<p>The purpose of this study was to examine through interviews, how preschool teachers describe educational documentation and how they use this educational tool in their everyday activity. To get an overview of what educational documentation can be, the study takes its startingpoint in the educational movement in Reggio Emila in Italy after the second World War, where educational documentation was an important part of the educational philosophy. The background also gives an overwiev of the policy documents for preschools in Sweden. The study shows that educational documentation run the risk of being confused with or reduced to the children’s folders, where the aim is to describe with a few chosen pictures the child’s growth trough the years in preschool. But this is no educational documentation. The study pointed at the educational factor as an important aspect of how teachers describe their work with educational documentation. Further and recurring education is essential in the dynamic profession of preschool education. Leadership seems to be important, especially for the teachers that has not had any further education. The time for work with educational documentation is described as adequate, but when the question of joint refexion came up, the time was said to be too short. The dialogue that is important for the educational documentation does not take place. ICT, <em>Information and Communication Technology</em>, plays an essential part in today´s work with educational documentation. The access to technical equipment and knowledge how to use it is varying and in need of improvement.</p>

<p>The purpose of this essay has been to seek understanding of how young people in high school and adult education experience the use of educational media tools in teaching. Examples of questions submitted material has been: What are the positive and negative experiences of ICT in the classroom?</p><p>The essay is of a qualitative nature, in which five students were interviewed about their experiences of ICT in the school environment. The result is analyzed from a sociocultural perspective and from an inward-student perspective.</p><p>The results showed that students felt that it was difficult to absorb many of the ICT facilities as sources of knowledge in the school environment. Due to lack of quality in teaching material and difficulties of the pupils to sort out the important information of the injected.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D. (Education))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

The purpose of this study was to examine through interviews, how preschool teachers describe educational documentation and how they use this educational tool in their everyday activity. To get an overview of what educational documentation can be, the study takes its startingpoint in the educational movement in Reggio Emila in Italy after the second World War, where educational documentation was an important part of the educational philosophy. The background also gives an overwiev of the policy documents for preschools in Sweden. The study shows that educational documentation run the risk of being confused with or reduced to the children’s folders, where the aim is to describe with a few chosen pictures the child’s growth trough the years in preschool. But this is no educational documentation. The study pointed at the educational factor as an important aspect of how teachers describe their work with educational documentation. Further and recurring education is essential in the dynamic profession of preschool education. Leadership seems to be important, especially for the teachers that has not had any further education. The time for work with educational documentation is described as adequate, but when the question of joint refexion came up, the time was said to be too short. The dialogue that is important for the educational documentation does not take place. ICT, Information and Communication Technology, plays an essential part in today´s work with educational documentation. The access to technical equipment and knowledge how to use it is varying and in need of improvement.

El objetivo de esta tesis es poner a prueba una ampliación del modelo de Demandas-Recursos en usuarios de Tecnología de la Información y la Comunicación (TIC), integrando tanto las aproximaciones negativas (burnout) como positivas (engagement) del bienestar psicológico de los empleados y una consecuencia organizacional: el compromiso. Para conseguir este objetivo se han seguido una serie de pasos. En primer lugar, y para realizar una validación transcultural, este modelo se ha puesto a prueba simultáneamente con empleados que utilizan tecnologías pertenecientes a dos países Europeos: España y Holanda. Se han llevado a cabo análisis factorials confirmatorios, modelos de ecuaciones estructurales, así como análisis multigrupo. En segundo lugar, y dada la relevancia de la Psicología Positiva y de los recursos personales (las creencias de eficacia) como variables intervinientes en el proceso de estrés, se han puesto a prueba modelos de espirales positivos de recursos en un estudio longitudinal de laboratorio con usuarios de TICs. Finalmente, se ha evaluado el papel de la eficacia colectiva percibida en usuarios de TICs como variable interviniente en un proceso de estrés motivacional de trabajo en grupo.

This paper will examine the use of internet by job seekers. More specifically, this study explores the frequency (how often) the job seekers use a home-based internet system to search for employment.

