AONS II: Continuing the Trend Towards Preservation Software ‘Nirvana’

File format obsolescence is a major risk factor threatening the sustainability of and access to digital information. While the preservation community has become increasingly interested in tools for migration and transformation of file formats, the National Library of Australia is developing mechanisms specifically focused on monitoring and assessing the risks of file format obsolescence. This paper reports on the AONS II project, undertaken by the National Library of Australia (NLA) in conjunction with the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR). The project aimed to develop a software tool which allows users to automatically monitor the status of file formats in their repositories, make risk assessments based on a core set of obsolescence risk questions, and receive notifications when file format risks change or other related events occur. This paper calls for the preservation community to develop a co-operating file format obsolescence community which includes registries, software tool creators and end users to effectively curate digital content in order to maintain long-term access.     

Selection and Elimination of Candidates in Counselor Education Programs

This study compared actual with ideal procedures in the selection and elimination of candidates in counselor education programs. A two-factor analysis for each category (selection and elimination) resulted in some significant differences (p< .001) between the actual and ideal procedures in both selection and elimination. The criteria for actual and ideal procedures in the selection and elimination of candidates were also treated by t tests, with highly significant differences (p<.075 to p<.0005) found on some of the criteria.     

Three-dimensional kinematics of the lower limbs during forward ice hockey skating

The objectives of the study were to describe lower limb kinematics in three dimensions during the forward skating stride in hockey players and to contrast skating techniques between low- and high-calibre skaters. Participant motions were recorded with four synchronized digital video cameras while wearing reflective marker triads on the thighs, shanks, and skates. Participants skated on a specialized treadmill with a polyethylene slat bed at a self-selected speed for 1 min. Each participant completed three 1-min skating trials separated by 5 min of rest. Joint and limb segment angles were calculated within the local (anatomical) and global reference planes. Similar gross movement patterns and stride rates were observed; however, high-calibre participants showed a greater range and rate of joint motion in both the sagittal and frontal planes, contributing to greater stride length for high-calibre players. Furthermore, consequent postural differences led to greater lateral excursion during the power stroke in high-calibre skaters. In conclusion, specific kinematic differences in both joint and limb segment angle movement patterns were observed between low- and high-calibre skaters.     

The New School

This paper traces the changing status of the school as a counter culture in the anthropological and historical literature, in particular from the moment when compulsory mass schooling assumed the function of ideological state apparatus in the post‐revolutionary 19^th century West. It then focuses attention on what may be called the New School, which could be said to represent an evolved, postmodern embodiment of the social archetype of the school as interruption of the status quo. It emerged in the form of schools initially associated with Romanticism and with socialist libertarian or ‘anarchist’ impulses, and moved, if temporarily, into the educational mainstream in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries in the left sector of the Progressive Education movement, proliferated in the 1960s and 70s in various school reform movements, and is a constant presence today in the theory and practice of those schools that identify themselves as ‘democratic’. It is based on principles of adult–child dialogue and direct democratic practice. Examples that we have of the New School tend to be characterised by material and activity environments that value variety, emergence, choice, emotional safety, self‐initiation and self‐organisation; that are multi‐sensorial and polysymbolic; and that are organised on the principles associated with mastery learning, social learning theory and play theory—that is, moderate complexity and optimal cognitive arousal as exemplary conditions for learning.     

Democracy,inclusive schooling and the politics of education

Drawing on a variety of social and political theories about the nature and future of democracy, this paper develops athesis about the politics of inclusive education. It concludes with a brief preliminary evaluation of the potential of the UK Labour Government's Education Action Zones policy for the development and governance of inclusive schools.     

The double‐dialectic and lifelong learning

This paper was provoked by Ted Bailey’s article, ‘Analogy, dialectics and lifelong learning’ which appeared in the March–April 2003 edition of this journal. Dr. Bailey argued that students can be enabled to learn the key concepts of the subjects they are studying through the dialectical operation of analogy which makes new knowledge accessible by comparing it to familiar experience. It is the aim of this paper to show that dialectics extend far beyond this particular application, and that indeed they may be said to underpin the very concept of lifelong learning itself. The paper begins by examining the concepts of the dialectic and the double‐dialectic, relating these to the writings of Giambattista Vico. The dialectical interplay of Nature and History is seen to be the foundation of human knowledge. This unitary view is then contrasted with specialism in the categorization of knowledge. The implications for lifelong education are considered, and illustrated through an example of a curriculum project.     

Personal Computers in Laboratory Teaching of Control

This paper reports on the incorporation of personal computers in the laboratory program at UMIST's Control Systems Centre. Laboratory practice is an integral component of all our control course. The laboratory facilities provide a mechanism for testing and verifying theoretical and design approaches. Incorporating computers in all phases of the laboratory program makes possible the use of current techniques in the analysis and design of realistic control systems. The control systems laboratory at UMIST has been developed with the goal of providing real world analysis and design experience in a laboratory setting. A collection of scale model experiments representing the major categories of industrial control problems has been constructed. These working models are coupled with a standard instrumentation interface and analogue and digital computers to implement control strategies. In all cases, great care has been taken to retain realism and allow the student to concentrate on control issues rather than configuration or programming problems. The primary objective of using personal computers in the control laboratory is to provide an on-line link between the student and the laboratory model. This provides direct ‘hands on’ experience of digital control ideas, interactive digital control experimentation and use of the computer as a multi-function virtual instrument. In addition, the computer is used off-line to simulate model performance as various control strategies are tried. At this point in time, each laboratory model station has been equipped with a personal computer containing A/D and D/A converters, hard and floppy disk, and a real-time clock. The computers are networked to provide access to printing and file storage facilities. Originally the software packages were written primarily in BASIC, and ran on BBC computers. These versions are however in the process of being replaced by PC-based packages written in C. Both the original BASIC and the C-successors have been developed to provide interactive, real-time control of the model using a choice of digital control algorithms. Using the keyboard as a control panel, the student can observe model performance, vary controller parameters, choose display characteristics and record parametric and graphical data. Future developments will expand the choice of available control algorithms and enhance the off-line analysis and design tools.