The prospect of radically changing teaching and learning by issuing a laptop computer to every student and teacher is an exciting one, but it carried big risks and would take time and thorough planning to execute well. But even thorough planning can't prevent the unanticipated. In this article, the author counts six major surprises during his time…

No matter how many car washes or bake sales schools host to raise money, adding funds to their coffers is a recurring problem. This perpetual financial difficulty makes expansive technology purchases or changes seem like a pipe dream for school CIOs and has education technologists searching for ways to stretch money. In 2005, state K-12 school…

This article presents the findings of a qualitative evaluation on the effect of a specialised software tool on the efficiency and quality of assignment marking. The software, Lightwork, combines with the Moodle learning management system and provides support through marking rubrics and marker allocations. To enable the evaluation a framework has…

Many students with physical disabilities have difficulty with writing fluency due to motor limitations. One type of assistive technology that has been developed to improve writing speed and accuracy is word prediction software, although there is a paucity of research supporting its use for individuals with physical disabilities. This study used an…

Like any infrastructure technology, Virtual World (VW) platforms provide affordances that facilitate some activities and hinder others. Although it is theoretically possible for a VW platform to support all types of activities, designers make choices that lead technologies to be more or less suited for different learning objectives. Virtual World…

The question of how to present cultural heritage resources in a way that attracts potential users is becoming important in our ever-changing world. This paper describes MOSAICA system--a web 2.0-based toolbox, dedicated for the preservation and presentation of cultural heritage. This paper also describes an evaluation study that examined MOSAICA…

Evaluation of methods and techniques for conversational and multimodal spoken dialogue systems is complex, as is gathering data for the modeling and tuning of such techniques. This article describes MushyPeek, an experiment framework that allows us to manipulate the audiovisual behavior of interlocutors in a setting similar to face-to-face…

The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which "plagiarismdetect.com," an internet help/tool to detect plagiarism helps academicians tackle the ever-growing problem of plagiarism. Concerned with term papers, essays and most of the time with full-blown research reports, a tool like "plagiarismdetect.com" may…

This paper discusses the challenges of online teaching, the reasons students cheat and one means of curtailing that cheating in the online environment. The use of Securexam Remote Proctor System in one university application is reviewed.

In models containing reciprocal effects, or longer causal loops, the usual effect estimates assume that any effect touching a loop initiates an infinite cycling of effects around that loop. The real world, in contrast, might permit only finite feedback cycles. I use a simple hypothetical model to demonstrate that if the world permits only a few…

In order to find its circumference, Archimedes famously boxed the circle between two polygons. Ending the first of a series of articles (MT179) with an aside, Francis Lopez-Real reverses the situation to ask: Which polygons can be boxed between two circles? (The official term for such polygons is "bicentric".) The sides of these polygons are…

Presently, teaching and presentation methods are changing from chalk and blackboards to interactive methods. Multimedia technology is presently used in many schools, however much of the commercially-available software programs don't allow teachers to share their experiences. Adobe Captivate 3 is a computer program that enables teachers, without…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a perspective on the emergence of social media and their adoption as a critical element in knowledge management strategy. Social media are defined as the collection of software tools and web-based applications that are personalized, that is, that communications identify individuals by name and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into the use of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 technologies so that librarians can combine open source software with user-generated content to create a richer discovery experience for their users. Design/methodology/approach: Following a description of the current state of integrated library…

Following an introduction to the diagonalization of matrices, one of the more difficult topics for students to grasp in linear algebra is the concept of Jordan normal form. In this note, we show how the important notions of diagonalization and Jordan normal form can be introduced and developed through the use of the computer algebra package…