South African unemployment in the midst of a skills crisis is surprising in view of an increase in obtaining the National Senior Certificate (Matric). Though, matric prepares candidates for higher education, for which less than 20% will enrol for. Technical qualifications even lower than matric seem to be more useful in the labour market. Unemployment can be approached from many sides, of which a curriculum approach is definitely one. With negative experience with large scale curriculum reforms, attention is lead to the community to take lead. While globalisation has traumatic effects on marginalised communities, some not only survive, but even thrive. Those are communities relying upon their own resourcefulness, and where social cohesion is strong. In the community of Hopetown, wealth exists next to poverty, the wealthy elite (increasingly multi-racial) and an economic inactive proletariat. Having two highly functional schools is a ray of hope, but does not contribute significantly enough to an employed community. Curriculum is an expression of deeply held convictions. Therefore it is an often disputed area between ideologies. Liberal individualism and socialist Marxism are ends of a spectrum. Concrete realisations are often unpleasing compromises. Analysing curricular theory, it emerges that learning happens by means of the formal, informal, hidden and zero curriculum. The local community has power to select elements from the formal, and give direction to other aspects of curriculum. Anybody’s approach to curriculum is a function of how opposing, yet complementing purposes with education and similar multitude of foci of curriculum are balanced. In schools it crystallises as a unique, collective but local exemplar of curriculum, in this study named the community based curriculum. International examples give different perspectives on what curricular power local communities have. In a qualitative study, drawing on ethnographic and phenomenologist method, community members and senior learner’s of Hopetown in the Northern Cape are interviewed to establish what learners’ employment desires are, and what labour needs employers have. The purpose is to translate that into possible curriculum components, to verify if the necessary skills are present in the community, and how to implement a community based curriculum. Findings are that learners of all walks of life covet the few “office jobs” available. A career in agriculture is enticing to prospective farmers, but the opposite to those who fear they might be labourers. As a result there is a labour crisis in agriculture, and farmers maintain that mechanisation is a result of labour shortages, not the cause of unemployment. Few other opportunities exist. Employers agree that a more productive labour force can lead to new development, but that new candidates have no realistic view of what the world of work entails. An entrepreneurial spirit and self driven work ethics seem to be absent. Recommendations go in three directions: A more progressive educational approach should lead to more self dependent adults. A culture of letting learners make errors and learn from them might make a positive difference. Encouraging senior learners to find temporal jobs should broaden their experience, and lead to better considered choices. The schools should also collaborate to offer more vocational school subjects. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Science, Mathematics and Technology Education / unrestricted

This thesis deals with the issue of Linked Open Data. The goal of this thesis is to introduce the reader to this issue as a whole and to the possibility of using Linked Open Data for developing useful applications by proposing a new development process focusing on such applications. The theoretical part offers an insight into the issue of Open Data, Linked Open Data and the NoSQL database systems and their usability in this field. It focuses mainly on graph database systems and compares them with relational database systems using predefined criteria. Additionally, the goal of this thesis is to develop an application using the proposed development process, which provides a tool for data presentation and statistical visualisation for open data sets published by the Supreme Audit Office and the Czech Trade Inspection. The application is mainly developed for the purpose of verifying the proposed development process and to demonstrate the connectivity of open data published by two different organizations.The thesis includes the process of selecting a development methodology, which is then used for optimising work on the implementation of the resulting application and the process of selecting a graph database system, that is used to store and modify open data for the purposes of the application.

Aus der Einleitung: "Produktentwicklung und Fertigungsplanung innovativer komplexer technischer Produkte sind heute ohne massiven Rechnereinsatz gar nicht mehr möglich: Produkteigenschaften wie Funktion, Fertigung, Montage, Bedienbarkeit, dynamisches Verhalten, Reaktion auf Störgrößen, Ästhetik, Instandhaltung bis Recycling sollten möglichst früh im Entwicklungsprozess durch virtuelle Prototypen technischer Produkte und Verfahren beschrieben und abgesichert werden (Höhne 2009)."

