Teachers’ and parents’ perspectives of digital technology in the lives of young children

The pervasiveness of technology in the 21st Century has meant that adults and children live in a society where digital devices are integral to their everyday lives and participation in society. How we communicate, learn, work, entertain ourselves, and even shop is influenced by technology. Therefore, before children begin school they are potentially exposed to a range of learning opportunities mediated by digital devices. These devices include microwaves, mobile phones, computers, and console games such as Playstations® and iPods®. In Queensland preparatory classrooms and in the homes of these children, teachers and parents support and scaffold young children’s experiences, providing them with access to a range of tools that promote learning and provide entertainment. This paper examines teachers’ and parents’ perspectives and considers whether they are techno-optimists who advocate for and promote the inclusion of digital technology, or whether they are they techno-pessimists, who prefer to exclude digital devices from young children’s everyday experiences. An exploratory, single case study design was utilised to gather data from three teachers and ten parents of children in the preparatory year. Teacher data was collected through interviews and email correspondence. Parent data was collected from questionnaires and focus groups. All parents who responded to the research invitation were mothers. The results of data analysis identified a misalignment among adults’ perspectives. Teachers were identified as techno-optimists and parents were identified as techno-pessimists with further emergent themes particular to each category being established. This is concerning because both teachers and mothers influence young children’s experiences and numeracy knowledge, thus, a shared understanding and a common commitment to supporting young children’s use of technology would be beneficial. Further research must investigate fathers’ perspectives of digital devices and the beneficial and detrimental roles that a range of digital devices, tools, and entertainment gadgets play in 21st Century children’s lives.

Teachers’ and parents’ perspectives of digital technology in the lives of young children

The pervasiveness of technology in the 21st Century has meant that adults and children live in a society where digital devices are integral to their everyday lives and participation in society. How we communicate, learn, work, entertain ourselves, and even shop is influenced by technology. Therefore, before children begin school they are potentially exposed to a range of learning opportunities mediated by digital devices. These devices include microwaves, mobile phones, computers, and console games such as Playstations® and iPods®. In Queensland preparatory classrooms and in the homes of these children, teachers and parents support and scaffold young children’s experiences, providing them with access to a range of tools that promote learning and provide entertainment. This paper examines teachers’ and parents’ perspectives and considers whether they are techno-optimists who advocate for and promote the inclusion of digital technology, or whether they are they techno-pessimists, who prefer to exclude digital devices from young children’s everyday experiences. An exploratory, single case study design was utilised to gather data from three teachers and ten parents of children in the preparatory year. Teacher data was collected through interviews and email correspondence. Parent data was collected from questionnaires and focus groups. All parents who responded to the research invitation were mothers. The results of data analysis identified a misalignment among adults’ perspectives. Teachers were identified as techno-optimists and parents were identified as techno-pessimists with further emergent themes particular to each category being established. This is concerning because both teachers and mothers influence young children’s experiences and numeracy knowledge, thus, a shared understanding and a common commitment to supporting young children’s use of technology would be beneficial. Further research must investigate fathers’ perspectives of digital devices and the beneficial and detrimental roles that a range of digital devices, tools, and entertainment gadgets play in 21st Century children’s lives.

Assessing the potential of inter-organisational shared services

Shared Services (SS) involves the convergence and streamlining of an organisation’s functions to ensure timely service delivery as effectively and efficiently as possible. As a management structure designed to promote value generation, cost savings and improved service delivery by leveraging on economies of scale, the idea of SS is driven by cost reduction and improvements in quality levels of service and efficiency. Current conventional wisdom is that the potential for SS is increasing due to the increasing costs of changing systems and business requirements for organisations and in implementing and running information systems. In addition, due to commoditisation of large information systems such as enterprise systems, many common, supporting functions across organisations are becoming more similar than not, leading to an increasing overlap in processes and fuelling the notion that it is possible for organisations to derive benefits from collaborating and sharing their common services through an inter-organisational shared services (IOSS) arrangement. While there is some research on traditional SS, very little research has been done on IOSS. In particular, it is unclear what are the potential drivers and inhibitors of IOSS. As the concepts of IOSS and SS are closely related to that of Outsourcing, and their distinction is sometimes blurred, this research has the first objective of seeking a clear conceptual understanding of the differences between SS and Outsourcing (in motivators, arrangements, benefits, disadvantages, etc) and based on this conceptual understanding, the second objective of this research is to develop a decision model (Shared Services Potential model) which would aid organisations in deciding which arrangement would be more appropriate for them to adopt in pursuit of process improvements for their operations. As the context of the study is on universities in higher education sharing administrative services common to or across them and with the assumption that such services were homogenous in nature, this thesis also reports on a case study. The case study involved face to face interviews from representatives of an Australian university to explore the potential for IOSS. Our key findings suggest that it is possible for universities to share services common across them as most of them were currently using the same systems although independently.

