Research questions and approaches for computational thinking curricula design

Teaching computational thinking (CT) is argued to be necessary but also admitted to be a very challenging task. The reasons for this, are: i) no general agreement on what computational thinking is; ii) no clear idea nor evidential support on how to teach CT in an effective way. Hence, there is a need to develop a common approach and a shared understanding of the scope of computational thinking and of effective means of teaching CT. Thus, the consequent ambition is to utilize the preliminary and further research outcomes on CT for the education of the prospective teachers of secondary, further and higher/adult education curricula

Nurturing creative thinking

An agricultural example shows that helping people flourish is an organic and unpredictable process. Like a farmer sowing seeds, someone creates conditions for children to grow as creative and critical thinkers. Creativity cannot be taught ‘directly’, but educational practice can provide the means, opportunities and a fertile environment for the creative mind to flourish. However, fostering creativity in schools is a challenging task, especially for teachers as they have to follow innovative teaching practices and play the new roles of mentor, facilitator and orchestrator of learning. This booklet focuses on eight key principles that primary and secondary teachers can follow in order to cultivate creative thinking in students. These principles are mainly inspired from a review of evidence-based research on creativity and innovation in educational contexts, as well as from authors’ own experiences as educators and life-long learners. The eight leading principles, which can easily be followed by teachers worldwide, are the following: promote creative thinking through all school subjects; influence creative thinking through well-designed learning spaces; increase the use of open questions; engage learners in meaningful and authentic activities; enhance creativity through collaboration; make efficient use of educational technologies; allow for mistakes and sensible risk-taking; and, last but not least, learn how to assess and reward creativity. These manifold principles aim at triggering teachers’ reflection on their everyday practices and encourage them to arrange creative thinking activities that offer authentic, interdisciplinary, open, and pleasant learning experiences to all students throughout the entire curriculum.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

A socio-cognitive and computational model for decision making and user modelling in social phishing

Systems software quality, and system security in particular, is often compromised by phishing attacks. The latter were relatively easy to detect through phishing content filters, in the past. However, it has been increasingly difficult to stop more recent and sophisticated social phishing attacks. To protect the citizens from new types of phishing attacks, software quality engineers need to provide equally sophisticating preventive technology that models people’s reactions. The authors considered the behaviour of people on the Internet from a socio-cognitive perspective and deduced who could be more prone to be spoofed by social phishing techniques. The authors herein propose a computational and interdisciplinary metamodelling methodology, which can assist in capturing and understanding people’s interactive behaviour when they are online. Online behaviour can reveal Internet users’ knowledge, information, and beliefs in a given social context; these could also constitute significant factors for trust in social phishing circumstances which, in turn, can provide valuable insights and decision making meta-knowledge for recognition of potential victims of phishers. The proposed modelling approach is illustrated and explained using real-life phishing cases. This meta-model can i) help social computing and phishing researchers to understand users’ trust decisions from a socio-cognitive perspective, and ii) open ways to integrate artificial intelligence design techniques within software quality management practices in order to protect citizens from being spoofed by social phishing attacks. Thus, this software design quality approach will increase system security as a proactive maintenance strategy

A comparative study of cloud services use by prospective IT professionals in five countries

Individuals and organizations utilise the cloud technology and its services in various ways. Cloud-based services are becoming increasingly popular, while there is no adequate knowledge offered for their secure use in the education for future IT professionals. It is important to understand how security and privacy issues are perceived and handled by male/female users and IT professionals of different cultures. The authors aim at presenting and scrutinizing information about cloud services’ use by prospective IT professionals in five countries, namely China, Finland, Greece, Nepal, and the UK. In particular the authors, wanting to find out what are the future IT professionals’ conceptualisations and awareness, collected data from male and female IT students in higher education, who use (or not) cloud services. The authors further illustrate the research findings by proceeding to a comparative analysis considering different perspectives such as: gender, education background, national culture (values and culture), and IT-related knowledge. The final research outcomes reveal attention-grabbing information for future IT professionals’ skills, knowledge, and digital competencies. For the IT professionals and software quality engineering communities the latter comprise a body of realistic knowledge, worthy of note when designing curricula for security technology by accommodating practical and accessible solutions (e.g., cryptography-based cloud security) for developing and enhancing the IT professionals’ role

Academic Mindtrek Conference 2014 Open Source Software Liferay Solutions- E-Banking Account and MQ File System

Internet banking enables customers to save time, take control of their personal finances and even help the environment by opting to receive electronic statements. For Internet banking users, online banking services is the third most important driver of financial institution selection, falling just behind rates and fees, and also for better customer services. These days, it’s not good enough to simply offer online banking services, however. To maintain existing customers and attract new ones, financial institutions need to keep their offerings up to date with the latest features. As the world becomes more global one it will be changed by paperless systems. The idea of a cashless society is the hope of the future. Thus more innovations will still evolve which will make cashless transactions easily accessible and affordable. Technology has had a remarkable influence on the growth of service. In the context of the above perspective, the paper will make an attempt to analyze the evolving sphere of Internet banking and the innovations both technological and conceptual which are sweeping the financial services industry in North of Europe, and in the context of the changes that are taking place in this sector across the Europe and world. If the flow of information could be improved, more efficient at the same time the company's operations. Portals offer a solution to the flow of information problem. The aim of the thesis was to investigate the suitability of Liferay's business environment. Early stages of research it became clear quickly that Liferay is a very sophisticated Open-source project, which has a lot to the portal market

Ethical issues invoked by Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is universally referred to as the fourth industrial revolution. It is a current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. The computerisation of manufacturing includes, amongst other, cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and cognitive computing. There are many challenges in the realisation of Industry 4.0. In order to adopt a "smart factory" and improved (software) processes many ethical considerations need to be identified and considered if a company is to obtain an ethical development and deployment of Industry 4.0. The purpose of normative ethics is to scrutinise standards about the rightness and wrongness of actions, the ultimate goal being the identification of the true human good. A rational appeal can be made to normative defensible ethical rules in order to arrive at a judicious, ethically justifiable judgement. In this position and constructive design research paper our steps are: First we report on the findings of a broad literature review of related research, which refers to the current challenges in the realisation of Industry 4.0. Second, we identify and list some basic generic Deontological and Teleological ethical principles and theories that can serve as normative guidelines for addressing the challenges identified in the initial step. Third, we prescribe a set of ethical rights and duties that must be exercised and fulfilled by protagonists/stakeholders in Industry 4.0 implementation in order for them to exhibit ethical behaviour. Each of these suggested actions are substantiated via an appeal to one, or a number of the normative guidelines, identified in the second step. By identifying and recommending a set of defensible ethical obligations that must be fulfilled in the development and deployment of smart factories, protagonists such as: employers, project managers, technology suppliers, trade unions, (on a microscopic level) and chambers of commerce, local and national government (on a macroscopic level) and other can fulfil their ethical duties. Thus, a deployed Industry 4.0 solution can result in technological change, social change and changes in the business paradigm, which are all ethically justifiable. Ultimately all the improvement processes of Industry 4.0 implementation must be underpinned with ethical consideration