Integrating concrete and virtual materials in an elementary mathematics classroom : a case study of success with fractions

This paper describes an approach to introducing fraction concepts using generic software tools such as Microsoft Office's PowerPoint to create "virtual" materials for mathematics teaching and learning. This approach replicates existing concrete materials and integrates virtual materials with current non-computer methods of teaching primary students about fractions. The paper reports a case study of a 12-year-old student, Frank, who had an extremely limited understanding of fractions. Frank also lacked motivation for learning mathematics in general and interacted with his peers in a negative way during mathematics lessons. In just one classroom session involving the seamless integration of off-computer and on-computer activities, Frank acquired a basic understanding of simple common equivalent fractions. Further, he was observed as the session progressed to be an enthusiastic learner who offered to share his learning with his peers. The study's "virtual replication" approach for fractions involves the manipulation of concrete materials (folding paper regions) alongside the manipulation of their virtual equivalent (shading screen regions). As researchers have pointed out, the emergence of new technologies does not mean old technologies become redundant. Learning technologies have not replaced print and oral language or basic mathematical understanding. Instead, they are modifying, reshaping, and blending the ways in which humankind speaks, reads, writes, and works mathematically. Constructivist theories of learning and teaching argue that mathematics understanding is developed from concrete to pictorial to abstract and that, ultimately, mathematics learning and teaching is about refinement and expression of ideas and concepts. Therefore, by seamlessly integrating the use of concrete materials and virtual materials generated by computer software applications, an opportunity arises to enhance the teaching and learning value of both materials.

Moving from Awareness to Knowing, Understanding, Speaking and Doing: Indigenous Women Academics in Higher Education. National Tertiary Education Women's Conference, 18-19 July 2009, South Melbourne, Victoria.

Bronwyn Fredericks was asked to outline some of the issues faced by Indigenous women academics.

There is nothing that 'identifies me to that place' : Aboriginal Women's perceptions of health spaces and places

There is a growing body of literature within social and cultural geography that explores notions of place, space, culture, race and identity. The more recent works suggest that places are experienced and understood in multiple ways and are embedded within an array of politics. Memmott and Long, who have undertaken place-based research with Australian Indigenous people, present the theoretical position that ‘place is made and takes on meaning through an interaction process involving mutual accommodation between people and the environment’. They outline that places and their cultural meanings are generated through one or a combination of three types of people–environment interactions. These include: a place that is created by altering the physical characteristics of a piece of environment and which might encompass a feature or features which are natural or made; a place that is created totally through behaviour that is carried out within a specific area, therefore that specific behaviour becomes connected to that specific place; and a place created by people moving or being moved from one environment to another and establishing a new place where boundaries are created and activities carried out. All these ideas of places are challenged and confirmed by what Indigenous women have said about their particular use of, and relationship with, space within several health services in Rockhampton, Central Queensland. As my title suggests, Indigenous women do not see themselves as ‘neutral’ or ‘non-racialised’ citizens who enter and ‘use’ a supposedly neutral health service. Instead, Aboriginal women demonstrate they are active recognisers of places that would identify them within the particular health place. That is, they as Aboriginal women didn’t just ‘make’ place, the places and spaces ‘make’ them. The health services were identified as sites within which spatial relations could begin to grow with recognition of themselves as Aboriginal women in place, or instead create a sense of marginality in the failure of the spaces to identify them. The women’s voices within this paper are drawn from interviews undertaken with twenty Aboriginal women in Rockhampton, Central Queensland, Australia, who participated in a research project exploring ‘how the relationship between health services and Aboriginal women can be more empowering from the viewpoints of Aboriginal women’. The assumption underpinning this study was that empowering and re-empowering practices for Aboriginal women can lead to improved health outcomes. Throughout the interviews women shared some of their lived realities including some of their thoughts on identity, the body, employment in the health sector, service delivery and their notions of health service spaces and places. Their thoughts on health service spaces and places provide an understanding of the lived reality for Aboriginal women and are explored and incorporated within this paper.

Dismantling the public sector bastion : evaluation capital works

Purpose: The determination of the most appropriate procurement system for a capital works project is a challenging task for public sector clients considering the array of assessment criteria that are considered and the procurement methods that are available. This is particularly pertinent to the Western Australian public sector where they have had a propensity to use traditional lump sum as the default procurement solution despite knowing that the selection of an inappropriate procurement method may lead to cost and time overruns, claims, and disputes’ on projects. This paper presents a six step procurement method evaluation approach that requires public sector agencies to consider in detail an array of options so as to obtain value for money. Design/methodology/approach: A procurement evaluation approach is developed and is examined using a focus group of 12 participants comprising of a public sector client, project team and key stakeholders. The focus group was used to examine the developed approach in the context of a real-life capital works project. Findings: The procurement method evaluation approach was deemed to be pragmatic and enabled decision-makers to re-evaluate outcomes from previous steps in the process. All focus group participants stated the six step process enabled a recommendation that was grounded in reflection and detailed evaluation. Practical implications: The developed procurement approach has enabled the public sector client evaluate the way in which they view procurement method selection and examine how they obtain ‘value for money’. Originality/value: The six step procurement approach makes use of quantitative and qualitative techniques and is reliant on discourse and reflection in making a procurement method recommendation. Consequently, the approach enables public sector clients to account for the complexities often associated with procurement selection.