Designing learning spaces for (partially) online lives : recombinant architecture

The notion of recombinant architecture signals a loosening of spatial connections between physical and digital-online environments (Mitchell, 1996; 2000; 2003). Such an idea also points to the transformative nature of the designing approaches concerned with the creation of spaces where bits meet bodies to fulfil human needs and desires and, at the same time, pursuing those human dimensions of space and place which are so important to our senses of belonging, physical comfort and amenity. This paper proposes that recombinant spaces and places draw on familiar architectural forms and functions and on the transforming functions of digital-online modes. Perspectives, approaches and resources outlined in the paper support designing and re-designing enterprises and aim to stimulate discussion in the Digital Environments strand of this online conference: 'Under Construction: a world without walls'.

Making sense of working lives and working choices : the role of satirical cartoons

This study examined the tone and content of 107 political, satirical cartoons images published in the popular culture forum of mainstream newspapers. The cartoons illustrated the reform of the industrial relations system in Australia in 2005 and 2006. The images were conveyed in a moderate tone. That is, they were more about poking fun at and questioning authority and power, rather than simply describing the issues on one hand, or demonstrating any revolutionary fervor on the other. The cartoons’ content represented many of the concerns and issues being voiced by employer groups, government, opposition, unions and the media at the time. Themes likely to evoke a strong response from the readership included the importance of a collective response in voicing opposition to the legislation and enacting change, the risks to fundamental working conditions, the stealth and dogma associated with the rollout of the changes and the increasing disparity in wealth and power between employers and workers. The images were an important part of the wider discourse and a mechanism which helped place industrial relations squarely in the minds of working Australians.

Promoting creativity in education : from policy to practice : an Australian perspective

In the 21st century, our global community is changing to increasingly value creativity and innovation as driving forces in our lives. This paper will investigate how educators need to move beyond the rhetoric to effective practices for teaching and fostering creativity. First, it will describe the nature of creativity at different levels, with a focus on personal and everyday creativity. It will then provide a brief snapshot of creativity in education through the lens of new policies and initiatives in Queensland, Australia. Next it will review two significant areas related to enriching and enhancing students’ creative engagement and production: 1) influential social and environmental factors; and 2) creative self-efficacy. Finally, this paper will propose that to effectively promote student creativity in schools, we need to not only emphasise policy, but also focus on establishing a shared discourse about the nature of creativity, and researching and implementing effective practices for supporting and fostering creativity. This paper has implications for educational policy, practice and teacher training that are applicable internationally.

A novel nonrepudiable threshold multi-proxy multi-signature scheme with shared verification

Tzeng et al. proposed a new threshold multi-proxy multi-signature scheme with threshold verification. In their scheme, a subset of original signers authenticates a designated proxy group to sign on behalf of the original group. A message m has to be signed by a subset of proxy signers who can represent the proxy group. Then, the proxy signature is sent to the verifier group. A subset of verifiers in the verifier group can also represent the group to authenticate the proxy signature. Subsequently, there are two improved schemes to eliminate the security leak of Tzeng et al.’s scheme. In this paper, we have pointed out the security leakage of the three schemes and further proposed a novel threshold multi-proxy multi-signature scheme with threshold verification.

Understanding Shared Services : an exploration of the IS literature

In a competitive environment, companies continuously innovate to offer superior services at lower costs. ‘Shared services’ have been extensively adopted in practice as one means for improving organisational performance. Shared services is considered most appropriate for support functions, and is widely adopted in Human Resource Management, Finance and Accounting; more recently being employed across the Information Systems function. IS applications and infrastructure are an important enabler and driver of shared services in all functional areas. As computer based corporate information systems have become de facto and the internet pervasive and increasingly the backbone of administrative systems, the technical impediments to sharing have come down dramatically. As this trend continues, CIOs and IT professionals will need a deeper understanding of the shared services phenomenon and its implications. The advent of shared services has consequential implications for the IS academic discipline. Yet, archival analysis of IS the academic literature reveals that shared services, though mentioned in more than 100 articles, has received little in depth attention. This paper is the first attempt to investigate and report on the current status of shared services in the IS literature. The paper presents detailed review of literature from main IS journals and conferences, findings evidencing a lack of focus and definitions and objectives lacking conceptual rigour. The paper concludes with a tentative operational definition, a list of perceived main objectives of shared services, and an agenda for related future research.

