Tablet PCs provide numerous benefits over traditional electronically projected lectures that use software such as PowerPoint. Flexibility and spontaneity can be achieved by editing or creating notes in real-time. The input pen or stylus is a very useful tool, especially for courses that involve the extensive use of equations or mathematical…

Excel, Microsoft's spreadsheet program, offers several tools which have proven useful in solving some optimization problems that arise in operations research. We will look at two such tools, the Excel modules called Solver and Goal Seek--this after deriving an equation, called the "cash accumulation equation", to be used in conjunction with them.

The aim of this series of applications is to enhance students' spatial perception capacity by means of exercises that require the student to concentrate on mentally recreating the figures represented. Each application is designed with an increasing level of difficulty, designed to increase the students' concentration and train their spatial…

This empirical paper shows how free/libre open source software (FLOSS) contributes to mutual and collaborative learning in an educational environment. Unlike proprietary software, FLOSS allows extensive customisation of software to support the needs of local users better. This also allows users to participate more proactively in the development…

When the author started his visualization session at Brampton by showing a still from Kate Mackrell's "Kaleidoscope," he was immediately struck by one student's description of a symmetry and reflection line that was quite at odds with what he was holding. Since he had seen the whole thing moving on a number of occasions, the author was hanging on…

In the past few years, there has been an increased emphasis for teachers to become more adept at multimedia-based skills. Whether it's creating PowerPoint[R] slides, MPEG movies, image files, or a host of other tasks, today's K-12 teacher needs to have an appropriate level of expertise in multimedia development. One aspect of this skill set that…

Virtual Reality (VR) is a creation of virtual 3D world in which one can feel and sense the world as if it is real. It is allowing engineers to design machines and Educationists to design AV [audiovisual] equipment in real time but in 3-dimensional hologram as if the actual material is being made and worked upon. VR allows a least-cost (energy…

IT educators and learners are continually challenged to adapt to software changes and remain current in software applications. This study researched if it is necessary for IT educators to prepare IT students in the most current software releases--i.e., at the highest software currency preparation level and in the same software application that the…

This dissertation makes the claim that electronic scholarly editions have the potential to produce more reliable scholarly texts than their print-based antecedents. It consists of an introduction, four chapters, and a brief conclusion. It originated in my work creating the Elwood Viewer, a sophisticated software browser written to display TEI…

The research in this dissertation examined the language and literacy practices of middle school children as they played Gamestar Mechanic, a game-based learning environment constituted by a flash-based multiplayer online role-playing game designed to introduce them to the Discourse of game designers, by exposing them to key principles and…

As demand for information on postsecondary education has increased, institutions have had to adapt information systems to accurately report data. Institutions currently respond to multiple constituencies including national media outlets, higher education associations, state regulatory authorities, and federal agencies. The purpose of this study is…

Many exam programs have begun to include innovative item types in their operational assessments. While innovative item types appear to have great promise for expanding measurement, there can also be genuine challenges to their successful implementation. In this paper we present a set of four activities that can be beneficially incorporated into…

Information technology teams are often partially distributed teams (PDTs). A PDT consists of two or more subteams that are separated geographically. This article describes research focused on the use of PDTs to engage students in "real world" IT team learning about the subject matter while also teaching them the skills they will need to work in…

Using computers to recognize and analyze human speech goes back at least to the 1970's. Developed initially to help the hearing or speech impaired, speech recognition was also used early on experimentally in language learning. Since the 1990's, advances in the scientific understanding of speech as well as significant enhancements in software and…

In this article, the author suggests a framework for developing lesson ideas involving variation. This idea was demonstrated by Rebecca Davey at a conference bringing together teachers from the seven schools participating in the TI-"n"spire pilot research project overseen by Alison Clark-Wilson of the University of Chichester. It uses information…