Information and communication technologies are not value-neutral. I examine two domains, public health surveillance and sustainability, in five papers covering: (i) the design and development of a software package for computer-assisted outbreak detection; (ii) a workflow for using simulation models to provide policy advice and a list of challenges for its practice; (iii) an analysis of design documents from three smart home projects presenting intersecting visions of sustainability; (iv) an analysis of EU-financed projects dealing with sustainability and ICT; (v) an analysis of the consequences of design choices when creating surveillance technologies. My contributions include three empirical studies of surveillance discourses where I identify the forms of action that are privileged and the values that are embedded into them. In these discourses, the presence of ICT entails increased surveillance, privileging technological expertise, and prioritising centralised forms of knowledge. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Manuscript. Paper 5: Manuscript.</p>

Around the globe the number of older people in relation to the rest is constantly growing. As a result, medical and care facilities cannot handle the growing number of patients. Therefore, elderly in-home assistance gets more attention an importance. Due to issues regarding memory, physical strength and reduced self-assessment, old people face a lot of challenges in accomplishing their activities of daily living. This thesis is meant to address these problems by analysing the required infrastructure of a home-care facility as well as the arising issues regarding used components, especially wireless sensors. After the analysis, a prototype of a home-care system is designed and implemented. Furthermore, the issue of energy consumption of the used wireless sensor node is addressed by modifying the intelligence of the used sensor. After that, the design and components of the prototype used for the energy consumption analysis is explained, together with the programming structure of the sensor nodes used in this thesis. Thereupon, the results are of the simulations are discussed and compared with the authors ‘expectations. Finally the overall outcomes of the thesis are analysed and summed up, followed by a short outlook of further possible improvements and developments.

Despite the volume of literature examining the role of producer amenities (e.g., highways and airports) in firms’ selection of a location, almost no quantitative studies regard the impact of consumer amenities (e.g., theatres and cafes) in attracting firms, as they are hypothesized to attract residents rather than firms or companies. Since the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector is regarded as a significant driver and an increasingly important part of the economy in North American and European countries, this research aims to provide insight into the importance of consumer amenities in the location pattern of companies in this sector. Consumer amenities are stated to be important factors in the lifestyle of creative and talented workers such as employees of high-tech industries (Florida, 2003); therefore, this study hypothesizes that ICT firms tend to locate near consumer amenities as they are assumed to be attractive to the talented and highly educated workers that those firms want to employ. ICT firms, because of their size and use, can also be integrated into existing land use, such as downtown where there are lots of amenities. Industrial uses would be more likely to locate near highways because of their land requirements. This thesis looks at a broad pattern as an exploratory study to see if there is a location pattern between consumer amenities and ICT firms’ location. Using census data from Canadian industries, this thesis focuses on exploring a spatial pattern for distribution of ICT companies, both with regards to amenities and the location of firms in other industries. In doing so, information of 66,078 firms that operate in Vancouver and their associated data were obtained from Statistics Canada and the Canadian Business Database. A walkability index is also developed that represents the amenity variable. The findings of this study suggest that ICT firms are more likely to be found in areas with a high concentration of consumer amenities. However, the result shows that there is statistically weak relationship between location of ICT firms and existence of consumer amenities, but this relationship is generally not detected for firms in other sectors. Moreover, the most significant finding of this thesis is that there is a tendency for ICT firms to locate close to and concentrated in downtown cores. As a result, the findings demonstrate that the agglomeration factor in ICT firms’ location decision is more important than the existence of consumer amenities in the place. This study concludes by suggesting that municipalities and their local economic development specialists wanting to attract regional economic growth to better understand and focus on the determinant elements of location decision by ICT firms.

M. Tech. Business Information Systems. Tshwane University of Technology 2011 / This research was carried out in the context of the government’s current efforts to integrate Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in teaching and learning, in secondary schools which appears to be a major challenge. The study was exploratory and descriptive in nature where the problem that has not been clearly defined or understood was addressed. Activity theory underpinned the study because of its dynamic perspective. The essence of activity theory stems from a view of learning where individuals actively construct their understanding of the environment while engaging in goal-oriented activities. The findings show that while the South African government has made the commitment and efforts to integrate ICTs in schools, there is no logical and detailed strategy to support the usage of these ICTs in teaching and learning activities. For example, some schools do have the right technologies and infrastructure, but teachers and learners do not know how to use and adopt them appropriately. Lack of (and inadequate) teacher training and development also adds to the challenges regarding the ICT integration in suburban secondary schools.