The Melbourne Decision-Making Questionnaire : an instrument for measuring patterns for coping with decisional conflict

A study was conducted to examine the factorial validity of the Flinders Decision Making Questionnaire (Mann, 1982), a 31-item self-report inventory designed to measure tendencies to use three major coping patterns identified in the conflict theory of decision making (Janis and Mann, 1977): vigilance, hypervigilance, and defensive avoidance (procrastination, buck-passing, and rationalization). A sample of 2051 university students, comprising samples from Australia (n=262), New Zealand (n=260), the USA (n=475), Japan (n=359), Hong Kong (n=281) and Taiwan (n=414) was administered the DMQ. Factorial validity of the instrument was tested by confirmatory factor analysis with LISREL. Five different substantive models, representing different structural relationships between the decision-coping patterns had unsatisfactory fit to the data and could not be validated. A shortened instrument, containing 22 items, yielded a revised model comprising four identifiable factors-vigilance, hypervigilance, buck-passing, and procrastination. The revised model had adequate fit with data for each country sample and for the total sample, and was confirmed. It is recommended that the 22-item instrument, named the Melbourne DMQ, replace the Flinders DMQ for measurement of decision-coping patterns.

Birrarung Marr

Melbourne's new riverside park, Birrarung Marr is located on the north bank of the Yarra, meeting Federation Square at its western end. In design terms it is an important one for both Melbourne and its city centre. It is the first new park in the inner-ring of the city to be built in a hundred years, since Alexandria Gardens, and is also the first major park done by COM since the influential period of designed capital works under the leadership of Rob Adams, at City Projects.

‘Storyline patents’: are plots patentable?

The most interesting questions that arise in patent law are the ones that test the boundaries of patentable subject matter. One of those questions has been put forward recently in the United States in an argument in favour of patenting the plots of fictional stories. United States attorney Andrew F Knight has claimed that storylines are patentable subject matter and should be recognised as such. What he claims is patentable is not the copyrightable expression of a written story or even a written outline of a plot but the underlying plot of a story itself. The commercial application of ‘storyline patents’, as he describes them, is said to be their exclusive use in books and movies. This article analyses the claims made and argues that storylines are not patentable subject matter under Australian law. It also contends that policy considerations, as well as the very nature of creative works, weigh against recognition of ‘storyline patents’.

Choreographing research : supervising the dancing thesis

The dancing doctorate is an interrogative endeavour which can but nurture the art form and forge a beneficial dynamism between those who seek and those who assess the emerging knowledges of dance’. (Vincs, 2009) From 2006-2008 three dance academics from Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne undertook a research project entitled Dancing between Diversity and Consistency: Refining Assessment in Postgraduate Degrees in Dance, funded by the ALTC Priority Projects Program. Although assessment rather than supervision was the primary focus of this research, interviews with 40 examiner/supervisors, 7 research deans and 32 candidates across Australia and across the creative arts, primarily in dance, provide an insight into what might be considered best practice in preparing students for higher research degrees, and the challenges that embodied and experiential knowledges present for supervision. The study also gained the industry perspectives of dance professionals in a series of national forums in 5 cities, based around the value of higher degrees in dance. The qualitative data gathered from these two primary sources was coded and analysed using the NVivo system. Further perspectives were drawn from international consultant and dance researcher Susan Melrose, as well as recent publications in the field. Dance is a young addition to academia and consequently there tends to be a close liaison between the academy and the industry, with a relational fluidity that is both beneficial and problematic. This partially explains why dance research higher degrees are predominantly practice-led (or multi-modal, referring to those theses where practice comprises the substantial examinable component). As a physical, embodied art form, dance engages with the contested territory of legitimising alternative forms of knowledge that do not sit comfortably with accepted norms of research. In supporting research students engaged with dance practice, supervisors traverse the tricky terrain of balancing university academic requirements with studies that are emergent, not only in the practice and attendant theory but in their methodologies and open-ended outcomes; and in an art form in which originality and new knowledge also arises from collaborative creative processes. Formal supervisor accreditation through training is now mandatory in most Australian universities, but it tends to be generic and not address supervisory specificity. This paper offers the kind of alternative proposed by Edwards (2002) that improving postgraduate supervision will be effective if supervisors are empowered to generate their own standards and share best practice; in this case, in ways appropriate to the needs of their discipline and alternative modes of thesis presentation. In order to frame the qualities and processes conducive to this goal, this paper will draw on both the experiences of interviewees and on philosophical premises which underpin the research findings of our study. These include the ongoing challenge of dissolving the binary oppositions of theory and practice, especially in creative arts practice where theory resides in and emerges from the doing as much as in articulating reflection about the doing through what Melrose (2003) terms ‘mixed mode disciplinary practices’. In guiding practitioners through research higher degrees, how do supervisors deal with not only different forms of knowledge but indeed differing modes of knowledge? How can they navigate tensions that occur between the ‘incompatible competencies’ (Candlin, 2000) of the ‘spectating’ academic experts with their ‘irrepressible drive ... to inscribe, interpret, and hence to practise temporal closure’, and practitioner experts who create emergent works of ‘residual unfinishedness’ (Melrose 2006) which are not only embodied but ephemeral, as in the case of live performance?

