School Timetabling Optimisation Using Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm Based on a Virtual Searching Space Method

Although educational timetabling problems have been studied for decades, one instance of this, the school timetabling problem (STP), has not developed as quickly as examination timetabling and course timetabling problems due to its diversity and complexity. In addition, most STP research has only focused on the educators’ availabilities when studying the educator aspect, and the educators’ preferences and expertise have not been taken into consideration. To fill in this gap, this paper proposes a conceptual model for the school timetabling problem considering educators’ availabilities, preferences and expertise as a whole. Based on a common real-world school timetabling scenario, the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is adapted to this study, as research shows its applicability in solving examination and course timetabling problems. A virtual search space for dealing with the large search space is introduced to the proposed model. The proposed approach is simulated with a large, randomly generated dataset. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach is able to solve the STP and handle a large dataset in an ordinary computing hardware environment, which significantly reduces computational costs. Compared to the traditional constraint programming method, the proposed approach is more effective and can provide more satisfactory solutions by considering educators’ availabilities, preferences, and expertise levels.

90th anniversary from the birth of academician A.P. Ershov

The article presents the main milestones in the life and scientific path of Andrei Petrovich Ershov (1931-1988), an outstanding scientist, one of the founders of informatics and programming in our country, whose name is closely connected with the development of the school informatics course. The main ideas of the first domestic textbook of informatics, created under the leadership of A.P. Ershov, are presented in the article. These ideas are an extraordinary phenomenon in the world school informatics, which largely determined the subsequent direction of the development of the subject. The quotes from several articles by A.P. Ershov are given, which are especially relevant at the present time.

Making Space for Social and Emotional Learning in Science Education

Social-emotional learning (SEL) is known to improve student outcomes but is rarely combined with STEM. In this paper we present an action research study to examine the impact of a STEM + SEL curriculum intervention to address a real-world school conflict. One hundred sixth–eighth graders and four teachers participated in an in-person facilitation of a SEL Arthropod curriculum, DIFFERENT. After the intervention, students completed open-ended couplet statements about arthropod behavior, tarantulas, and humans designed to measure sentiment change. Answers were manually coded using inductive coding on a scale of negative (1) to positive (5). Statement sentiments significantly shifted from negative to neutral and negative to positive for all three questions. Neutral to positive shifts were only significant for the couplet statements about arthropod behavior. This study reports the first confirmed instance of successful use of arthropods for SEL within a curriculum that integrates students’ social-emotional skills within a science classroom.

ROLE OF THE WORLD IN THE WORLD SCHOOL

The article addresses the problem of organizing the process of physical education in the family. Studies have shown that parents do not have enough attention to the physical upbringing of their children in the family, which necessitates finding new ways to work with the family.

LET’S DANCE

In today’s world, school physical education is acquiring more and more responsibility for the formation of a goal-setting for a healthy lifestyle in schoolchildren, because a significant part of the day the child spends at school. Dance directions: flash mobs, zumba, dance aerobics, parterre gymnastics — significantly increase the level of health of students, as a physically prepared body less susceptible to any diseases. Through regular exercise, there is a certain need for performing physically challenging exercises. In addition, the student’s stress resistance is actively engaged in physical exercises, is noticeably higher, because the developed skill of correct breathing will not allow muscle clamping to happen, that is, some loss of control over your body. Developed the ability to control the process of tension and relaxation of muscles helps to relieve tension, stiffness.

Connecting Classrooms to the world: School librarian - An Agent of Change in Modern Educational Approaches to Teaching

The paper will demonstrate a library program of an International School in India which connects its pupils with global partners on various curriculum contents. Technology is the key component used by the teacher librarians to achieve the objective. They build awareness of global issues to pupils and motivate them to research and find partners around the world including their own country with same or similar issues. During the research process students reflect critically on their own practice and compare with the partner schools. The librarians also collaborate with the classroom teacher to take action for embedding the same in teaching. The activities have a great impact on teaching and learning and the collaborations offer a myriad of ICT and global communication skills to students.

Cultural Arts in the Library

The UNESCO Manifesto on the School Library states that the mission of the school library is to offer learning services and resources that enable all members of the school community to become critical thinkers and effective users of information in all formats and media. Throughout the world school librarians have explored ways to help their colleagues record, organize and share cultural arts. The generated websites can foster student multi-literacy and cultural competence, including producing cultural arts.

Teachers-librarian collaboration in building the curriculum for an IB World School

Many schools are in the transition stage from passive learning environments into active ones. Teachers, librarians and administrators are forced to rethink the curriculum in terms of content and teaching methodology because of advancement of technology and competitions. The paper will demonstrate the need of collaborative work of teacher-librarians and class room teachers. It will analyse the need of students and faculty for viable information skills offering librarians a new entrée into the classroom curriculum. Librarians are designing a variety of outreach programs to work more closely with teachers to integrate information skills into the curriculum. The paper will present a case study

Guided Inquiry

Global interconnectedness enabled by information technology calls for new skills, knowledge and ways of learning to prepare students for living and working in the 21st century. Guided Inquiry equips students with abilities and competencies to address the challenges of an uncertain, changing world. School librarians are vital partners in creating schools that enable students to learn through vast resources and multiple communication channels. School libraries are dynamic learning centres in information age schools with school librarians as primary agents for designing schools for 21st century learners.

Graphic map load comparison of two Czech school atlases using edge detection

Map complexity has been studied by cartographers for decades. Unfortunately, it is not being systematically measured as an essential map property and used to optimize cartographic products during the map-making process. Therefore, the appropriate load of map content in a map usually remains dependent only on the subjective assessment of the cartographer designing the map.The paper aims to describe and examine newly developed easy-to-use metric for graphic map load evaluation. A plugin for an open-source software Gimp was developed to provide an accessible tool to measure graphic map load of various geospatial visualizations in an image file format. This tool was then used to compare two Czech school atlases produced by Kartografie PRAHA, a.s. publisher in terms of their graphic map load. The examined atlases include: the latest World School Atlas (in Czech Školní atlas světa) and the new equivalent called Pupil’s Atlas (originally Školní atlas světa) intended to fit especially to younger pupils. Both the atlases are captured in Figure 1.The equivalent maps (the same or very similar map extents, scales, captured regions and map types) in both atlases were compared to investigate differences in graphic map load. For this, a developed metric implemented in the form of an extension to well-known image processing software Gimp was used. The extension advances an edge detection filter to identify both sharp and smooth edges in order to estimate the graphic map load of map samples. Also, a distribution of map load across the map layout is shown. Subsequently, measured values were compared and used to estimate the differences in the potential readability of those products.