Karlos Santiago

Game-Console-Based Projects for Learning the Computer Input/Output Subsystem

The input/output (I/O) subsystem is an important topic within computer architecture (CA) because it determines how the computer interacts with its environment. For this reason, computer scientists and engineers must understand how the computer manages this interaction, which is usually taught in introductory CA courses. Of course, there are many different styles of teaching, ranging from purely theoretical to completely practical. The CA course considered in this paper has already applied a practical approach for some time. For the I/O subsystem, students must be able to describe what polling and interrupts are and handle them through low-level programming. However, programming at this level in operating system (OS)-driven computers is not possible without being familiar with the kernel and drivers, which is not usually the case for students in an introductory course. Fortunately, there are many bare and specialized embedded systems around that are not OS-driven. In this proposal, the Nintendo DS (NDS) console was used in a classroom setting. It proved to be an appropriate infrastructure for developing attractive and engaging projects and was useful in providing a better understanding of the mechanisms related to the I/O subsystem. At the same time, the teaching methods were altered to make the transition from classical, passive, lecture-based classes to an active project-based learning (PBL) approach. It has been a very rewarding experience to see students learning to control the NDS devices on their own. In addition to describing the implementation of the proposed changes in two subsequent school years, this paper also presents some data and conclusions.

Trilingualism (Spanish, English and Basque) in the educational system of the Basque country

Abstract The research presented here aims to show the results obtained in Spanish, Basque and English languages for a bilingual community – the Basque Country (in which two official languages coexist) – and in which a bilingual school education system has been established with three linguistic Models and classified as A, B and D (as the letter C is not normally used in Basque). These Models depend on the greater or lesser presence of Basque and Spanish, both as languages through which studies are learnt as well as vehicular languages. Although what is involved here is not a longitudinal study, data has been gathered over a four-year period (2000–2003) in order to verify that the results are stable on a yearly basis. Also requiring to be verified was whether the possible differences arising amongst pupils between the distinct linguistic Models were the same for three different age groups (12, 14 and 16 corresponding to three different school grades). Given the nested structure of the data, hierarchical linear models (HLM) have been employed for the statistical analysis of the same. The results obtained confirm that the greatest differences are in Basque between pupils in the different Models, while with Spanish and English the differences are less.