Problems of Education in the 21st Century

5-7

Authors: Vincentas Lamanauskas

In recent years attention to natural science education is not decreasing. In various information sources we can find a constantly expressed position that natural science – technological literacy of young generation is not only insufficient but also very often inadequate to the time requirements. We can claim with confidence, that the whole last decade (2000-2010) in one way or another was devoted to the discussion of the mentioned problem in various aspects. What is really important today and especially in perspective? The answers to natural science technological education problem questions are not easy at all. The so-called public opinion of giving priority to social sciences has a particularly negative influence. The process when a great majority of youth choose social science field programmes for their studies and significantly smaller part chooses natural science – technological profile studies, has already been observed for the second decade. The motives are various here. First of all, it is groundlessly thought that social sciences are easier to study than natural science subjects. There is a part of truth in this. However, we feel the absence of government’s clear strategic standpoint. Isn’t it, that physicists, chemists, biologists, engineers and so on are not necessary in Lithuania any more? We can mention, that similar tendencies are observed in the other countries as well. Secondly, representatives of social sciences (these are also representatives of education, educologists) rather often groundlessly ignore natural science - technological education and its importance to a man. Even the official discourse analyzes children’s rights, bullying, adaptation, motivation, social integration and other rather trendy questions more often than the second ones – guaranteeing natural science – technological education. There happen to be not rare cases when education communities do not acknowledge the researchers analysing natural science education problems, consider them to be “a substance”, “polluting” pedagogics. In Western literature such a phenomenon is called “Science war” from social scientists. Basically, we can ask – whether this war is progressive or reactionary?!

19-32

Authors: Murat Gökdere

This study aims to examine the knowledge levels of class and science teachers in primary schools about the education of gifted and talented children. As the sample in this study, 55 classroom teachers and 40 science teachers working at the city of Amasya in Turkey were selected, which was conducted within the scope of case study methodology. A test concerning the characteristics of gifted and talented children and a semi-constructed interview method were used in the collection of data. Considering the findings obtained, it can be stated that classroom teachers have a higher level of knowledge than science teachers do. In addition, it cannot be stated that classroom teachers have sufficient levels of knowledge about the education of gifted and talented children. Insufficiency in both teacher groups is considered to be due to the absence of any training concerning the concept of giftedness and the characteristics of these students in pre-service and in-service training processes in the past. In order not to have any hitches in the process for identification of gifted and talented children, studies should be made with respect to improving the knowledge levels and qualities of candidate teachers and the teachers on duty about the characteristics of gifted and talented children.

42-48

Authors: Milena Janakova

The objective of study was education system options such as Moodle. Education systems offer many activities with various procedures for implementation within a course. The benefit is an advantage of the relatively large variety of options, but the question stands on their utility and complexity of implementation. For the evaluation of individual activities, they must accept the dynamic and diverse needs of students. A good starting point is the variety of teaching materials and the addition of such activities such as Database, Glossary, or Link to file or web. An analysis of these options is realized by Petri Nets with support simulation. The profit is the availability of an additional analysis with an incidence matrix and reachable markings. Realized analysis confirms a less important of Database and Glossary activities compared with Link to file or web, or Test.

61-71

Authors: Agnieszka A. Kaczor

The purpose of this study is elaboration of computer classes for pharmacy or chemistry students on ADMET parameters of barbiturates and thiobarbiturates in the context of their molecular structure and gathering students’ feedback on the classes. Barbiturates and thiobarbiturates are derivatives of barbituric acid and thiobarbituric acid, respectively. These drugs, depending on clear differences in their structure, exert a variety of effects on the central nervous system, ranging from mild sedation to total anesthesia. Barbiturates may be used as hypnotics, anxiolytics and anticonvulsants whereas thiobarbiturates can be applied for the induction of general anesthesia. At present barbiturates are usually replaced by benzodiazepines which are less dangerous at overdose. Nevertheless, they remain a model group of drugs to discuss structure-activity relationship, in particular the effect of lipophilicity on the activity profile. The presented computer-assisted classes were designed by taking into consideration the common problems which many students experiense when they learn medicinal chemistry.The classes make use of freely available web services only and consist of the following steps: (1) calculation of lipophilicity of selected barbiturates and thiobarbiturates with several algorithms offered by Virtual Computational Chemistry Laboratory web service;(2) discussion of relationship between the lipophilicity value and activity profile;(3) calculation of other ADMET parameters (e.g. plasma protein binding, blood-brain barrier penetration, human intestinal absorption) of barbiturates and thiobarbiturates with PREADMET web service and ADMEBoxes web service (demo version) . The classes were highly approved by students and may be utilized in education of pharmacy and chemistry but also biology and medicine students.

84-95

Authors: Jordi Mongay Batalla, Maria Ledzińska

Among many positive aspects of the development of the Internet in the last decades, one may also find some damaging ones. This paper centers on the information flood, which any user must face whenever she/he approaches the Internet. The amount of information in the network is hastily increasing and it does not seem to have limits. New studies show that the amount of information in the Internet reaches a value near one zettabyte. Zettabyte is a unit of information equal to 10^21 bytes. Any searching in Internet is, ever increasing, an immersion in a sea of information that may bring high discomfort to the users, caused, especially, by the inability to process all the data read. This research analyses the issue of information flood and proposes a solution to be implemented as an interface between users and the Internet. The creation of this new tool takes into account the requirements from the psychological standpoint and the implementation issues from the telecommunication point of view. The cooperation between psychology and ICT (Information and Computer Technologies) seems crucial to improve the well-being of people in a as technical a society as the current one.

106-113

Authors: Ozden Sahin-Izmirli, Serkan Izmirli, Isil Kabakci-Yurdakul

In this research, it is aimed to determine the views of faculty members about sharing course materials on the web. Seven faculty members who published OpenCourseWare (OCW) are the participants of research. Participants are faculty members from two state universities in Turkey. This research attempts to find answers to these questions: “What are the general views of faculty members about OCW?” and “What are the views of faculty members about the process before, on and after adding OCW on the web?” This research is based on qualitative phenomenological research methodology. Qualitative data were collected via semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. The content analysis technique was used to analyze the data. Results were interpreted and described with direct quotations at the end of the analysis. According to results of the research, faculty members assessed that OCW increase the quality of education and bring new opportunities. Some faculty members prefer to add the existing course resources to the web without any modification. However the others prefer to modify the existing course resources. Faculty members support the use of OCW by others with proper citation. Faculty members also stated that OCW should be revised and updated, and students’ demands should be taken into consideration.

123-130

Authors: Silvana Vishkurti, Aida Spahiu, Margarita Paci

This paper aims to propose some ways on how to improve the relation between didactics and science in the field of science teaching in universities. Educating young people in sciences is one of the objectives of a general reform of programs that has swept Higher Education in Albania, due to the Bologna process. But this reform was originally conceived as training for teachers or students rather as an interactive process between these two actors. This paper argues that training teachers with the didactics of science would enable students to acquire knowledge more actively and efficiently. From a socio-constructivist perspective this study analyzes the situation in which vocational education is in Albania as well as the teacher’s role in helping students develop an independent intellectual thought. The results of this study are based on three sources: student questionnaires, teachers’ interviewing and class observations. Data analysis reveals that it is essential for teachers to be professionally trained with innovative methods of didactic research. Their implementation will allow the selection of those practices in science teaching which will facilitate the students’ knowledge acquisition.