Digital kids, analogue students : a mixed methods study of students' engagement with a school-based Web 2.0 learning innovation

The inquiry documented in this thesis is located at the nexus of technological innovation and traditional schooling. As we enter the second decade of a new century, few would argue against the increasingly urgent need to integrate digital literacies with traditional academic knowledge. Yet, despite substantial investments from governments and businesses, the adoption and diffusion of contemporary digital tools in formal schooling remain sluggish. To date, research on technology adoption in schools tends to take a deficit perspective of schools and teachers, with the lack of resources and teacher ‘technophobia’ most commonly cited as barriers to digital uptake. Corresponding interventions that focus on increasing funding and upskilling teachers, however, have made little difference to adoption trends in the last decade. Empirical evidence that explicates the cultural and pedagogical complexities of innovation diffusion within long-established conventions of mainstream schooling, particularly from the standpoint of students, is wanting. To address this knowledge gap, this thesis inquires into how students evaluate and account for the constraints and affordances of contemporary digital tools when they engage with them as part of their conventional schooling. It documents the attempted integration of a student-led Web 2.0 learning initiative, known as the Student Media Centre (SMC), into the schooling practices of a long-established, high-performing independent senior boys’ school in urban Australia. The study employed an ‘explanatory’ two-phase research design (Creswell, 2003) that combined complementary quantitative and qualitative methods to achieve both breadth of measurement and richness of characterisation. In the initial quantitative phase, a self-reported questionnaire was administered to the senior school student population to determine adoption trends and predictors of SMC usage (N=481). Measurement constructs included individual learning dispositions (learning and performance goals, cognitive playfulness and personal innovativeness), as well as social and technological variables (peer support, perceived usefulness and ease of use). Incremental predictive models of SMC usage were conducted using Classification and Regression Tree (CART) modelling: (i) individual-level predictors, (ii) individual and social predictors, and (iii) individual, social and technological predictors. Peer support emerged as the best predictor of SMC usage. Other salient predictors include perceived ease of use and usefulness, cognitive playfulness and learning goals. On the whole, an overwhelming proportion of students reported low usage levels, low perceived usefulness and a lack of peer support for engaging with the digital learning initiative. The small minority of frequent users reported having high levels of peer support and robust learning goal orientations, rather than being predominantly driven by performance goals. These findings indicate that tensions around social validation, digital learning and academic performance pressures influence students’ engagement with the Web 2.0 learning initiative. The qualitative phase that followed provided insights into these tensions by shifting the analytics from individual attitudes and behaviours to shared social and cultural reasoning practices that explain students’ engagement with the innovation. Six indepth focus groups, comprising 60 students with different levels of SMC usage, were conducted, audio-recorded and transcribed. Textual data were analysed using Membership Categorisation Analysis. Students’ accounts converged around a key proposition. The Web 2.0 learning initiative was useful-in-principle but useless-in-practice. While students endorsed the usefulness of the SMC for enhancing multimodal engagement, extending peer-topeer networks and acquiring real-world skills, they also called attention to a number of constraints that obfuscated the realisation of these design affordances in practice. These constraints were cast in terms of three binary formulations of social and cultural imperatives at play within the school: (i) ‘cool/uncool’, (ii) ‘dominant staff/compliant student’, and (iii) ‘digital learning/academic performance’. The first formulation foregrounds the social stigma of the SMC among peers and its resultant lack of positive network benefits. The second relates to students’ perception of the school culture as authoritarian and punitive with adverse effects on the very student agency required to drive the innovation. The third points to academic performance pressures in a crowded curriculum with tight timelines. Taken together, findings from both phases of the study provide the following key insights. First, students endorsed the learning affordances of contemporary digital tools such as the SMC for enhancing their current schooling practices. For the majority of students, however, these learning affordances were overshadowed by the performative demands of schooling, both social and academic. The student participants saw engagement with the SMC in-school as distinct from, even oppositional to, the conventional social and academic performance indicators of schooling, namely (i) being ‘cool’ (or at least ‘not uncool’), (ii) sufficiently ‘compliant’, and (iii) achieving good academic grades. Their reasoned response therefore, was simply to resist engagement with the digital learning innovation. Second, a small minority of students seemed dispositionally inclined to negotiate the learning affordances and performance constraints of digital learning and traditional schooling more effectively than others. These students were able to engage more frequently and meaningfully with the SMC in school. Their ability to adapt and traverse seemingly incommensurate social and institutional identities and norms is theorised as cultural agility – a dispositional construct that comprises personal innovativeness, cognitive playfulness and learning goals orientation. The logic then is ‘both and’ rather than ‘either or’ for these individuals with a capacity to accommodate both learning and performance in school, whether in terms of digital engagement and academic excellence, or successful brokerage across multiple social identities and institutional affiliations within the school. In sum, this study takes us beyond the familiar terrain of deficit discourses that tend to blame institutional conservatism, lack of resourcing and teacher resistance for low uptake of digital technologies in schools. It does so by providing an empirical base for the development of a ‘third way’ of theorising technological and pedagogical innovation in schools, one which is more informed by students as critical stakeholders and thus more relevant to the lived culture within the school, and its complex relationship to students’ lives outside of school. It is in this relationship that we find an explanation for how these individuals can, at the one time, be digital kids and analogue students.

