The use of computer-based learning tools for teaching and clinical purposes: Interactive computing strategy for Iraq

Medical universities and teaching hospitals in Iraq are facing a lack of professional staff due to the ongoing violence that forces them to flee the country. The professionals are now distributed outside the country which reduces the chances for the staff and students to be physically in one place to continue the teaching and limits the efficiency of the consultations in hospitals. A survey was done among students and professional staff in Iraq to find the problems in the learning and clinical systems and how Information and Communication Technology could improve it. The survey has shown that 86% of the participants use the Internet as a learning resource and 25% for clinical purposes while less than 11% of them uses it for collaboration between different institutions. A web-based collaborative tool is proposed to improve the teaching and clinical system. The tool helps the users to collaborate remotely to increase the quality of the learning system as well as it can be used for remote medical consultation in hospitals.

Truth - the essential dimension of ethics in scholarship, teaching, learning and research

The introduction of metrics, league tables, performance targets, research assessment exercises and a range of other pressures placed by society, funding bodies and employers on scholars, teachers and students have resulted in diminished value being placed on the essential ethical criterion of truth. The impact of reduced valuation for truth has a huge impact on the standing of science and not least horticultural science in the eyes of the general public at a time when this should be a primary concern. This contribution discusses examples of the impact of diminished valuation of truth, the causes of this phenomenon, the results that come from this situation and remedies that are needed.

Transreal limits and elementary functions

We extend all elementary functions from the real to the transreal domain so that they are defined on division by zero. Our method applies to a much wider class of functions so may be of general interest.

How students view the boundaries between their science and religious education concerning the origins of life and the universe

Internationally in secondary schools, lessons are typically taught by subject specialists, raising the question of how to accommodate teaching which bridges the sciences and humanities. This is the first study to look at how students make sense of the teaching they receive in two subjects (science and religious education) when one subject’s curriculum explicitly refers to cross-disciplinary study and the other does not. Interviews with 61 students in seven schools in England suggested that students perceive a permeable boundary between science and their learning in science lessons and also a permeable boundary between religion and their learning in RE lessons, yet perceive a firm boundary between science lessons and RE lessons. We concluded that it is unreasonable to expect students to transfer instruction about cross-disciplinary perspectives across such impermeable subject boundaries. Finally we consider the implications of these findings for the successful management of cross-disciplinary education.

Education and training futures in horticulture and horticultural science

Horticultural knowledge and skills training have been with humankind for some 10,000 to 20,000 years. With permanent settlement and rising wealth and trade, horticulture products and services became a source of fresh food for daily consumption, and a source of plant material in developing a quality environment and lifestyle. The knowledge of horticulture and the skills of its practitioners have been demonstrated through the advancing civilizations in both eastern and western countries. With the rise of the Agricultural Revolutions in Great Britain, and more widely across Continental Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as the move towards colonisation and early migration to the New Worlds, many westernised countries established the early institutions that would provide education and training in agriculture and horticulture. Today many of these colleges and universities provide undergraduate, postgraduate and vocational and technical training that specifically targets horticulture and/or horticultural science with some research and teaching institutions also providing extension and advisory services to industry. The objective of this chapter is to describe the wider pedagogic and educational context in which those concerned with horticulture operate, the institutional structures that target horticulture and horticultural science education and training internationally; examine changing educational formats, especially distance education; and consider strategies for attracting and retaining young people in the delivery of world-class horticultural education. In this chapter we set the context by investigating the horticultural education and training options available, the constraints that prevent young people entering horticulture, and suggest strategies that would attract and retain these students. We suggest that effective strategies and partnerships be put in place by the institution, the government and most importantly the industry to provide for undergraduate and postgraduate education in horticulture and horticultural science; that educational and vocational training institutions, government, and industry need to work more effectively together to improve communication about horticulture and horticultural science in order to attract enrolments of more and talented students; and that the horticulture curriculum be continuously evaluated and revised so that it remains relevant to future challenges facing the industries of horticulture in the production, environmental and social spheres. These strategies can be used as a means to develop successful programs and case studies that would provide better information to high school career counsellors, improve the image of horticulture and encourage greater involvement from alumni and the industries in recruitment, provide opportunities to improve career aspirations, ensure improved levels of remuneration, and promote the social features of the profession and greater awareness and recognition of the profession in the wider community. A successful career in horticulture demands intellectual capacities which are capable of drawing knowledge from a wide field of basic sciences, economics and the humanities and integrating this into academic scholarship and practical technologies.

Elementary Petri net inside RFID distributed database (PNRD)

Usually, a Petri net is applied as an RFID model tool. This paper, otherwise, presents another approach to the Petri net concerning RFID systems. This approach, called elementary Petri net inside an RFID distributed database, or PNRD, is the first step to improve RFID and control systems integration, based on a formal data structure to identify and update the product state in real-time process execution, allowing automatic discovery of unexpected events during tag data capture. There are two main features in this approach: to use RFID tags as the object process expected database and last product state identification; and to apply Petri net analysis to automatically update the last product state registry during reader data capture. RFID reader data capture can be viewed, in Petri nets, as a direct analysis of locality for a specific transition that holds in a specific workflow. Following this direction, RFID readers storage Petri net control vector list related to each tag id is expected to be perceived. This paper presents PNRD cornerstones and a PNRD implementation example in software called DEMIS Distributed Environment in Manufacturing Information Systems.

