PanamaTipico.com: a Born Digital Initiative for Researching and Preserving Panama’s Cultural Heritage

This paper reflects on the experience of PanamaTipico.com, an independent website specialized in the research and preservation of the cultural heritage of the Republic of Panama, a developing country located in Central America. Basic information about the project is described. Also discussed, are some of the challenges confronted by the project and the results achieved. The goal of this paper is to encourage a discussion on whether or not the experience of Pan-amaTipico.com is comparable to the experiences of similar projects in developing countries in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

Sturm Sequences and Modified Subresultant Polynomial Remainder Sequences

ACM Computing Classification System (1998): F.2.1, G.1.5, I.1.2.

Graphical Approach to Teaching Compound Interest in High School Math Classes

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2015

Bulgarian Trace in Scientix

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2015

Cultural Institutions and Citizen Science: Some Educational Aspects

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2015

Cognitive-didactic Model for Making Testing Items in Physics

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2015

Automated Data Retrieval in Distance Learning Quality

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2015

A Мodel for Assessment of Professional Competence in Physical Therapy Students

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2015

The Positive Effect of Using the Integral Approach for Improving Quality of Learning and Students' motivation

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2015

Cyber Threats Identification in the Evolving Digital Reality

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2016

Modular Digital Watermarking for Image Verification and Secure Data Storage in Web Applications

Our modular approach to data hiding is an innovative concept in the data hiding research field. It enables the creation of modular digital watermarking methods that have extendable features and are designed for use in web applications. The methods consist of two types of modules – a basic module and an application-specific module. The basic module mainly provides features which are connected with the specific image format. As JPEG is a preferred image format on the Internet, we have put a focus on the achievement of a robust and error-free embedding and retrieval of the embedded data in JPEG images. The application-specific modules are adaptable to user requirements in the concrete web application. The experimental results of the modular data watermarking are very promising. They indicate excellent image quality, satisfactory size of the embedded data and perfect robustness against JPEG transformations with prespecified compression ratios. ACM Computing Classification System (1998): C.2.0.

VisibleZ: A Mainframe Architecture Emulator for Computing Education

This paper describes a PC-based mainframe computer emulator called VisibleZ and its use in teaching mainframe Computer Organization and Assembly Programming classes. VisibleZ models IBM’s z/Architecture and allows direct interpretation of mainframe assembly language object code in a graphical user interface environment that was developed in Java. The VisibleZ emulator acts as an interactive visualization tool to simulate enterprise computer architecture. The provided architectural components include main storage, CPU, registers, Program Status Word (PSW), and I/O Channels. Particular attention is given to providing visual clues to the user by color-coding screen components, machine instruction execution, and animation of the machine architecture components. Students interact with VisibleZ by executing machine instructions in a step-by-step mode, simultaneously observing the contents of memory, registers, and changes in the PSW during the fetch-decode-execute machine instruction cycle. The object-oriented design and implementation of VisibleZ allows students to develop their own instruction semantics by coding Java for existing specific z/Architecture machine instructions or design and implement new machine instructions. The use of VisibleZ in lectures, labs, and assignments is described in the paper and supported by a website that hosts an extensive collection of related materials. VisibleZ has been proven a useful tool in mainframe Assembly Language Programming and Computer Organization classes. Using VisibleZ, students develop a better understanding of mainframe concepts, components, and how the mainframe computer works. ACM Computing Classification System (1998): C.0, K.3.2.

An Approach for a more Objective Evaluation of Practical Projects, Used in the Training Process

Well–prepared, adaptive and sustainably developing specialists are an important competitive advantage, but also one of the main challenges for businesses. One option of the education system for creation and development of staff adequate to the needs is the development of pro jects with topics from real economy ("Practical Projects"). The objective assessment is an essential driver and motivator, and is based on a system of well-chosen, well-defined and specific criteria and indicators. An approach to a more objective evaluation of practical projects is finding more objective weights of the criteria. A natural and reasonable approach is the accumulation of opinions of proven experts and subsequent bringing out the weights from the accumulated data. The preparation and conduction of a survey among recognized experts in the field of project-based learning in mathematics, informatics and information technologies is described. The processing of the data accumulated by applying AHP, allowed us to objectively determine weights of evaluation criteria and hence to achieve the desired objectiveness. ACM Computing Classification System (1998): K.3.2.

Distance Distributions and Energy of Designs in Hamming Spaces

We obtain new combinatorial upper and lower bounds for the potential energy of designs in q-ary Hamming space. Combined with results on reducing the number of all feasible distance distributions of such designs this gives reasonable good bounds. We compute and compare our lower bounds to recently obtained universal lower bounds. Some examples in the binary case are considered.

From Education to Technology Commercialization

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2016