The West Virginia Prescription Drug Abuse Quitline (WVPDAQ) is a resource that offers education and support to individuals and families affected by prescription drug abuse. The WVPDAQ began functioning September 11, 2008, through the use of mobile phone and laptop technology. Although some helplines and quitlines use some aspects of remote technology, most function through traditional call center and landline technology, making the WVPDAQ unique. This article describes the process evaluation of the WVPDAQ and outlines both the positive findings and challenges faced by the WVPDAQ. Lessons learned and future recommendations for remote quitline endeavors are also presented. It is hoped that the experiences and information regarding the WVPDAQ presented can provide best-practice insight for public health practitioners and evaluation personnel who are considering using alternative technologies to deliver quitline services.

In Sweden, it has become exceedingly uncommon to come across a classroom without computers, as computer-assisted learning has become prevalent. This study aims to examine the positive and negative aspects of implementing a one laptop per child (OLPC) policy in Swedish secondary schools in the learning process. The research primarily relies on interviews conducted with teachers in Sweden, supplemented by scientific data from surveys conducted by various universities. The study focuses on students in grades 4-9, investigating teachers' attitudes towards OLPC and its impact on students’ performance and learning process in Sweden. The majority of available resources highlight significant benefits of incorporating computers into the learning process, particularly emphasizing the advantages of a 1:1 ratio. Many teachers assert that computer usage makes the learning experience more enjoyable for students, resulting in increased motivation to learn. Additionally, some teachers emphasize the substantial impact of 1:1 computer access on students with special needs. However, there are downsides to the easy availability of computers as well. Teachers argue that excessive reliance on computers for tasks such as essay writing can lead to complications such as deteriorated handwriting, spelling errors, and increased distraction.

Noise from information technology (IT) equipment is a significant problem in today's modern society. Active Noise Control (ANC) has shown promise in reducing the effect of IT fan noise on users. Though ANC has been applied to axial fans (such as those found in desktop computers), it has not been applied to centrifugal fans, such as those found in laptop computers. This work applies an ANC method to a centrifugal fan mounted in a mock laptop enclosure. This method is applied in four steps. First, secondary sources are placed in the vicinity of the fan. Second, an accurate model of the radiation from the fan and secondary sources is constructed. Third, the total power radiated from this system is minimized. This creates nodal lines in the vicinity of the fan. Fourth, ANC error sensors are placed on the nodal lines predicted by the model. This creates these nodal lines experimentally, thus creating the minimum power condition. The noise from the exhaust and inlets of the fan will first be controlled individually. Then the method will be applied to the combined system. Global sound power radiation will be measured in all cases.

Future pointing devices for mobile gaming is a study of properties of a number of pointing devices, and how these properties make them suitable for gaming in a mobile environment. Today, most of all advanced computer games is played with a mouse, which make the laptop and its touch-pad bad for gaming. For many decades the optical computer mouse has been the leading pointing device for playing computer games, and its have been scientifically that players with a computer mouse out-perform players with a joy-stick or other pointing devices when playing games with importance of precision. A mouse can be plugged to a laptop, but not without compromising the mobility which is significant for the laptop. Two studies discovered the user experience and functional performance of playing a precision game with an optical computer mouse, joystick, eye-tracker, touchpad and accelerometer. Our studies showed that users preferred to use the mouse when playing precision computer games, with joystick and touchpad as second choices. The eye-tracker where very unfamiliar for the users but was performing almost as accurate as the touch-pad. The accelerometer was the worst pointing device according to the test persons, and by the functional study of the performance of the pointing devices. Their result was by the falling order of mouse, touchpad, joystick, eye-tracker and at last the accelerometer. An interesting way of developing a new pointing device would be to use the mobility and precision of an eye-tracker. The eye-tracker could state a region of interest of the screen where a complementary touch pad could be in use to release your eyes from being the pointing device. It would give you the opportunity to aim with the touchpad and letting you check your surrounding with your eyes. / Detta är ett arbete som ämnar att hitta egenskaper hos ett pekdon som kan komma att ersätta den optiska datormusen i vissa miljöer. De flesta datorspel spelas med en mus. En mus kan självklart kopplas in i en laptop, men inte utan att kompromissa på den mobilitet som ofta är förknippad med en bärbar dator. Det utfördes två studier av användbarhet samt funktionalitet av pekdonen optisk datormus, joystick, ögonspårare, pekplatta och accelerometer. Testpersonerna föredrog musen vid spelande av precisionsspel, där ögonspårare och pekplatta var andrahandsval. Ögonspåraren var okänd för testpersonerna men presterade nästan lika bra som pekplattan. Accelerometern var det sämsta pekdonet enligt testpersonerna, men också enligt studien av pekdonens användbarhet. Ett intressant utvecklingsområde för ett nytt pekdon vore att nyttja mobiliteten och precisionen hos ögonspåraren för att upprätta region av intresse på skärmen. I denna region kan sedan en kompletterande pekplatta ta över.