The last decade has seen an emergence of various types of cloud services and development frameworks offered by leading companies in the software industry. While each of these services has been used to solve specific tasks, their specifications have changed over time as they have matured. Therefore, integrating these components to solve a whole new task tends to get tricky due to their incompatible and experimental nature. While some technology components might continue to be developed, others might deprecate. In this thesis, using a user-centered design and agile development approach, we have attempted to develop a cloud solution using microservice software architecture by integrating state-of-the-art technology components to solve a totally new task of providing a non-intrusive technology experience during walking meetings. We present our results based on interaction with the research group, user studies as a part of the research study “Movement of the mind”, and expectations of the working prototype within the context of walking meetings. We also present the features of the prototype and our motivation for choosing the tools to develop them. Finally, we discuss the development challenges faced during our attempt and conclude whether it is plausible to integrate various components of bleeding-edge technology to solve complex real-life problems or rather wait for these technologies to mature. / Under det senaste decenniet har marknaden erbjudits en mängd olika typer av molntjänster och utvecklings-ramverk framtagna av ledande företag inom mjukvaruindustrin. Dessa tjänster har ofta använts för att lösa specifika uppgifter. Olika komponenterna som ingår i dessa specifika lösningar har med tiden utvecklats ändrats allteftersom de har mognat. Att integrera dessa komponenter för att lösa en helt ny uppgift tenderar därför att bli svårt på grund av deras instabila, inkompatibla och experimentella karaktär. Medan vissa teknikkomponenter kan fortsätta att utvecklas kan andra avstanna och utgå. Vi har närmat oss detta problemområde genom agil och iterativ utveckling samt användar-centrerad design-metod. En moln-baserad lösning som bland annat integrerat bleeding-edge teknikkomponenter har utvecklats och utvärderats med syfte att ge en icke-påträngande tekniskt support för gå-möten. De resultat som här presenteras och diskuteras baseras på interaktion med forskargruppen inom projektet "Med rörelse i tankarna", användarstudier och användartesteter i fält på olika arbetsplatser där den prototyp som utvecklats sökt motsvara användarnas utryckta förväntningar på tekniskt support för gångmöten. Vi diskuterar också prototypens egenskaper och vår motivation för val av metoder för att utveckla den. Slutligen diskuterar vi de utvecklingsutmaningar vi ställdes inför under vårt försök och om det är rimligt att integrera olika bleeding-edge komponenter för att lösa komplexa verkliga problem eller huruvida man hellre bör vänta på att dessa teknologier nått en stabilare mognadsgrad.

Global manufacturing accounted for 17% of global GDP in 2021. The heavy constructionequipment industry creates significant socio-ecological impacts through CO2 emissions, landdegradation and social risks. It is important to implement sustainability from the early phasesof product development. Research shows lack of cooperation between academia andbusinesses in testing to improve Sustainable Product Development (SPD) tools. The studyidentifies needs for implementing SPD and testing of relevant SPD tools for a heavyconstruction equipment manufacturer. It applies DSIP methodology as theoretical frameworkand focus group interviews / workshops, document content analysis and observation as datacollection methods. SAM4SIP supported in identifying the capability needs in relation toSPD implementation and informed the selection of the two SPD tools to be tested at the casecompany. First, the Leading Sustainability Criteria (LEASA) workshop generated 10measurable criteria covering all product life cycle phases which thereafter were furtherdeveloped in the Overall Sustainability Fingerprint template with respective compliancelevels to create design space. The results emphasize on the importance of taking a full-systemperspective to implement SPD on all decision levels of a company and giving opportunity tomanufacturers to utilise DSIP and find suitable tools to implement SPD.

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yes / Between 2008 and 2011 academic teaching staff from Leeds Beckett University (UK) and Chainama Hills College of Health Sciences (Zambia) worked together on a Development Partnership in Higher Education (DelPHe) project funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) via the British Council. The partnership focused on “up-scaling” the provision of mental health education which was intended to build capacity through the delivery of a range of workshops for health educators at Chainama College, Lusaka. The project was evaluated on completion using small focus group discussions (FGDs), so educators could feedback on their experience of the workshops and discuss the impact of learning into their teaching practice. This chapter discusses the challenges of scaling up the mental health workforce in Zambia; the rationale for the content and delivery style of workshops with the health educators and finally presents and critically discusses the evaluation findings. / Department for International Development (DFID) via the British Council