An Exploratory Study of the Application of Modern Distance Learning Resources for Rural Elementary and Middle Schools in Western China:The Case of Three Cities in Gansu Province

Based on a specially adapted questionnaire,research was carried out to explore how resources in modern distance learning were being applied in rural elementary and middle schools in Western China,in order to enhance the usefulness of the allocated resources.One particular distance learning project was used as the subject of the study,and teachers at 22 rural elementary and middle schools in 3 prefecture-level cities in Gansu Province,Western China,acted as the sample group.Analysis of the teachers’questionnaire responses showed that,(1)there is a comparatively high number of modern distance learning resources in use in rural elementary and middle schools in Western China,and they are being effectively used in the classroom to assist in everyday teaching;(2)teachers of rural elementary and middle schools in Western China have the ability to make use of these modern resources,and can obtain them by way of multi-channel inquiry;(3)modern distance learning resources are already becoming important components of everyday teaching resources in Western China;and(4)teachers are generally able to apply these resources well,despite some problems remaining.In the case of problems in application,most teachers are able to find adequate solutions.

USING INTERNET RESOURCES IN THE TEACHING AND LEARNING OF ENGLISH

The paper introduces the use of the Internet for both teacher and learner.It shows how the teacher canuse the Internet both for the selection of authentic materials for classroom use and also as a medium forself-improvement and professional updating through the use of discussion forums and mailing lists.Students can use email for academic contact with their tutors and also for self-study.Email and TheWorld Wide Web are explained and a number of mailing lists and websites recommended.

A hierarchical ontology context model for work-based learning

Context modelling involves a） characterizing a situation with related information, and b） dealing and stor- ing the information in a computer-understandable form. It is the keystone to enable a system to possess the perception ca- pacity and adapt its functionality properly for different situa- tions. However, a context model focusing on the characteris- tics of work-based learning is not well studied by pioneering researchers. For addressing this issue, in this work we firstly analyze several existing context models to identify the essen- tials of context modelling, whereby a hierarchical ontology context model is proposed to characterize work-based learn- ing. Subsequently, we present the application of the proposed model in work-based learning scenario to provide adapted learning supports to professionals. Hence, this work has sig- nificance in both theory and practice.

AWeb 3.0 ontology based on similarity:a step toward facilitating learning in the Big Data age

Web 3.0 technology will revolutionize the learning process,enabling data linking to connect learning resources and create ontologies for different areas of knowledge that enable‘smart searches.’Smart or semantic searches perceive relationships among various pieces of information and present them to the learner.Connectivism has been proposed as a theory to guide learning in this new Web 3.0 environment.This paper discusses the relevance of connectivism and then develops an ontology for learning resources.The authors propose a hybrid similarity measure to evaluate the similarity among different learning resources.The paper presents a case study that was conducted to evaluate the proposed similarity measure on education data sets and demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed methods.