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T14:32:36Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Renata Kelly da Silva.pdf: 2034031 bytes, checksum: df2f6c3c9a770ed3ae5eaaaa259c82ae (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-08-26 / Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo / This study aims to accomplish a comprehensive report of the first impressions of Basic Education teachers about the use of educational laptops in public school, those provided by the UCA Project (Um Computador por Aluno One Computer per Student) of the Federal Government and the Ministry of Education, as well as identifying the impact that this technology caused initially to those education professionals. The exploratory research, of qualitative nature, was performed with teacher of the Public School Network, within the facilities of the Catholic University of São Paulo (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo PUC/SP). This environment was provided with wireless internet which enabled to analyze three prototypes of the educational laptop from different manufacturers. Since the workshop, there have been recorded the expectations and the initial impressions of the teachers before, during and after the contact with the educational laptop. The data obtained by the exploratory research was organized with extracts of depositions of the teachers at workshop extracted from the reflexive memorial and the answers of the questionnaires, being those last analyzed according to the methodology of the Collective Subject Speech (Discurso do Sujeito Coletivo DSC) through the software QualiQuantSoft. In research conducted a field observation work in a public school that uses the laptop education in the classroom. The analysis of the data collected in the workshop about the use of the educational laptop in the classroom presented queues of this being a technology different from those of the computing labs in the schools participant because it was mobile, reduced in size and wireless internet ready. After all the process of data analysis and the results exploration, I concluded that in the three research tools applied in the workshop, in the first moment, during the process, and at the end of the workshop, the category mobility and change in pedagogical practices were pointed out by the teachers in all times. Teachers demonstrated a good acceptance of this technology due to its pedagogical potential. At school, the use of educational laptop favored the relationship between teachers and students and students with students, respect and collaboration, that facilitated the involvement of students in the class and reinforces the results of the analysis / O presente estudo pretende realizar um levantamento das primeiras impressões dos professores da Educação Básica sobre o uso do laptop educacional na escola pública, esse viabilizado pelo Projeto Um Computador por Aluno UCA do Governo Federal e Ministério da Educação, bem como identificar o impacto que essa tecnologia causou inicialmente para esses profissionais da educação. A pesquisa exploratória, de natureza qualitativa, foi realizada com professores da Rede Pública de Ensino, nos espaços físicos da Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo PUC/SP. Esse cenário era um ambiente que possuía Internet sem fio o qual possibilitou analisar três protótipos do laptop educacional de diferentes fabricantes. Durante a oficina, foram registradas as expectativas e impressões iniciais dos professores antes, durante e após o contato com o laptop educacional. Os dados obtidos pela pesquisa exploratória foram organizados com trechos de depoimentos dos professores na oficina extraídos do memorial reflexivo e respostas dos questionários, sendo esse último analisado seguindo a metodologia do Discurso do Sujeito Coletivo (DSC) por meio do software QualiQuantSoft. Na pesquisa de campo realizei um trabalho de observação em uma escola pública que utiliza o laptop educacional na sala de aula. A análise dos dados coletados na oficina sobre o uso do laptop educacional na sala de aula apresentou indícios de ser uma tecnologia diferenciada das existentes nos laboratórios de informática das escolas dos participantes por ser móvel, de tamanho reduzido e conexão à Internet sem fio. Após todo processo de análise de dados e exploração dos resultados, constatei que nos três instrumentos de pesquisa aplicados na oficina, no momento inicial, no desenvolvimento (processo) e no momento final, a categoria mobilidade e mudança da prática pedagógica foram apontadas pelos professores em todos esses momentos. Os professores demonstraram boa aceitação dessa tecnologia móvel pelo seu potencial pedagógico. Na escola, o uso do laptop educacional favoreceu a relação entre professores e alunos e alunos com alunos, pelo respeito e pela colaboração, o que favoreceu o comprometimento dos alunos com as aulas e reforça os resultados das análises

