A new environment for education? The computer in the home

This paper derives from an interdisciplinary research project which is studying the engagement of young people with different aspects of techno-popular culture. The focus is on the young person and the significance of digital technologies in their lives as a whole. Drawing on cultural studies research we are investigating the ways in which the contexts for computer use are structured by the different discourses present within the family, and the ways in which these discourses may provide a framing context for children’s interactions with digital technology. Drawing on socio-cultural research we take the view that learning is learning to do something with a cultural or cognitive tool. Our analysis of data from case studies of 16 families shows that the context of home computer use amongst young people is far from a simple and uniform phenomenon and is structured by the different discourses present within the family. What young people learn through interaction with computers is thus as much framed by the context of use as by the affordance of the technology.     

Moving or Merging IT Departments? The Hardware and Software are the Easy Parts

Although the technical complications in moving or merging a data or telecom department are considerable, it is the human considerations that are most important and critical to the success of the change. This article shows several methods for handling these issues, with real world examples, in order to prevent problems with the change.Eric Klein has an MS degree in information systems and a BBA degree in management information systems, both from Pace University, New York, USA. He has taught classes at both the undergraduate and graduate level at Pace University in New York, USA, the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo, Israel, and Polytechnic University, Israel in Practical Networking.His practical experience in management consulting is from his experiences at Moran Stahl & Boyer in New York, and as a Senior Technical Consultant for MCI. He is a member of the ISOC, the IETF (IPv6, Evolution of SNMP, SNMP Version 3, and IPv6 Operations working groups where he is co-author of, draft-ietf-v6ops-nap-01.txt in the IPv6 OPS) and the IEC.     

Will cloud computing make the Information Technology (IT) department obsolete?

The rapid adoption and growth of cloud computing is creating unprecedented change in the manner in which IT services are procured, managed, and deployed. Cloud computing is forcing firms to rethink traditional IT governance practices while raising new and fundamental questions for scholars and practitioners. This paper identifies the major areas of change and highlights governance issues that arise with the adoption of cloud computing. The focus of this paper is on the organizational impact on IT governance under cloud computing. The paper posits (1) that successful IT departments under cloud computing will transform into new roles that address internal customer‐facing issues and external cloud‐facing issues, (2) firms that mitigate information asymmetry under cloud computing will show higher firm performance, and (3) firms that offer superior cloud‐sourced IT service attributes of internal prices, quality, variety, and competition in the cloud will show higher firm performance.     

A new polynomial-time algorithm for the maximum weighted (χ(G) — 1)-coloring problem in comparability graphs

For a weighted graph G = (V, E), the maximum weightedk-coloring problem is to color a set of vertices of maximum weight usingk colors. In this paper we are interested in solving this problem in comparability graphs. For these graphs, as shown by Cameron, the problem can be translated into a dual transportation problem. Let (G) denote the chromatic number of a comparability graphG. We prove that whenk is equal to (G) — 1, the problem can be solved more efficiently by finding a maximum weighted stable set in a bipartite graph. Maximum matching algorithms can be used in the unweighted case.This work was supported by an NSERC International Fellowship to the University of Montréal, and by NSERC #OGP0105384.     

What is P3P? (the Platform for Privacy Preferences)

P3P promises protection against surreptitious data mining. Stephen Smith López explains its workings.     

The (black) art of runtime evaluation: Are we comparing algorithms or implementations?

Any paper proposing a new algorithm should come with an evaluation of efficiency and scalability (particularly when we are designing methods for “big data”). However, there are several (more or less serious) pitfalls in such evaluations. We would like to point the attention of the community to these pitfalls. We substantiate our points with extensive experiments, using clustering and outlier detection methods with and without index acceleration. We discuss what we can learn from evaluations, whether experiments are properly designed, and what kind of conclusions we should avoid. We close with some general recommendations but maintain that the design of fair and conclusive experiments will always remain a challenge for researchers and an integral part of the scientific endeavor.     

The Java Management Extensions (JMX): Is Your Cluster Ready for Evolution?

