TALAT Lecture 3206: The Feeding of Castings
This lecture provides an introduction to the techniques used to compensate for the solidification shrinkage of castings. The students will be able to understand the basic principles of how to design a feeder system to produce a shrinkage-free casting. Basic knowledge of castings production, basic physics and metallurgy background is assumed.
The evolution of research on collaborative learning
For many years, theories of collaborative learning tended to focus on how individuals function in a group. More recently, the focus has shifted so that the group itself has become the unit of analysis. In terms of empirical research, the initial goal was to establish whether and under what circumstances collaborative learning was more effective than learning alone. Researchers controlled several independent variables (size of the group, composition of the group, nature of the task, communication
Functioning in the Wireless Classroom
Code It! fosters mathematics learning environments where pre-algebra students use handheld technologies to explore and learn about functions. The resources developed - server-based and handheld software and paper-based student and teacher texts - were packaged as a 20-session unit on code making and breaking and designed to boost students' understanding of functions and their facility with the multiple representations of tables, graphs and symbols. We field tested the wireless system with two te
CML - The ClassSync Modeling Language.
The ClassSync Modeling Language (CML) addresses the problem of creating a controlling overlay to classroom learning activities, or e-leaming workflows. Our aim is to allow authors and teachers to generate a mapping from activity design to its implementation in a wirelessly networked classroom with ubiquitous use of handheld computers for information exchange. CML models e-learning workflows with three major components: actors, data objects, and interaction networks. Actors are the diverse perfon
The greenhouse effect visualizer: a tool for the science classroom
The Greenhouse Effect Visualizer (GEV) is designed to help students visualize data sets related to the earth's energy balance. This work was inspired by the benefits scientific visualization have provided to scientists in discovering patterns and presenting the results of their work to broad communities. The hope is that scientific visualization can provide equal assistance to students trying to learn science. The philosophy underlying this approach links learning with practice. Hence, students
‘Hole-In-The-Wall’ Computer Kiosks Foster Mathematics Achievement - A comparative study
Earlier work at unsupervised playground computer kiosks in rural India, popularly called 'hole-in-the-wall', showed that children exposed to these kiosks learn to use computers on their own and that they are able to clear school examinations in computer science, without any classroom teaching for it. Extending this, our recent research work examines the possible impact on attainments in other curricular subjects, arising from self-directed use of these kiosks. This paper investigates the impact
Medical Response to Weapons of Mass Destruction: Mustard Gas
This presentation discusses exposure to vesicant vapors, such as the chemical mustard, mechanisms of action, disease manifestations, how to diagnose and treat exposure. This Web-based course combines Medantic Technology's didactic presentations and Medulator virtual patient cases delivered via a custom learning management system. Originally published for Medantic Technology by Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, the course was co-developed with subject matter expertise provided by the Uniformed Serv
Adaptive Personalisation in Self e-Learning Networks
This paper presents some of the personalisation services designed for self e-learning networks in the SeLeNe project. A self e-learning network consists of web-based learning objects that have been made available to the network by its users, along with metadata descriptions of these learning objects and of the networkÂ’s users.
The architecture of the network is distributed and service-oriented. The personalisation facilities include: querying learning object descriptions to return results tail
Medical Response to Weapons of Mass Destruction: Nerve Agents
This presentation discusses exposure to nerve agents such as sarin gas and their use as weapons of mass destruction, disease manifestations, how to diagnose and treat them. Medical Response to Weapons of Mass Destruction, A Course on Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Warfare for Healthcare Providers, was the first of its kind following the devastating events of 2001. This Web-based course combines Medantic Technology's didactic presentations and Medulator virtual patient cases delivered via a cu
The Internetworked School: A Policy for the Future
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Cyclone in the classroom: bringing the atmospheric science community into the high school
There has been much discussion about the failure of traditional science education to prepare students for careers in science (Halloun & Hestenes, 1985; Rutherford & Ahlgren, 1990). Students may become adept at solving textbook problems, but they fail to apply the theories that are learned in school to the actual phenomena that the theories attempt to explain (Tinker, 1992). This is in large part due to the fact that students don't often experience phenomena in the classroom. They spend most of t
Synthesizing instructional technologies and educational culture: exploring cognition and metacogniti
This research was initiated to examine instructional technologies and educational cultures in relation to identified cognitive and metacognitive strategies uses in school tasks. The project involved activities from the social studies curricula that were presented through two new software programs intended to support the development of problem-solving and reasoning strategies - IDEA [Interactive Decision Envisioning Aid, Pea (76)] Notecards (34) - and through instructional approaches bases upon "
Gathering Requirements for a Grid-based Automatic Marking System
This paper reports on our experiences using a Creative Requirements [1] workshop approach to elicit requirements for a Grid-based automatic marking system. The research was conducted for ELeGI, an EU funded project whose goal is to provide a European Learning Grid infrastructure to promote a learning paradigm shift from a teacher-centred approach to a learner-centred approach.
The automatic marking system uses Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) to assess the meaning of essays written by computer sc
Experiences with Writing Grid Clients for Mobile devices
This paper describes our attempts to write GRID clients for Mobile Devices, such as a PDA, which have restrictive computational and storage facilities. Our experiences are based on an implementation of a mobile GRID client for Finesse, an existing web-based e-learning system.
At this stage of our work we are not looking to novel applications of mobile learning, but rather are exploring the feasibility of mobile devices as GRID platforms, with novel learning applications as our future aim. We ex
edCity - a New Learning Environment
edCity will facilitate learning anywhere, anytime, for anyone - for users of all ages both in traditionally taught and in pedagogically innovative courses - by fusing physical and virtual representations of real cities in order to provide a new learning framework.
The edCity project will be scenario-driven with major conceptual inputs to the design generated by highly interactive scenario-building activities.
After 18 months, a "Semantic Web" framework will be published and a prototype of the
On the cognitive effects of learning computer programming
This paper critically examines current thinking about whether learning computer programming promotes the development of general higher mental functions. We show how the available evidence, and the underlying assumptions about the process of learning to program, fail to address this issue adequately. Our analysis is based on a developmental cognitive science perspective on learning program, incorporating developmental and cognitive science considerations of the mental activities involved in progr
Symbol Systems and Thinking Skills: Logo in Context
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Word closet
Word Closets give students an additional classroom resource for "researching" the correct spelling of words to use in their daily writing. Word Closets are particularly focused toward concept words, season words, and favorite words that students like to use in their writing but may need help with spelling.
The Collaborative Visualization Project
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Supporting Conceptual Awareness with Pedagogical Agents
This paper describes a series of efforts in building and conceptualizing software agents
for distributed collaborative learning. The agents are referred to as pedagogical agents.
We have integrated pedagogical agents within two collaborative environments,
TeamWave Workplace and Future Learning Environment. The role of agents in these
environments differs from past work on software agents in their function as extended
awareness mechanisms, focusing on task and concept awareness (conceptual a
