Es scheint in den letzten Jahren eine deutliche Veränderung in der Art der Kommunikation mit den sogenannten Neuen Kommunikationstechnologien stattgefunden zu haben, und zwar im Längsschnitt, also etwa über die letzten 10, 15 Jahre, wie auch zwischen den sich aus heutiger Sicht herausentwickelt habenden Nutzergruppen. Quantitative Erhebungen, am ausgeprägtesten die regelmäßig unternommenen und von den Medien wiedergegebenen "Internetumfragen", ebnen solche Veränderungen naturgemäß vollständig ein. Auch die vorhandenen qualitativen Arbeiten reflektieren solche Veränderungen meist nicht, da zeitliche Dimensionen üblicherweise in den Fragestellungen fehlen. Der Beitrag versucht eine Skizze dieser Entwicklungen, möchte einige Mißverständnisse im Zusammenhang mit neuer "Elektronischer Kommunikation" korrigieren helfen und kommunikationsökonomische Aspekte beisteuern.

This qualitative case study explores how secondary school teachers innovate in the face of complex simultaneous and ongoing mandated changes and in particular, how they innovate with ICTs. The study argues that by understanding the whole-school context, the integration of ICTs can be better understood. The research setting is a complex independent, monastic secondary school in South Africa. Rather than select exemplary projects which are the usual focus of ICT research, the school was chosen for its combination of highly developed ICT infrastructure, but relative lack of exemplary achievement with ICTs. Using Sherry and Gibson’s (2005) terminology – convergence, mutuality and extensiveness – derived from their sustainability research, this study investigates the interplay of contextual factors that affects teachers’ ability to innovate in their practice, focussing on process innovation and arguing from a complexity and innovation theory point of view. Contextual factors were identified broadly as organisational factors, collegial and professional relationship factors, and ICT factors. Although all teachers were willing to innovate in practice, particularly in response to radical mandated curricular change and an inclusive philosophy, it was found that contextual factors have differing effects on their individual ability to innovate. The study identifies patterns in which not only positive factors converge, but negative factors (termed disconvergent factors) also converge. Collegial and professional relationship factors affect the diffusion or extension of innovation. These are limited by a lack or under-exploitation of lateral communication means. The study concludes that the effects of context are unique to each individual teacher and that their professional learning trajectory needs to be scaffolded and personalised. Both ICT-based and collaborative opportunities should be provided in support of a professional learning community to address the need to diffuse innovation laterally and to enable sharing that will reduce current overload and stress levels. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Science, Mathematics and Technology Education / unrestricted

Dissertation thesis in theoretical part deals with the influence of information and communication technologies on financial reporting, discusses the financial reporting aspects of the Internet, describes the characteristics and use of XML and XBRL, identifies opportunities and risks of electronic documents and possible changes in the work of auditors. Practical part provides an empirical survey on how financial statements are being published in the Czech Republic via the Internet. The sample of entities identifies and then presents the place and form of disclosure of financial statements to users with a view to regulating the relevant legislation.

This study answers to th e quest ions of why and how the "Everything Maths" and "Everything Science" open textbooks are used, and to what extent a Community of Practice (Wenger, 2006) has formed around the use of these open textbooks, are informed by a case study, comprising of interviews with nine South African high-school teachers using these open educational resources. The Community of Practice theory provided a useful lens through which to code, analyse and view utterances made. Findings indicate that while financial reasons for using the open textbooks are important, pedagogical reasons, of quality and scope of content, are more valued by teachers. Also important are the availability of the open textbooks in a variety of formats, the potential for teachers to develop social learning (Brown, 2008) skills, learners to study independently, the interactive features, and online availability of the open textbooks. A Community of Practice, while not formalised, exists around the use of these open textbooks and can be classified as an Active Community (Kim, Hong and Suh 2012).