The arrival of commodity hardware configurations with performance rivaling that offered by RISC workstations is resulting in important advances in the state of the art of building and running very large scalable clusters at “mass market” pricing levels. However, cluster middleware layers are still considered as static infrastructures which are not ready for evolution. In this paper, we claim that middleware layers based on both agent and Java technologies offer new opportunities to support clusters where services can be dynamically added, removed, and reconfigured. To support this claim, we present the Java management extensions, a new Java agent-based technology, and its application to implement two disjoint cluster management middleware services (a remote reboot service and a distributed infrastructure for collecting Log events) which share a unique agent-based infrastructure.     

The Berlin Brain-Computer Interface (BBCI) – towards a new communication channel for online control in gaming applications

The investigation of innovative Human-Computer Interfaces (HCI) provides a challenge for future multimedia research and development. Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) exploit the ability of human communication and control bypassing the classical neuromuscular communication channels. In general, BCIs offer a possibility of communication for people with severe neuromuscular disorders, such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or spinal cord injury. Beyond medical applications, a BCI conjunction with exciting multimedia applications, e.g., a dexterity game, could define a new level of control possibilities also for healthy customers decoding information directly from the user’s brain, as reflected in electroencephalographic (EEG) signals which are recorded non-invasively from user’s scalp. This contribution introduces the Berlin Brain–Computer Interface (BBCI) and presents setups where the user is provided with intuitive control strategies in plausible gaming applications that use biofeedback. Yet at its beginning, BBCI thus adds a new dimension in multimedia research by offering the user an additional and independent communication channel based on brain activity only. First successful experiments already yielded inspiring proofs-of-concept. A diversity of multimedia application models, say computer games, and their specific intuitive control strategies, as well as various Virtual Reality (VR) scenarios are now open for BCI research aiming at a further speed up of user adaptation and increase of learning success and transfer bit rates.

The “Authoring on the Fly” system for automated recording and replay of (tele)presentations

We discuss the problem of capturing media streams which occur during a live lecture in class or during a telepresentation. Instead of presenting yet another method or system for capturing the classroom experience, we introduce some informal guidelines and show their importance for such a system. We derive from these guidelines a formal framework for sets of data streams and an application model to handle these sets so that a real-time replay becomes possible. The Authoring on the Fly system is a possible realization of a framework which follows these guidelines. It allows the capture and real-time replay of data streams captured during a (tele)presentation, including audio, video, and whiteboard action streams. This article gives an overview of the different AoF system components for the various phases of the teaching and learning cycle. It comprises an integrated text and graphics editor for the preparation of pages to be loaded by the whiteboard during the presentation phase. The recording component of the system captures various data streams of the live presentation. They are postprocessed by the system so that they become instances of the class of media for whose replay the general application model was developed. From a global point of view, the Authoring on the Fly system allows one to merge three apparently distinct tasks – teaching in class, telepresentation, and multimedia authoring – into one single activity. The system has been used routinely for recording telepresentations over the MBone net and has already led to a large number of multimedia documents which have been integrated automatically into Web-based teaching and learning environments.     

Can proactively induced organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) foster positive work attitudes? Theorising the mediating role of ‘meaning of work’ for IT professionals

Given the high employee turnover rates among information technology (IT) professionals, firms are on the lookout for ways to retain them. With this end in view, to keep their professionals committed and satisfied, many IT firms are making proactive efforts to induce a favourable organisational environment by encouraging employees towards extra-role organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). However, there is scant evidence as to whether orchestrating proactively induced OCB results in positive work attitudes. Our study contributes by theorising the mechanisms through which OCB fosters positive work attitudes among IT professionals, which is expected to lower their turnover rates. Grounding our research in self-perception and self-determination theories, we hypothesize the relationships between IT professionals' OCB and their affective attitudes towards their organisation and job, as being mediated by their cognitive evaluations of the ‘meaning of their IT work’. We test the theorised model with data collected through a large-scale two-wave survey design from a multinational IT-services company. The results offer a nuanced understanding of the relationship between OCB and positive work attitudes for IT professionals, which have significant implications for research and practice.     

Waiting for the rapture: What can we do with computers to (hopefully) witness the emergence of life?

