Dragana Martinovic

Doing Research Was Inspiring: Building a Research Community with Teachers.

This paper reports on a mixed-methods study related to K–12 teachers’ understandings of what research is, and what enables or inhibits teacher use of research in the classroom towards informing their instructional practices. In a collaboration exemplifying school board and university partnerships, we examined the nature of associations between teachers and education research(ers). Our findings indicated that teachers felt both connected and disconnected to research practices in education. Participants suggested ways to establish and sustain better links and collaborations among the communities of teaching and research. This paper emphasizes the importance of universities, schools and teachers working together to conduct meaningful research and apply current knowledge in the field of education.

Being an expert mathematics online tutor: what does expertise entail?

This article is derived from the qualitative portion of a larger study conducted on mathematics websites that provide expert volunteer help. Data consist of tutoring logs of five expert tutors from two help sites, plus interviews with these tutors. The researcher has employed theories about expertise in the educational domain to elicit details of individual coping strategies with challenges posed by the online environment, including students’ non‐responsiveness and issues of academic honesty. One of the participants, a recent online tutor who was also a teacher, experienced conflict of professional interests between these two roles. Tutors, who were also students, felt a conflict of liability – towards the tutees on one hand and towards the website administration on the other. Except for one tutor who demonstrated a highly developed expert performance, other tutors exhibited characteristics of both novices and experts, thus placing themselves within temporary and context‐dependent locations on the novice‐expert continuum. Recommendations are offered herein for future research and for the organization of online tutoring environment. It is suggested that best practices must include both pedagogical and tutor training/support considerations.

Visual Mathematics and Cyberlearning

This first book in the series will describe the Net Generation as visual learners who thrive when surrounded with new technologies and whose needs can be met with the technological innovations. These new learners seek novel ways of studying, such as collaborating with peers, multitasking, as well as use of multimedia, the Internet, and other Information and Communication Technologies. Here we present mathematics as a contemporary subject that is engaging, exciting and enlightening in new ways. For example, in the distributed environment of cyber space, mathematics learners play games, watch presentations on YouTube, create Java applets of mathematics simulations and exchange thoughts over the Instant Messaging tool. How should mathematics education resonate with these learners and technological novelties that excite them?

Visual Mathematics and Cyberlearning in View of Affordance and Activity Theories

How do new digital tools and environments affect mathematics learning of students who belong to the Net Generation? In order to explore the complexity of the use of multimedia and Internet to make mathematics teaching and learning more visual and cyber-oriented, our chapter reflects on an add-on value of the new developments in research and practice as discussed by contributing authors of the book. This meta-conceptual analysis of the variety of perspectives on visual mathematics and cyberlearning presented in different chapters of the volume is conducted through the lenses of the Activity Theory and Affordance Theory thus allowing for comprehensive connections of affordances of computational tools to the new structures of activity system in the digital era that make mathematics learning collaborative and self-directed, and increase opportunities of democratization, emergence of mathematical discourse, and multimodalities of embodied interactions.

Comparison of children's gaming scores to NEPSY-II scores

For 11/15 games the childrens game and NEPSY-II performances significantly correlated.Many games predicted to use cognitive skills, correlated with right NEPSY-II measures.Additional skills also correlated with games, emphasizing the complexity of game play.Analysis confirmed at least one cognitive category for each game, except memory.Similar games could be used to practice or monitor cognition of schoolchildren. This exploratory quantitative study compared schoolchildrens scores on 15 computer games to their scores on the neuropsychological test, NEPSY-II, to determine whether these games utilize predicted cognitive skills. Forty-three children aged 7-12 from different ethnic groups participated in this study. There was an almost equal split between girls and boys, some of whom reported mild learning difficulties. Many a priori predicted correlations were confirmed, with a medium to high effect. Eleven games shared their highest correlation with one or more of the predicted cognitive skills as measured by the NEPSY-II, which provided evidence that these computer games use specific cognitive functions. This suggests that similar computer games could be used to assess, practice, or monitor cognitive skills among schoolchildren.