Identifying with an avatar : a multidisciplinary perspective

Avatars perform a complex range of inter-related functions. They not only allow us to express a digital identity, they facilitate the expression of physical motility and, through non-verbal expression, help to mediate social interaction in networked environments. When well designed, they can contribute to a sense of “presence” (a sense of being there) and a sense of “co-presence” (a sense of being there with others) in digital space. Because of this complexity, the study of avatars can be enriched by theoretical insights from a range of disciplines. This paper considers avatars from the perspectives of critical theory, visual communication, and art theory (on portraiture) to help elucidate the role of avatars as an expression of identity. It goes on to argue that identification with an avatar is also produced through their expression of motility and discusses the benefits of film theory for explaining this process. Conceding the limits of this approach, the paper draws on philosophies of body image, Human Computer Interaction (HCI) theory on embodied interaction, and fields as diverse as dance to explain the sense of identification, immersion, presence and co-presence that avatars can produce.

Book Review: Larissa Behrendt, Chris Cuneen and Terri Libesman, Indigenous Legal Relations in Australia (Oxford University Press, Melbourne 2009) 376pp

Indigenous Legal Relations in Australia is a welcome and refreshing addition to the current literature on Indigenous legal issues. Written by a team of highly qualified Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics who share a long term commitment to Indigenous legal and social justice issues, this book provides a clearly written and accessible introductory text for tertiary students and general readers alike who are seeking to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between Indigenous Australians and the Anglo-Australian legal system.

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.

Soft-biometrics : unconstrained authentication in a surveillance environment

Soft biometrics are characteristics that can be used to describe, but not uniquely identify an individual. These include traits such as height, weight, gender, hair, skin and clothing colour. Unlike traditional biometrics (i.e. face, voice) which require cooperation from the subject, soft biometrics can be acquired by surveillance cameras at range without any user cooperation. Whilst these traits cannot provide robust authentication, they can be used to provide coarse authentication or identification at long range, locate a subject who has been previously seen or who matches a description, as well as aid in object tracking. In this paper we propose three part (head, torso, legs) height and colour soft biometric models, and demonstrate their verification performance on a subset of the PETS 2006 database. We show that these models, whilst not as accurate as traditional biometrics, can still achieve acceptable rates of accuracy in situations where traditional biometrics cannot be applied.

Extraction of road lanes from high-resolution stereo aerial imagery based on maximum likelihood segmentation and texture enhancement

Accurate road lane information is crucial for advanced vehicle navigation and safety applications. With the increasing of very high resolution (VHR) imagery of astonishing quality provided by digital airborne sources, it will greatly facilitate the data acquisition and also significantly reduce the cost of data collection and updates if the road details can be automatically extracted from the aerial images. In this paper, we proposed an effective approach to detect road lanes from aerial images with employment of the image analysis procedures. This algorithm starts with constructing the (Digital Surface Model) DSM and true orthophotos from the stereo images. Next, a maximum likelihood clustering algorithm is used to separate road from other ground objects. After the detection of road surface, the road traffic and lane lines are further detected using texture enhancement and morphological operations. Finally, the generated road network is evaluated to test the performance of the proposed approach, in which the datasets provided by Queensland department of Main Roads are used. The experiment result proves the effectiveness of our approach.

What works elsewhere? A review of physical activity intervention studies

Obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D) have reached epidemic proportions in many parts of the world with numbers projected to rise dramatically in coming decades (Wang and Lobstein, 2006; Zaninotto et al., 2006). In Australia, and consistent with much of the developed world, the problem has been described as a ‘juggernaut’ that is out of control (Zimmet and James, 2007). Unfortunately the burgeoning problem of non-communicable diseases, including obesity and T2D, is also impacting developing nations as populations are undergoing a nutrition transition (Caballero, 2005). The increased prevalence of overweight and obesity in children, adolescents and adults in both the developed and developing world is consistent with reductions in all forms of physical activity (Brownson et al., 2005). This brief paper provides an overview of the importance of physical activity and an outline of physical activity intervention studies with particular reference to the growing years. As many interventions studies involving physical activity have been undertaken in the context of childhood obesity prevention (Lobstein et al., 2004), and an increasing proportion of the childhood population is overweight or obese, this is a major focus of discussion.