Natural Computing - Hadn’t this question already been answered? We all know about computation-universal Turing Machines. And we know that any such machine can simulate a space–time...     

Video-enhanced or textual rubrics: Does the Viewbrics' formative assessment methodology support the mastery of complex (21st century) skills?

Learners in the process of developing complex skills need a rich mental model of what such skills entail. Textual analytics rubrics (TR) are a widely used instrument to support formative assessment of complex skills, supporting feedback, reflection, and thus mental model development of complex skills. However, the textual nature of a rubric limits the possibility to deliver contextual and dynamic (time-and behaviour-oriented) information. In the Viewbrics online tool, we developed a version supporting the delivery of contextual and dynamic information by adding video-modelling examples with embedded self-explanation prompts to textual analytics rubrics. We called this combination as video-enhanced rubrics (VERs). Our current study investigates whether the Viewbrics online tool supports complex skills development and whether either textual- or video-enhanced rubrics best support complex skills' mastery. The study was a three-group (VERS n = 49, TR n = 54, control n = 50) within-subjects design. Learners' performance of complex skills was measured through expert, peer, and self-assessment using the Viewbrics online tool. A multilevel regression analysis shows learners in the TR and VERS conditions consistently outperforming the control condition to varying degrees across skills. However, no differences have been found between the two experimental conditions. Positive results across different complex skills indicate the Viewbrics online tool can be used to support the development of a wide range of complex skills in secondary education.     

The Emperor’s new clothes? A meta-study of education technology policies in Ireland,North and South (1996–2006)

In this paper, we asked whether or not it matters if policy direction for embedding digital technology in education is aligned with the locus of control of curriculum reform and of teachers’ professional development. We created a simple control:choice framework with which to analyse and compare approaches to education technology policy and the interaction of technology with curriculum and professional development in Northern Ireland and in the south of Ireland. While we expected to find harmony between technology provision and educational change, we did not discover it. We concluded that different approaches are not necessarily at odds and their interplay is more complex.     

The new exact solitary and multi-soliton solutions for the (2+1)-dimensional Zakharov–Kuznetsov equation

In this paper, by employing two different simplest equation methods, the (2$+$1)-dimensional Zakharov–Kuznetsov (ZK) equation derived for describing weakly nonlinear ion-acoustic waves in the plasma is investigated. With the aid of the Bernoulli equation and the coupled Burgers’ equations, the electric field potential of ZK equation are formally obtained, which are presented as the new solitary and multi-soliton solutions. Meanwhile, the electric field and magnetic field can be accordingly obtained. In addition, the significant features of the variable coefficient and parameter are discovered. The results show that the solitary and multi-soliton solutions are precisely obtained and the efficiency of the methods is demonstrated. These new exact solutions will extend previous results and help to explain the features of nonlinear ion-acoustic waves in the plasma.     

Does being on Facebook make me (feel) accepted in the classroom? The relationships between early adolescents' Facebook usage,classroom peer acceptance and self-concept

The present study aimed to explore the relationships between classroom peer relations, self-concept, and the use of social networking sites in early adolescents. The differences between Facebook users and non-users in their (teacher-assessed and sociometric) classroom peer acceptance and the peer relations, academic and global self-concept were investigated. In addition, the incremental predictive power of students' Facebook usage indicators for their peer relations self-concept beyond their actual classroom acceptance was tested, as well as the moderating role of early adolescents' gender classroom peer acceptance in the relation between Facebook usage and peer relations self-concept. 404 early adolescents (47.3% males; 82.9% Facebook users) participated in the study. No differences were found between users and non-users in their social preference, teacher-assessed peer acceptance, and academic and general self-concept. However, Facebook users reported significantly higher peer relations self-concept. No significant differences were found between Facebook users classified in different sociometric groups. Measures of Facebook usage explained incremental variance in peer-relation self-concept beyond classroom peer acceptance measures. In addition, a significant interaction effect between emotional connectedness to Facebook and gender was found; being highly emotionally connected to Facebook was beneficial only for girls’ peer relations self-concept. These results shed light on commonalities and differences in Facebook and classroom connectedness.