An enquiry into the ethical efficacy of the use of radio frequency identification technology

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the privacy rights dilemma surrounding radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. As one example of ubiquitous information system, RFID has multitudinous applications in various industries and businesses across society. The use of this technology will have to lead to a policy setting dilemma in that a balance between individuals’ privacy concerns and the benefits that they derive from it must be drawn. After describing the basic RFID technology some of its most prevalent uses, a definition of privacy is derived in the context of information systems. To illustrate current attempts at controlling the undesirable side effects of RFID, Lessig’s cyberspace framework is presented. It is found that each of Lessig’s components is inadequate at preventing individual privacy violations in RFID. The main focus within this framework is on the norms of society. The social norm mechanism that addresses privacy issues in cyberspace is the Fair Information Practices Principles (FIPP). After an analysis of these principles, it is posited that the FIPP only deal with procedural justice issues related to data collection and omit distributive and interactional justice reasoning related to the actual beneficial and detrimental outcomes to the individuals whose data is being obtained. Thus, RFID is presented in the context of the tension between the many benefits that are provided by the technology in social exchanges, and the risk it carries of the loss of privacy. The new, expanded framework recognizes both sides of the issue with the ultimate goal of providing a greater understanding of how privacy issues can be addressed with RFID technology.     

“The good university teacher” as perceived by the students

Many universities, recognizing the student as the main consumer of college instruction, have begun to seek his views regarding the quality of teaching. In this study the Israeli student's concept of a good teacher has been investigated. A sample of second year university students were asked to select the three most important characteristics of a good teacher from a list of fifteen.It was shown that students attached primary importance to method of instruction. Of secondary importance was the teacher's ability to spark intellectual growth. Research talents, personality, and academic status were of relatively little concern. Social science, life science, law and medical students all concurred in emphasizing the importance of the teacher's ability to communicate ideas, whereas humanities students stressed his ability to stimulate thinking.It appears that undergraduate students rate teachers by their ability to transmit knowledge rather than according to the university's criteria of research and publication.The concepts good teacher and effective instruction are used interchangeably in this article, although they are not identical.     

The NOMA of Yishayahu Leibowitz

Stephen Jay Gould presented his position on science and religion – Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA) – without justification. A detailed justification of the NOMA position can be found in the earlier work of scientist and philosopher Yishayahu Leibowitz; his work is especially interesting because it comes from a religious person. This paper summarizes Leibowitz's philosophical and theological position, and claims that his version of NOMA, and by implication similar versions of NOMA, are not applicable in science education.     

Sense of authentic inner compass as a moral resource across cultures: possible implications for resisting negative peer-pressure and for parenting

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on a recently conceptualized construct—sense of authentic inner-compass (AIC)—and two parenting practices promoting it: basic autonomy-support (BAS) and inherent value-demonstration (IVD). Rooted in self-determination theory, sense of AIC refers to the perception that we have self-guiding values, aspirations, and goals, which function like an ‘authentic inner-compass’ that informs us on what we truly value and need. The utility of this construct for understanding morality-related phenomena also in cultures not emphasizing autonomy and authenticity, is demonstrated by a study conducted in two widely different cultures: Bedouin and Jews in Israel. As expected, across cultures, the practices of BAS and IVD were associated with sense of AIC, which then predicted adolescents’ resistance to peer-pressure to engage in antisocial behaviors. Invariance analysis showed a similar pattern across cultures. Discussion focuses on implications of the AIC concept for various moral behaviors, and for value-oriented parenting and moral education.     

Fertile Zones of Cultural Encounter in Computer Science Education

We explain certain learning difficulties in computer science education as resulting from a clash between the students' culture as computer users and the professional computing culture. We propose the concept of fertile zones of cultural encounter as a way of overcoming these learning difficulties. This pedagogical approach aims to bridge the gap between cultures by designing interventions that are appreciated by members of both cultures, yet also guide the student to engage in the practices of the professional culture. The learning difficulties are demonstrated by a detailed analysis of episodes taken from an advanced high school computer science course in concurrency. We show that fertile zones of cultural encounter can be successful in significantly improving learning of this subject.     

Learning computer science concepts with Scratch

Scratch is a visual programming environment that is widely used by young people. We investigated if Scratch can be used to teach concepts of computer science (CS). We developed learning materials for middle-school students that were designed according to the constructionist philosophy of Scratch and evaluated them in a few schools during two years. Tests were constructed based upon a novel combination of the revised Bloom taxonomy and the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome taxonomy. These instruments were augmented with qualitative tools, such as observations and interviews. The results showed that students could successfully learn important concepts of CS, although there were problems with some concepts such as repeated execution, variables, and concurrency. We believe that these problems can be overcome by modifications to the teaching process that we suggest.     

The Concept of Nondeterminism: Its Development and Implications for Teaching

Nondeterminism is a fundamental concept in computer science that appears in various contexts such as automata theory, algorithms and concurrent computation. We present a taxonomy of the different ways that nondeterminism can be defined and used; the categories of the taxonomy are domain, nature, implementation, consistency, execution and semantics. An historical survey shows how the concept was developed from its inception by Rabin & Scott, Floyd and Dijkstra, as well as the interplay between nondeterminism and concurrency. Computer science textbooks and pedagogical software are surveyed to determine how they present the concept; the results show that the treatment of nondeterminism is generally fragmentary and unsystematic. We conclude that the teaching of nondeterminism must be integrated through the computer science curriculum so that students learn to see nondeterminism both in terms of abstract mathematical entities and in terms of machines whose execution is unpredictable.

---