori worldview. APPROACH The paper uses three of Brookfield’s (1998) four lenses of reflection on teaching practice. RESULTS The first academic considered it was important to enable students to adequately explore the worldviews of the diverse stakeholders they will design products for in future and to test students on their understanding of these in order to satisfy cultural aspects of the graduate profile outcomes. The second academic found benefits of the use of Maori language in class in creating an atmosphere reflective of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Each academic found something to learn from the other’s work. CONCLUSIONS Adding the Maori language and worldview enables the classroom to better reflect New Zealand’s bi-cultural environment and student projects to better meet the needs of diverse stakeholder groups, and also explicitly addresses the cultural aspects of the graduate profile

Engineers for the future; accounting for diversity

tailoring engineering and STEM education to meet the needs of all stakeholders. (External Industry requirement) a. Educational institutions must consider an increasingly diverse group of stakeholders, including students, staff, industry, and the wider community. How can educational activities expand our horizons beyond classroom and industry experience

On the Design of Smart Home System

Smart Home (SH) technology, comprising smart devices in the home context. SH technology has demonstrated new and good contribution to increase safety and reliability, at the same time; it might have its own influence to change our living habit. Use of mobile phones is changing with the development of technology; it can be used for different purposes. With the help of a network, mobile phone can be used to implement the smart home by controlling the devices. The objectives of this paper are to implement a smart home by controlling electronic devices at home remotely and to get an alert on intrusion or movement around the restricted premises. The mobile phone is using the short message service (SMS) service available and the alerts are also received as an SMS mentioning the activity occurring around the premises

Comparison between Two Algorithms of 32kb/s ADPCM using QAM Signal at 16.8kb/s

This paper studies the  comparison between two algorithms of 32kb/s ADPCM systems. The first algorithm uses 4-bit quantizer with sampling rate of 8000 sample/sec, and the second algorithm uses 5-bit quantizer with sampling rate of 6400 sample/sec. The comparison is done using QAM signal at data rate of 16.8kb/s. Two models of QAM signals are used, the first model operates at symbol rate of 2400 baud   with each symbol is represented by 7-bit, while, the second model operates at symbol rate of 2800 baud with each symbol is represented by 6-bit. The contribution of this paper is that sending the second model of QAM signal over ADPCM with 5-bit quantizer. Simulation results show that the performance of ADPCM with 5-bit quantizer is better than 4-bit quantizer for both models of QAM signals. Also, the performance of ADPCM using second model is better than the first model. Furthermore, the performance with circular constellation is better than rectangular on

NOVEL SIMPLE DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF WI-MAX TRANSCEIVER USING MATLAB-SIMULINK

This paper provides analysis of WiMAX systems from its background to their architectures highlighting merits and demerits, topologies, structures and looks deep into transceiver systems architecture, then specializes on the radio frequency (RF) front-end part of the WiMAX transceiver system in which a model is designed. Thereafter, the model is implemented in MATLAB Simulink and the results are investigated and analyzed

Reflecting on our own learning: incorporating diverse worldviews into teaching and learning activities.

CONTEXT The teacher’s experience is frequently overlooked as a source of useful data on teaching practice. Nelson (2003, p. 85) points out that “every class is potentially an experiment from which the data are either discarded or never gathered.” This paper presents two academics’ reflections on the impact of their training in te reo Maori and tikanga Maori on their teaching activities. PURPOSE To reflect on academics’ learning of Maori language and culture in order to design teaching and learning activities that incorporate Maori language and the Maori worldview. APPROACH The paper uses three of Brookfield’s (1998) four lenses of reflection on teaching practice. RESULTS The first academic considered it was important to enable students to adequately explore the worldviews of the diverse stakeholders they will design products for in future and to test students on their understanding of these in order to satisfy cultural aspects of the graduate profile outcomes. The second academic found benefits of the use of Maori language in class in creating an atmosphere reflective of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Each academic found something to learn from the other’s work. CONCLUSIONS Adding the Maori language and worldview enables the classroom to better reflect New Zealand’s bi-cultural environment and student projects to better meet the needs of diverse stakeholder groups, and also explicitly addresses the cultural aspects of the graduate profile

Is it conceivable that neurogenesis, neural Darwinism, and species evolution could all serve as inspiration for the creation of evolutionary deep neural networks?

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are built using artificial neural networks. They are part of machine learning methods that are capable of learning from data that have been used in a wide range of applications. DNNs are mainly handcrafted and they usually contain numerous layers. Research frontier has emerged that concerns automated construction of DNNs via evolutionary algorithms. This paper emphasizes the importance of what we call two-dimensional brain evolution and how it can inspire two dimensional DNN evolutionary modeling. We also highlight the connection between the dropout method which is widely-used in regularizing DNNs and neurogenesis of the brain, and how these concepts could benefit DNNs evolution.The paper concludes with several recommendations for enhancing the automatic construction of DNNs

Teaching Methodology and its Effects on Quality Learning.

Teaching method is the mechanism that is used by the teacher to organize and implement a number of educational means and activities to achieve certain goals. Teaching techniques are the means that reflect the success of the learning process and the competencies of the teacher. Being a teacher, I always need to look for new ways to deliver knowledge to my learner, and in many occasions, I found that traditional teaching methods become not effective as it used to be due to the current advancement in technology. Teaching becomes more effectives when it performed in a quicker response to the needs of the learner, so that blending various techniques to deliver knowledge and ideas become necessary. This paper presents the characteristics of many teaching methods including online teaching and a comparison between them is highlighted, in order to choose the method that satisfy the aims and provide the teacher with high competency. Keywords: Teaching Methodology, Competency, Strengths and Limitations, Quality of Teaching, Online Learning

POST-WAR LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS: Redefining Schools Designs in Iraq

The learning environments in Iraq have been greatly affected by war and ongoing conflict in the past two decades. As a result, the drop-out rates have increased, academic achievement is low, and the students are suffering from stress. Architecturally, the existing school typologies in Iraq were designed more than 70 years ago and does not reflect the needs of the 21st century students. The new design does not only provide a physical function - an elementary school and a pedestrian bridge, but also presents a community gathering space for the parents and families of the two separated neighborhoods. Programmatic functions and the site forces combined to create the form while providing many special variations on each floor. The level of privacy increases on the higher levels while the bridge serves as a public space above water level. In terms of safety, the location provides a great control in the two entry points on both ends of the bridge while it opens to the public in the after-school hours. By connecting Adhamiya and Utayfia neighborhoods together, the school becomes the bridge that does not only connect both communities physically but also to bond the people and those young students back together in a warm welcoming Environment

Flow in Pipes Simulation Using Successive Substitution Method

The aim of this paper is to present the implementation of mathematical model to simulate the flow of fluid and gas in pipes network consisted of a number of horizontal pipes of specified diameters and length, joined at a number of nodes, and to compute the pressure, the flow rate, and the direction of flow at each node. Such simulation allows predicting the behavior of the fluid network system under different conditions. Such prediction can be effectively used to give decisions regarding the design and the operation of the real system. This model adopt the successive substitution method as a numerical technique to solve non-linear equation using a fixed-point iteration. Keywords: Flow in Pipes Network, Successive Substitution Method, Numerical Methods, Fixed Point Iterations