Using Mobile Devices to Connect Teachers and Museum Educators

The use of mobile devices is increasing rapidly as a potential tool for science teaching. In this study, five educators (three middle school teachers and two museum educators) used a mobile application that supported the development of a driving question. Previous studies have noted that teachers make little effort to connect learning experiences between classrooms and museums, and few studies have focused on creating connections between teachers and museum educators. In this study, teachers and museum educators created an investigation together by designing a driving question in conjunction with the research group before field trips. During field trips, students collected their own data using iPods or iPads to take pictures or record videos of the exhibits. When students returned to the school, they used the museum data with their peers as they tried to answer the driving question. After completing the field trips, five educators were interviewed to investigate their experiences with designing driving questions and using mobile devices. Besides supporting students in data collection during the field trip, using mobile devices helped teachers to get the museum back to the classroom. Designing the driving question supported museum educators and teachers to plan the field trip collaboratively.     

Organization,management and academic problems in the Arab University: The Kuwait University experience

The modern university is essentially an alien phenomenon in the Arab world where it lacks the societal support base enjoyed by the western university. Moreover, many of the new Arab universities, like Kuwait University, established in 1966, were either modeled after the French influenced Egyptian university — in-turn based on semi-independent colleges — or received their initial administrative and teaching faculty from Egypt. From this legacy is derived a significant share of the obstacles hindering organization and management reform. At the same time a variety of governmental traditions and regulations binding the university to general civil service regulations, an under-developed tradition of university autonomy and faculty participation in university decision-making, and a utilitarian concept of formal education which associates degress with employment status are among the more serious problems confronting the Arab university.Kuwait University can be seen as a microcosm of the organizational, management and academic problems encountered in the Arab university. Although Kuwait University enjoys adequate financial support and is not forced to accommodate an unreasonable number of students, it has peculiar problems arising from unequal admissions standards (Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti), traditional societal values, paucity of indigenous staff, inexperienced administrators, lack of balance in academic ranks, absence of tenure, a fragmented physical plant, inadequate support staff as well as insufficient societal understanding and support. Like most other Arab universities Kuwait University not only reflects the rudimentary societal development but is located on the frontier of that development. Given the small population of Kuwait, the university is especially important in this development role. As the university and its distinctive needs become better understood the total society will be strengthened.     

Foreign Communications

Masami Ito, et al. Broadcasting in Japan (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978—E4.95/$9.50, paper)

Ibrahim Elsheikh Mass Media and Ideological Change in Egypt (1950-1973) (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, 1977—about $40.00, paper)

Mass Media and Cultural Relationships by Anthony Piepe, Sunny Crouch and Miles Emerson (1978, 169 pp.—price not given)

Trade Unionism in Television by Peter Seglow (1978, 287 pp.—price not given)

Cuadernos de Comunicaci(5n (Communication Notes) (Comunicolgia Aplicada de Mexico, S.A. Comunal No. 7, Mexico 20, D.F.—about $55 per year/12 issues).

Godwin C. Chu, Syed A. Rahim, and D. Lawrence Kincaid Institutional Exploration in Communication Technology (Honolulu: East West Communication Institute, East-West Center, 1978 —$3.00, paper)

P. Gould and J. Johnson, An Experiment in the Classification of Television Programs, October 1978, $3.00, paper), and the paper written for laymen, #5 (P. Gould, How Should We Classify Television Programs? October 1978, $2.50, paper)

Journalism Training: An Interim Report by Robert Amerson and John Herbst (30 pp. $1.75)

An Analysis of Ten International Radio News Broadcasts in English to Africa by Douglas A. Boyd and Donald R. MacKay (16 pp., $1.25)

A Look at the World's Radio News by Bert Cowlan and Lee M. Love (39 pp., $2.25)

Education for Communication Development: The Global View by Robert Lindsay (27 pp., $1.75)

A Brief Study on News Patterns in 16 Third World Countries by Edward T. Pinch (15 pp., $1.25)

International Telecommunications and the Requirements of News Services by Ithiel de Sole Pool and Stephen Dizard (19 pp., $1.25)

Foreign News in Nine Arab Countries by Gehan Rachty (21 pp., $1.25)

International News Wires and Third World News in Asia by Wilbur Schramm, et al. (79 pp., $4.00)

The Multinational News Pool by Roger Tatarian (19 pp., $1.25)

International Conferences: Process and Effects by Rosemarie Rogers, et al. (March 1978, 53 pp., $3.00)

Hemisphere Communications in Historical Perspective by James Nelson Goodsell (September 1978, 18 pp., $1.25)

Kaarle Nordenstreng and Herbert I. Schiller, eds. National Sovereignty and International Communication (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing Corp., 1979—$21.50)

Rosemary Righter's Whose News? Politics, the Press and the Third World (London: Andre Deutsch/New York: Times Books, 1978—$12.50)

Frank Barton The Press of Africa: Persecution & Perseverance (New York: Holmes & Meier/Africana Publishing Co, 1979—$29.50)

Godwin C. Chu, ed. Popular Media in China: Shaping New Cultural Patterns (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1978—$12.00)     