The aim of the study was to investigate the use of laptops in English language teaching, its benefits and disadvantages. Three classroom observations, six student interviews and three teacher interviews were carried out to answer the study’s research questions, namely, what are the benefits and disadvantages of using laptops in the teaching of English at schools under study? How do teachers solve technical and pedagogical problems related to the use of laptops? What kinds of IT-support and possibility to develop teaching skills required by laptops are available for teachers of English? Results of the study indicate that easy access to authentic English through laptops is a benefit when teaching English at two Swedish compulsory schools and one high school. Furthermore, the study has shown that laptops are beneficial tools when teaching writing proficiency and working with problem-solving tasks in the classroom. The results of the study have also pointed to the disadvantage in the use of laptops during classroom activities, which are caused by students who are engaged in browsing off-task websites. However, a solution to this could be to include these websites into English language learning activities. The data from the interviews with the three English language teachers have provided evidence about different possibilities for IT-support and IT-development for these teachers. This study makes it clear that a successful implementation of one-to-one laptop programs requires teachers who can invest their time and energy into learning new technology, IT-development provided by the school and municipality through courses, workshops and visits at IT-fairs and other schools with one-to-one laptop program as well as a functional IT-support.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 28-31, 1996 / Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / This paper presents a new architecture of the end-to-end ground system to reduce overall mission support costs. The present ground system of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is costly to operate, maintain, deploy, reproduce, and document. In the present climate of shrinking NASA budgets, this proposed architecture takes on added importance as it will dramatically reduce all of the above costs. Currently, the ground support functions (i.e., receiver, tracking, ranging, telemetry, command, monitor and control) are distributed among several subsystems that are housed in individual rack-mounted chassis. These subsystems can be integrated into one portable laptop system using established MultiChip Module (MCM) packaging technology. The large scale integration of subsystems into a small portable system will greatly reduce operations, maintenance and reproduction costs. Several of the subsystems can be implemented using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products further decreasing non-recurring engineering costs. The inherent portability of the system will open up new ways for using the ground system at the “point-of-use” site as opposed to maintaining several large centralized stations. This eliminates the propagation delay of the data to the Principal Investigator (PI), enabling the capture of data in real-time and performing multiple tasks concurrently from any location in the world. Sample applications are to use the portable ground system in remote areas or mobile vessels for real-time correlation of satellite data with earth-bound instruments; thus, allowing near real-time feedback and control of scientific instruments. This end-to-end portable ground system will undoubtedly create opportunities for better scientific observation and data acquisition.

