This paper provides a review of the rhetoric behind the component movement in educational software, and a critical analysis and synthesis of issues underlying the movement. We draw on case studies of several significant recent component projects in order to assess claims and to uncover and examine issues that are less often considered. While our…

Persistence of Vision Raytracer (POV-Ray), a free computer program for creating photo-realistic, three-dimensional scenes and a link for Mathematica users interested in generating POV-Ray files from within Mathematica, is discussed. POV-Ray has great potential in secondary mathematics classrooms and helps in strengthening students' visualization…

France is not advanced regarding evaluation in social work, despite a law established in January 2002 making evaluation a legal obligation every 5 years. This article presents a software program to help social services evaluate on both individual and group levels. Automatic dashboard results of the program with special emphasis on the main…

The Web has caught the attention of many educators as an efficient communication medium and content delivery system. But we feel there is another aspect of the Web that has not been given the attention it deserves. We call this aspect of the Web its "component architecture." Briefly it means that on the Web one can develop very complex…

Necessity is still the mother of invention, and physical processing is a reality for most libraries. Ergo, the inevitable development of Indigo Media and its innovative MediaPrint software, which allows distributors to overlay customized labels, logos, barcodes, and artwork onto retail labels of audiobooks, CDs, VHS tapes, DVDs, and CD-ROMs, on a…

Higher education is moving closer to an online learning environment that captures the social vitality and collaborative spirit of the real-world campus. A growing open source community of learning researchers, software architects, visualization and simulation specialists, and user interface designers has taken up the challenge, lending their…

The back-titration methods are compared statistically to establish glycine in a nonaqueous medium of acetic acid. Important variations in the mean values of glycine are observed due to the interaction effects between the analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique and a statistical study through a computer software.

This article discusses the pros and cons of open source software, such as Linux. It asserts that despite the technical difficulties of installing and maintaining this type of software, ultimately it is helpful in terms of knowledge acquisition and as a beneficial investment librarians can make in themselves, their libraries, and their patrons.…

This article represents the second part of a series in this journal called "How to Perform a Security Audit." It continues the conversation on setting up a process for identifying security-related concerns and implementation safeguards. It continues the conversation from the perspective of system monitoring. This article discusses how to use a…

This article features an assistant professor of technology who shares his story of near disaster and offers advice for others about protecting their data. The author presents steps that can be taken to prevent unexpected events from destroying data. The author strongly recommends using backup files as a way of securing computer files and data.…

Podcasting allows distribution of audio files through an RSS feed. This permits users to subscribe to a series of podcasts that are automatically sent to their computer or MP3 player. The capability to receive podcasts is built into freely distributed software such as iPodder as well as the most recent version of iTunes, a free download. In this…

In the educational process, the disciplines D1, D2,...,Dn have a succession which is generated by the content and the final objective--the student formation. In this work, the disciplines are presented as structured text entities. The graph associated to the disciplines is established. A method for dependencies evaluation is proposed. The testing…

The paper highlights some evaluation methods to assess the quality characteristics of the text entities. The main concepts used in building and evaluation processes of the text entities are presented. Also, some aggregated metrics for orthogonality measurements are presented. The evaluation process for automatic evaluation of the text entities is…

Teachers can integrate halftone or duotone production into a graphic communications class even if they lack access to an offset press. The approach described in this article, in fact, offers a benefit in that the dots involved in screen printing halftones and dutones can be enlarged to make them easily visible, while those used in offset printing…

Voice recognition software is hardly new--attempts at capturing spoken words and turning them into written text have been available to consumers for about two decades. But what was once an expensive and highly unreliable tool has made great strides in recent years, perhaps most recognized in programs such as Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking…