In the Republic of Croatia Informatics is an elective course in elementary school for students from 5th to 8th grade. When it comes to programming language teachers can choose between BASIC and Logo. There are a lot of new programming environments for learning and teaching programming like Scratch and also new ways of teaching programming like game based learning. This study compares attitudinal and learning outcomes of 7th-grade students programming in Logo and Scratch. The classes were normal classes, non-extracurricular activities. The questionnaire is used to measure the attitude towards programming and programming languages. The test is constructed to measure learned programming concepts in both compared programming languages Logo and Scratch. Results showed that learning Scratch first can provide a better understanding of basic programming concept for novices in elementary school than Logo.

Quantum-dot Cellular Automata is an alternative to CMOS technology for the future digital designs. When compared to its CMOS counterpart, it has extremely low power consumption, as there is no current flow in cell. The methodology of parity generator and checker is based on the parity generation and matched it at the receiver end. By using the parity match bits, the error in circuit can be sensed. In this paper, novel parity generator and detector circuit are introduced. The circuit is designed in single layer, minimum clock and minimum latency, which is achieved in QCA framework. The proposed circuits are better than the existing in terms of clock cycle delay, cell complexity and clock cycle utilize. The simulation of presented cell structures have been verified using QCA designer tool. In addition, QCA Probabilistic (QCAPro) tool is used to calculate the minimum, maximum and average energy dissipation aspect in proposed QCA circuit. Appropriate comparison table and power analysis is shown to prove that our proposed circuit is cost effective.

The world today has witnessed the evolution imposes on researchers in the field of education to review the methods and strategies of teaching, since the teaching and learning system is not a collection of information and knowledge that stuffed in mind. It is a development of cognitive performance and modes of thinking in addition to the use of innovative ways and methods to help the student to adapt to its environment and to solve the problems that he/ she faces to make learning meaningful. One of the recent trends is the use of educational teaching games. Games increase the motivation of the learner and ensure the interaction with educational material which, in turn, offers fun and enjoyable manner in order to achieve the desired objectives. This paper attempts to address the need to utilize gaming to improve learning in active ways and to raise level of the learning process in an interactive environment for the students and the teachers. To evaluate the proposed solution, this paper used survey research methodology and the results are highly encouraging by the professionals working in academia.

The main purpose of this study was to examine the impact of English uses and English proficiency on inter-cultural sensitivity among 292 Taiwanese participants. Results indicate that there is a significant differential level of English uses across three groups of the participants (high, moderate and low frequency of English uses). Post-hoc comparison indicated that high-frequency English usesrs have significantly higher inter-cultural sensitivity than moderate and low-frequency users. However, the results do not support the hypothesized linkage between foreign language proficiency and inter-cultural sensitivity. The implications from these findings suggest that the frequency of English uses will better equip EFL learners with sufficient socio-linguistic competences and communicative skills compared with English proficiency. Moreover, inter-cultural sensitivity is a skill learned through authentic interaction in an intercultural context. Thus, the MOF in Taiwan should rethink of washback effect of the English Benchmark Policy.

Detection and tracking of stable features in moving real time video sequences is one of the challenging task in vision science. Vision sensors are gaining importance due to its advantage of providing much information as compared to recent sensors such as laser, infrared, etc. for the design of real–time applications. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to obtain the features in the moving vehicles in outdoor scenes and the proposed method can track the moving vehicles with improved matched features which are stable during the span of time. Various experiments are conducted and the results show that features classification rates are higher and the proposed technique is compared with recent methods which show better detection performance.

Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are becoming increasing popular among students, setting out a new way to communicate, collaborate and learn. The use of portable devices has the capability to inspire new approaches to learning. It is therefore important to examine the students’ viewpoints about the educational use of mobile technology in supporting the learning process. The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of mobile devices for learning purposes by exploring the kinds of interactions that students in Nigerian universities have with their portable gadgets. A sample of 240 higher education students participated in the study by completing the researchers’ questionnaire. The results of the study indicate the students use their portable devices to exchange education-related messages and academic files with classmates, search the internet and library databases for academic materials, practice online quizzes or tests and hold discussions with classmates among others. The statistical analyses result show that there is no significant difference in the students’ use of mobile devices based on gender.

Demand of reliable computing has been a major concern since the dawn of the electronic digital computer age. Reliable computing has various applications not only in the field of military, aerospace and communication but even contemporary commercial applications to fulfill today’s automated life style. The tremendous growth in fabrication from small scale integration (SSI) to giant scale integration (GSI) is facing power dissipation as one of the main barriers. To overcome this barrier, researchers need to enter into the reversible logic domain. Making a reversible circuit robust or fault tolerant is much more difficult than a conventional logic circuit. Fault tolerance can be achieved in a system by using parity bits. The main aim of this paper is to come up with a new fault tolerant ALU design based on parity preserving reversible logic gates with improved quantum cost and power overhead as compare to existing fault tolerance based ALU designs. The most stringent requirement for fault tolerant ALU is in real time control system where faulty computation jeopardizes human life or other catastrophic effects.Implentation of proposed design is done using Xilinx ISE design suit 14.2 tool and its performance over existing ALU designs is qualitatively analyzed.

This paper reviews the design of phase locked loop (PLL) using recently reported charge pump circuits. Lock time, phase noise, lock range and reference spur of each charge pump circuit are investigated. Though improved charge pump circuits are designed recently, their performance is not as effective as the basic charge pump PLL (CP-PLL). Initially the design of PLL using the basic charge pump is completed in this paper and then the PLL using improved charge pumps are redesigned in CMOS 180 nm technology and simulated using Cadence Virtuoso Analog Design Environment. Finally all the charge pumps are compared with respect to the PLL performances. The current starved voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) used for the design of PLL brings about a tuning range of 119.5 MHz to 2.3 GHz. The PLL using different charge pumps produces a lock time which varies from 204 ns to 329 ns. The other parameters like lock range, phase noise and reference spur are also examined.