No description available.

yes / The delivery of higher education, as with many aspects of society in general, is becoming increasingly shaped by the availability of the Internet in our everyday lives. Associated with the growth in Internet availability, web 2.0 technologies have become increasingly popular over recent years, especially with the `Google Generation¿, a term used to describe those brought up with the Internet. The exploitation of such tools has led to the widespread take-up of social networking sites, the growth in blogging and twitter, and the adoption of wikis and social media sites for the sharing and publishing of content. The opportunities introduced by technology enhanced learning (TEL), and in particular web 2.0 tools and applications, are now starting to attract significant interest from within the academic community. The lecture begins by describing the advances in digital communication technologies that are allowing new approaches to teaching and learning to be investigated. A review of how technology is currently employed in higher education then follows, before proceeding to outline the latest developments associated with web 2.0 tools and applications and the opportunities these present. A review of significant findings from within the academic research community is then given. To conclude, an assessment of what are the likely drivers that are creating a need for change within the higher education sector is presented before outlining the implications of introducing TEL from the perspectives of both students and teaching staff.

The world of today allows groups of people who are geographically-distributed to communicate through information and communication technologies (ICTs). In the workplace, these geographically-distributed teams are referred to as virtual teams. Quantifying and understanding issues in virtual teams has been a focus of research for the past two decades. This thesis aims to quantify generational differences between the Millennials and the Baby Boomers in the context of virtual teams in the engineering and construction sectors. This thesis consists of two studies. The first study broadly focuses on generational differences in regards to cultural, temporal, and technological issues faced in virtual teams. The results from the first study show that Millennials may be better suited to deal with cultural and language differences as well as time-distributed team members when compared to the Baby Boomers. However, the results for the technology hypothesis were mixed and motivated further research. Therefore, the second study focused on generational differences in views on specific ICTs. This study found that Millennials favored some ICTs more than their Baby Boomer counterparts. However, these generations also had indistinguishable views for many of the ICTs examined. The second study shows that the digital divide between generations is true for certain technologies but is unobservable in others. This thesis indicates that Millennials have relative strengths when handling the difficulties of virtual teaming when compared to the Baby Boomers. / Master of Science

Yes / Traditional public health methods for detecting infectious disease transmission, such as contact tracing and molecular epidemiology, are time-consuming and costly. Information and communication technologies, such as global positioning systems, smartphones, and mobile phones, offer opportunities for novel approaches to identifying transmission hotspots. However, mapping the movements of potentially infected persons comes with ethical challenges. During an interdisciplinary meeting of researchers, ethicists, data security specialists, information and communication technology experts, epidemiologists, microbiologists, and others, we arrived at suggestions to mitigate the ethical concerns of movement mapping. These suggestions include a template Data Protection Impact Assessment that follows European Union General Data Protection Regulations. / European Research Council Proof of Concept “Enhanced Place Finding” (grant no. 727695).

This diploma thesis deals with analysis of negative impacts of information and communication technologies in education. Health and social behavior related negative impacts, characterized by frequency of occurence or severity, are presented. Emphasized are, however, cognitive functions, especially attention and memory. Negative impacts, which can lead towards deterioration of pupils' ability to learn, are explored in detail. Possible situations of use and aspects of ICT, which can have said effect, are identified. The subject is expanded by possible countermeasures that can be used to prevent, mitigate or eliminate some of the negative impacts. The empiric part of the thesis verifies some of the presented negative impacts of information and communication technologies related in particular to school effectiveness of pupils and additional countermeasures are introduced to reduce these impacts.

This dissertation "European legal aspects of the protection of the private and family life of the child" focuses on the protection of privacy, particularly on data protection of children in the context of traditional and modern communication technologies. The family - parents plays the most important role in the environment of traditional and modern communication technologies for ensuring the right to privacy of children. Although the right to privacy and protection of personal data belongs directly to the child, parents have to provide the exercise of these rights of the child with regard to his/her age and mental capacity of the child. Particularly with regard to the constant development of modern technologies, it is possible to imagine that the increasingly threatening situations in terms of privacy and children's personal data will be more frequent. In selected cases, the analysis focuses on the question of who constitutes the cause of unlawful interference into the right of privacy, particularly data protection, individualization of the right or combination of rights to which an unlawful interference has been occurred and how the judicial authorities and national data protection authorities define in individual cases the permissible level of interference with the right to privacy and the...