Designing and implementing an undergraduate program in information systems security

This paper describes development and delivery of the curriculum for a four-year undergraduate program in applied Information Sciences which comprises all the aspects of information systems security. After the first generation of students graduated in 2008, the program was evaluated by using multiple methods, including an exploration of the challenges and successes the program underwent in the process. By reflecting on the established need for such a program and how it evolved historically, the authors set up a baseline for comparing this program with other related programs in the field as well as with known information systems security curriculum models. While this curriculum continues to be modified in response to requirements from the job market and input from industry experts, some challenges for the program remain, such as scarcity of qualified instructors to ensure seamless program delivery, having students with varied educational backgrounds in the same class, and underrepresentation of females. Program curriculum details and useful experiential conclusions are also provided.

Pedagogy for Mobile ICT Learning Using Video-Conferencing Technology

The objective of this paper is to describe the pedagogical and related organizational approaches implemented for mobile learning utilized between a school board and its partnered institutions: Faculties of Education and research institutes. While the two learning events described here were intended to provide mobile ICT-enabled and collaborative learning opportunities for students, the research component of the project was designed to explore the adoption of video-conferencing technology and other collaborative Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) amongst educators. The objective was to evaluate, from the educators’ perspectives, the benefits and obstacles associated with the use of emerging technologies within daily, classroom pedagogy. In order to do so, the authors have chosen two learning events that are very different in terms of their targeted populations, organizational complexity, and pedagogical goals. These learning events were also reflected upon by three in-service teachers from the school board (participants in one of the events), as well as five pre-service teachers, from one of the partner universities, who were observers of the events. A qualitative data analysis process revealed that these two groups have respectively realist and idealist views on ICT integration within schools. The authors concluded that ICT-enabled learning is best adopted through lived experiences and that those may be used to initiate and maintain paradigmatic transition between the various stages of learning on the teacher development continuum (idealist∆realist∆realistic-idealist), a process by which teachers become inspired users and promoters of innovative tools for mobile ICT learning in the classroom.

“You are what you play”: Breaching privacy and identifying users in online gaming

In this paper, we describe different ways that data collected through gaming can be used to learn more about individual players or their groups. We also make a case, taking into consideration two massively multiplayer online games, that such data may be indiscriminately collected, given the diminishing cost of electronic storage space and the increasing need for information that government and other organizations have. A variety of personally identifiable data items and their potential use for data mining analysis is also discussed.

Canadian and UK perspectives on electronic business data transfer

This paper is positioned around the notion that in an era of ubiquitous computing and digitalization of data, the Information Assurance in Security and Privacy (IASP) issues cannot be contained within geographic boundaries. Instead, they must be approached from a comparative cross-border perspective. Such a multi-dimensional inspection is even more critical because in the domain of electronic data transfer there is a knowledge gap across all sectors, lack of synchronization between geographic domains, and lack of public insight into the practices of the main players, including businesses. Here the authors present results of the preliminary research regarding comparison of Canadian and the United Kingdom practices in the management of electronic information on the Internet. The focus is primarily on policies and practices of electronic data storage and transfer, protection of privacy, and electronic business data transfer. This study represents the first stage of a larger project that will encompass several geographic regions1.

Organizing and implementing the internship component of undergraduate programs in IS Security

This paper describes experiences in organizing and running an internship component of an undergraduate program in information systems security. In 2004, Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning introduced a novel Bachelor in Applied Information Sciences (Information Systems Security) program. The intent was to educate well-rounded specialists in the field and provide them with valuable work experience during the 8-month long co-op term. The research presented here is based on the co-op officer reports, statistics reported by the co-op office, interviews with the students and other anecdotal data mainly collected through conversations with the involved parties. Besides providing facts that speak to the quality of the program and appropriate organization of the job placements, the authors critically examine successes and challenges encountered in this process. Comparison with other information systems security postsecondary programs in Ontario, Canada, is given based on type of program, characteristics and focus of curriculum content and length of internship.