NAVET's Boxes - an Evaluation of the Post-Visit Loan Service at a Science Centre in Borås

Many pedagogues believe science centres to be a good complement to the more formal school teaching. For a visit to a science centre to be as educational as possible, there is a need for pre-visit information of some sort, a guided visit, and post-visit work. Many science centres offer loan services of different kinds. At Navet, a science centre in Borås, teachers can borrow boxes with experiments connected to the different themes they provide. The experiments are supposed to be a continuation of the visit and help settle the knowledge gained during the visit. This thesis is an evaluation of how the boxes function in the schools, and what the teachers think of them. The study was conducted through questionnaires and interviews with both teachers and the staff at Navet. The results of the study are very positive. Many teachers have been involved with Navet from the very beginning and they see a visit to Navet as an integrated part of their teaching. Some boxes work better than others and some might need clearer information, but overall the teachers see the boxes as timesavers, as a way to vary their teaching more easily, and as a help for teachers not specialized in mathematics and science.

Translation, Communication and 'Learning' : Experiences from teaching a master program in Viet Nam

In Vietnam, as in other Asian countries, co-operation with foreign universities plays an important role for the development of higher education. This paper is based on personal experiences from teaching a Swedish Master Programme in Education Science at Vietnam National University in Hanoi. Using theories developed by Lev Vygotsky and Donald Schon, the programme is explored as an inter-cultural learning process. Three aspects are focused upon. Firstly, the fact that communication between students and teachers is conducted with the help of translators who support both teachers and students in their attempt to understand and make themselves understood. Secondly, the expressed need to connect the ideas and techniques which are studied in the programme to the students´ professional worlds. Thirdly, the need to construct a framework wherein the students can inquire into their own situations and to encourage them to try new and more productive ways to deal with problems they are confronted with.

Historielärares historier : Ämnesbiografi och ämnesförståelse hos gymnasielärare i historia

The overall aim of this study is to analyse history teachers’ understanding of the school subject history. The aim have also been to uncover what factors the history teachers say have affected their understanding of the school subject. Based on survey and interview methods, the question that this study deals with is: in the light of which general understanding of the school subject history, do the teachers make didactic choices on a daily basis? The first theme is biographical. The teachers’ life-history is taken into consideration and several factors in the teachers’ background and the school environment have been identified. It also seems as if the teachers’ understanding of the school subject goes from an elementary and searching approach to one that is more complex and convinced. The second theme is a more structural approach. The results shows three major orientations among the teachers’ general understanding namely, educational (bildung) orientation, critical orientation and identity orientation. Even though a main orientation can be seen among the teachers, an important result is also that the orientation is overall complex. At the most general level some patterns can be seen. First the connection between the teachers’ biography and their general understanding of the school subject. In the understanding of the school subject, it is also notable that teachers relate in different ways to history as science, history as identity and history from an ideological viewpoint. It is also possible to note some signs of change in the school subject history that follows a lager historiographical context.

Learning by Reading : A literature study on the use of authentic texts in the EFL upper elementary classroom

The English language is widely used throughout the world and has become a core subject in many countries, especially for students in the upper elementary classroom. While textbooks have been the preferred EFL teaching method for a long time, this belief has seemingly changed within the last few years. Therefore, this study looks at what prior research says about the use of authentic texts in the EFL upper elementary classroom with an aim to answer research questions on how teachers can work with authentic texts, what the potential benefits of using authentic texts are and what teachers and students say about the use of authentic texts in the EFL classroom. While this thesis is written from a Swedish perspective, it is recognized that many countries teach EFL. Therefore, international results have also been taken into consideration and seven previous research studies have been analyzed in order to gain a better understanding of the use of authentic texts in the EFL classroom. Results indicate that the use of authentic texts is beneficial in teaching EFL. However, many teachers are still reluctant to use these, mainly because of time constraints and the belief that such texts are too difficult for their students. Since these findings are mainly focused on areas outside of Sweden, additional research is needed before conclusions can be drawn on the use of authentic texts in the Swedish upper elementary EFL classroom.

The power of literature : A literature review on the incorporation of children’s literature in the lower-elementary English as a Second- Language classroom.

The use of children’s literature in the English as a Second language (ESL) classroom is a widely used teaching method. This study aims to find research relating to the incorporation of children’s literature in the lower elementary English as a secondlanguage classroom. The main questions are how children’s literature can be used in the classroom and what potential benefits it has. A systematic literature review was carried out and research from six studies was included. The included studies, analyzed in this thesis, involved children aged 6-9, who are learning a second language. The results reveal multiple benefits with the use of children’s literature in the lower elementary ESL classroom, such as vocabulary gains, improved speaking and listening skills, increased motivation and better pronunciation. The results also present a few suggestions on how to incorporate the literature in the classroom, where reading aloud to the students appears to be the most common practice. It also appears common to have post-reading sessions that include discussions about what has been read.

The Role of Motivational Strategies in the Upper Elementary Classroom : A systematic literature review about teacher strategies that promote self-confidence, motivation and a conducive learning environment

The aim of this literature review is to investigate which strategies teachers use to motivate pupils to communicate orally in English. The literature review also investigates how these teacher strategies affect pupils. The methodology used for this investigation is a systematic literature review. Various databases have been used when searching for literature. Scientific articles and theses have been searched for. They have also been read and analyzed before they have become a part of this review. The results indicate that some teachers feel insecure when speaking English. Therefore Swedish is spoken in many language classrooms. Teachers speaking in front of the class is the traditional way of teaching, and it does not seem to be a strategy who influences pupils positively. If teachers speak the target language among pupils they often get more motivated and focused pupils who feel comfortable speaking English. Young pupils are fast learners. By exposing them to the English language in early ages they receive great opportunities to learn a foreign language and strengthen their self-confidence. Drama, songs and rhymes are preferable strategies to use when teaching young learners. What position teachers decide to take in the classroom is also a significant element when teaching foreign languages.