Idag används 1:1 datorer, d.v.s. en dator för varje elev, i svenska skolor. Detta ämne är intressant att undersöka i vårt växande globala digitalsamhälle där kommuner och skolor strävar efter att erbjuda en hög tillgänglighet och kompetens till eleverna. Syftet med mitt arbete är att belysa 1:1 datoranvändning, samt om det förekommer skillnader mellan manliga och kvinnliga elevers användning. Det empiriska materialet har samlats in genom enkäter och intervjuer. Detta har bearbetats och därefter analyserats enligt tre kategorier: datorns användning, kommunikation, och samarbete. Resultatet visar att samtliga deltagare i undersökningen är överlag positiva till projektet, både lärare och elever anser att det är lättare att ta kontakt med varandra och skolarbetet underlättas. Det som upplevts som negativt är viss bristande uppmärksamhet under lektionerna pga. sociala medier. Elevernas användarkunskap skiljer sig inte åt könsmässigt, däremot visar undersökningen skillnader i användning efter intresseområden.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T14:30:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Claudia Mandaio.pdf: 3350752 bytes, checksum: a8880a43c8ee06531e78f9298685734d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-05-04 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Many researchers have investigated the use of laptops by teachers in the classroom both in Brazil and abroad. Literature points to the need of new teaching practices which could utilize the many technological resources available today, so that they are effectively used and exploited for more meaningful learning. The objective of this research in this context is to verify signs of changes in practices that elementary school teachers - from a state public school and a municipal public school, both in the countryside of the state of São Paulo develop with the use of laptop in the classroom. The theoretical framework that guides the research is based on constructionism, the concept of mobility, coupled with the use of portable computer, the notion of practical and reflective teacher, in the framework of pedagogical practices using this technology, and new teaching practices offered by the use of laptops. The research is characterized by a methodology called mixed method and presents multiple study cases or collective and educational cases. Questionnaires were utilized (quantitative research), as well as, interviews, records of observations and teachers‟ goals reports (qualitative research). As a result it was possible to identify new practices with the use of laptops, such as these: focus on the development of students‟ autonomy; promotion of collaborative and reflexive activities; development of competencies required for the use of technologies; a consensus that the use of portable computers and the Internet facilitates the reaching of these objectives; the understanding that the use of these devices makes students more interested in the classes due to the diversity of activities proposed for students, who are, in these two schools, the center of the pedagogical approach / Muitos pesquisadores vêm investigando a prática de professores em sala de aula com computador portátil, tanto no exterior quanto no Brasil, e a literatura da área aponta para a necessidade de novas práticas pedagógicas para que os recursos tecnológicos disponíveis hoje em dia sejam efetivamente usados e aproveitados para uma aprendizagem mais significativa. O objetivo desta pesquisa, nesse contexto, é identificar os indícios de mudanças nas práticas que professores do Ensino Fundamental I de uma escola estadual e de uma escola municipal do interior de São Paulo desenvolvem com o uso de computador portátil em sala de aula. A fundamentação teórica que norteia a pesquisa baseia-se no construcionismo; no conceito de mobilidade, atrelado ao uso de computador portátil; na noção do professor prático-reflexivo no âmbito das práticas pedagógicas com o uso dessa tecnologia. A pesquisa caracteriza-se pelo método misto e realiza um estudo de casos múltiplos ou de caso coletivo e educacional, que se vale de questionários (no que se refere à questão quantitativa), de entrevistas, de registros de observações diretas e relatório de aula do professor (no que se refere à parte qualitativa). Como resultados, figuram indícios de mudanças nas práticas dos professores com o uso do computador portátil, das quais destacam-se: o foco nos objetivos de desenvolver a autonomia dos alunos, promover atividades colaborativa e reflexiva e buscar desenvolver competências no uso de tecnologia; o consenso de que o uso do computador portátil e da internet é um facilitador para o alcance desses objetivos; a afirmação de que o uso do computador portátil e da internet faz com que os alunos se interessem mais pelas aulas, do que provavelmente decorre o fato de haver diversidade nas atividades propostas para os alunos, que parece ser, nessas duas escolas, o centro da abordagem pedagógica