Street computing workshop 2009

The Street Computing workshop, held in conjunction with OZCHI 2009, solicits papers discussing new research directions, early research results, works-in-progress and critical surveys of prior research work in the areas of ubiquitous computing and interaction design for urban environments. Urban spaces have unique characteristics. Typically, they are densely populated, buzzing with life twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. These traits afford many opportunities, but they also present many challenges: traffic jams, smog and pollution, stress placed on public services, and more. Computing technology, particularly the kind that can be placed in the hands of citizens, holds much promise in combating some of these challenges. Yet, computation is not merely a tool for overcoming challenges; rather, when embedded appropriately in our everyday lives, it becomes a tool of opportunity, for shaping how our cities evolve, for enabling us to interact with our city and its people in new ways, and for uncovering useful, but hidden relationships and correlations between elements of the city. The increasing availability of an urban computing infrastructure has lead to new and exciting ways inhabitants can interact with their city. This includes interaction with a wide range of services (e.g. public transport, public services), conceptual representations of the city (e.g. local weather and traffic conditions), the availability of a variety of shared and personal displays (e.g. public, ambient, mobile) and the use of different interaction modes (e.g. tangible, gesture-based, token-based). This workshop solicits papers that address the above themes in some way. We encourage researchers to submit work that deals with challenges and possibilities that the availability of urban computing infrastructure such as sensors and middleware for sensor networks pose. This includes new and innovative ways of interacting with and within urban environments; user experience design and participatory design approaches for urban environments; social aspects of urban computing; and other related areas.

The nine lives of Vietnam's new competition law

Vietnam's present draft of the proposed new Law on Competition is currently in its ninth version. Although there is a need to enact legislation as quickly as possible, Vietnam cannot rush the drafting process. Under its Bilateral Trade Agreement with the USA, Vietnam has committed to improve the quality of its laws and consistency of its legislative framework. Since the Law on Competition will be fundamental in establishing the legal framework for a more coherent and effective competition regime, and will have profound influences on Vietnam's objective of becoming a socialist-oriented market economy, its provisions must be well constructed and well considered, and this takes time. This article shows how the proposed Law is being crafted as compared to older drafts which sheds light on changes in policy during the drafting process. Where possible, the Draft is also compared with the laws in other jurisdictions for any assistance they might lend. In this author's opinion not all the changes are positive but any defects in the draft are not intractable and can be remedied prior to promulgation.

Shared leadership in Queensland schools : a collective case study

Shared leadership has been identified as a key governance base for the future of government and Catholic schools in Queensland, the state’s two largest providers of school education. Shared leadership values the contributions that many individuals can make through collaboration and teamwork. It claims to improve organisational performance and reduce the increasing pressures faced by principals. However despite these positive features, shared leadership is generally not well understood, not well accepted and not valued by those who practice or study leadership. A collective case study method was chosen, incorporating a series of semi-structured interviews with principals and the use of official school documents. The study has explored the current understanding and practice of shared leadership in four Queensland schools and investigated its potential for use.