Teacher Questioning and Interaction Patterns in Classrooms Facilitated with Differing Levels of Constructivist Teaching Practices

This research investigated the impact of teacher questions, question types, and interaction patterns that coincide with high and low levels of constructivist teaching practices. Through both quantitative and qualitative methods the findings revealed that teachers facilitating classrooms with high levels of constructivist teaching practices (HLCTP) were very active as they asked a significantly greater number of questions compared to teachers facilitating classrooms with low levels of constructivists teaching practices (LLCTP). In addition, teachers facilitating with HLCTP used a significantly greater number of open‐ended questions when compared with other types of questions (closed‐ended questions and task‐oriented questions). Closed‐ended questions were found in the HLCTP classrooms as teachers were concerned with focusing students on completing investigations, but open‐ended questions were more often found with the aim of promoting student actions attuned to knowledge construction.     

The Relationship between Students’ Views of the Nature of Science and their Views of the Nature of Scientific Measurement

The present study explores the relationship between students’ views of the nature of science (NOS) and their views of the nature of scientific measurement. A questionnaire with two‐tier diagnostic multiple‐choice items on both the NOS and measurement was administered to 179 first‐year physics students with diverse school experiences. Students’ views on the NOS were classified into four NOS ‘profiles’, and views on measurement were classified according to either the point or set paradigms. The findings show that students with a NOS profile dominated by a belief that the laws of nature are to be discovered by scientists are more likely to have a view of the nature of scientific measurement characterised by a belief in ‘true’ values. On the other hand, students who believe that scientific theories are inventions of scientists, constructed from observations that are then validated through further experimentation, are more likely to have a view of the nature of scientific measurement that is underpinned by the uncertain nature of scientific evidence. The implications for teaching scientific measurement at tertiary level are discussed.     

Integrated Science Students’ Assessment of their Teachers for Characteristics of Effective Science Teaching

This study explored views held by pre-service and in-service science teachers regarding the nature of science and technology particularly: (a) the characteristics of science and technology; (b) the aim of science and scientific research; (c) the characteristics of scientific knowledge and scientific theories; and (d) the relationship between science and technology. The views held by science teachers at pre-service and in-service levels were assessed using a questionnaire. The findings revealed that generally science teachers at both pre-service and in-service levels showed similar views in relation to the nature of science and technology. While the participants displayed mix views regarding science as content oriented or process oriented, technology was viewed as an application of science. Implications of these views for classroom teaching and learning are presented.     

Teaching Scientific Analogies: a proposed model

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model for teaching scientific analogies. This model is called: ‘The General Model of Analogy Teaching’ (GMAT). A theoretical framework is developed first for this model. The following points are covered in this framework: (1) definition of the analogy, (2) analogical learning, (3) variables related to the analogical learning, (4) evaluating the outcomes of analogical learning, and (5) limitations of using analogies in teaching. The General Model of Analogy Teaching proceeds in the following nine stages: (1) measure some of the students’ characteristics related to analogical learning in general, (2) assess the prior knowledge of the students about the ‘topic’ to be taught, (3) analyse the learning material of the ‘topic’ to be taught, (4) judge the appropriateness of the analogy to be used, (5) determine the characteristics of the analogy to be used, (6) select the strategy of teaching and the medium of presenting the analogy, (7) present the analogy to the students, (8) evaluate the outcomes of using the analogy in teaching, and (9) revise the stages of the model.     

Role of Omani parents: fostering emergent literacy skills

The purpose of this study is to document the significance of four practices employed by parents that contribute to such development. Those practices encompassed the availability of materials, activities at home, parent attitude and visits to their child's class. Subjects consisted of 314 male and female parents of kindergarten children in the Sultanate of Oman. The researchers developed a 25-item questionnaire intended to measure the degree of parent involvement in their children's development at acceptable levels of validity and reliability. Results indicated that the role of parents ranged from medium to high on all practice domains of the tool. There were no significant differences for parents reading and writing practices, education levels, income levels, gender of children and siblings order. It is suggested that additional investigation in rural areas and other locales districts with different socially and economical levels should be conducted. In addition, the role of technology at homes and kindergartens such as child's learning style, parent's knowledge of child development and the availability of related outside resources available to families should be considered.     

An extended discrete particle swarm optimization algorithm for the dynamic facility layout problem

We extended an improved version of the discrete particle swarm optimization （DPSO） algorithm proposed by Liao et al.（2007） to solve the dynamic facility layout problem （DFLP）. A computational study was performed with the existing heuristic algorithms, including the dynamic programming （DP）, genetic algorithm （GA）, simulated annealing （SA）, hybrid ant system （HAS）, hybrid simulated annealing （SA-EG）, hybrid genetic algorithms （NLGA and CONGA）. The proposed DPSO algorithm, SA, HAS, GA, DP, SA-EG, NLGA, and CONGA obtained the best solutions for 33, 24, 20, 10, 12, 20, 5, and 2 of the 48 problems from （Balakrishnan and Cheng, 2000）, respectively. These results show that the DPSO is very effective in dealing with the DFLP. The extended DPSO also has very good computational efficiency when the problem size increases.