My Vlog on How to Come Up With Your Thesis Topic

Here's my vlog on how to come up with your thesis topic -

Establishing the Theoretical Bounds in the Relationship Between Locality, Storage, Read Efficiency, and Storage Notion in a Dynamic Searchable Symmetric Encryption - Research Significance

Establishing the Theoretical Bounds in the Relationship Between Locality, Storage, Read Efficiency, and Storage Notion in a Dynamic Searchable Symmetric Encryption

Research Significance

Searchable encryption secures the privacy of one’s search over encrypted data.  One of its popular application models allows a data owner to store encrypted data to a server which can effectively perform keyword-based search over encrypted data according to a query trapdoor submitted by a data user.  The owner’s data and the user’s queries are kept secret in the server. Recently, many searchable encryptions have been proposed to achieve better security and performance, provide secure data updatable feature, and search results verifiable capability. However, most of the existing works endow the data user unlimited search capacities and do not consider a data user’s search permissions. In practical applications, granting search privileges for data users is a very important measure to enforce data access control.

Major concern over the security of searchable encryption schemes has become an important issue for discussion. There have been attacks (Zhang, et al., 2016) that have been devised that would allow an untrusted server to recover the keywords in the client’s search tokens, and in consequence, to learn a significant amount of information about the outsourced These attacks are normally performed by utilizing information leaked in the searching and updating phase, and they are pervasive because the information leakage exists inevitably in any searchable encryption scheme. A simple yet effective adaptive attack that can fully reveal the client’s queries by injecting only a small number - usually less than 100 files - to the encrypted data store has been performed raising more concerns in terms of the safety of the customers’ data (Zhang, et al.2016). The result has been devastating since the attack not only enabled the server to learn partial information about the encrypted data, the recovered keywords have also helped the server in other statistical attacks. The essential idea of the attacks is that the server first crafts a set of files, with each containing certain keywords, then sends the files to the client and tricks the client into encrypting them. After the client has encrypted and uploaded the injected files, the server can use the tokens previously submitted by the clients to search on the injected files. By knowing which keywords are in each injected file and observing which files matches the token, the server can deduce easily which keyword is encrypted in the token (Song, et al., 2017).

Dynamic searchable symmetric encryption (DSSE) is a useful cryptographic tool in the encrypted cloud storage. It provides data dynamics that allows the client to update data over the time without losing data confidentiality and searchability. Due to this property, DSSE is highly demanded in encrypted cloud. However, many existing DSSE schemes (Cash, et al., 2014) suffer from the file-injection attacks (Zhang, et al., 2016), where the adversary can compromise the privacy of a client query by injecting a small portion of new documents to the encrypted database. To resist this attack, Zhang et al. [22] highlighted the need of forward security that was informally

Searchable encryption facilitates cloud server to search over encrypted data without decrypting the data. Single keyword based searchable encryption enables a user to access only a subset of documents, which contains the keyword of the user's interest. Verifiable Searchable Symmetric Encryption, as an important cloud security technique, allows users to retrieve the encrypted data from the cloud through keywords and verify the validity of the returned results. Dynamic update for cloud data is one of the most common and fundamental requirements for data owners in such schemes. To the best of our knowledge, the existing verifiable SSE schemes supporting data dynamic update are all based on asymmetric-key cryptography verification, which involves time-consuming operations. The overhead of verification may become a significant burden due to the sheer amount of cloud data. Therefore, how to achieve keyword search over dynamic encrypted cloud data with efficient verification is a critical unsolved problem. To address this problem, we explore achieving keyword search over dynamic encrypted cloud data with symmetric-key based verification and propose a practical scheme in this paper. In order to support the efficient verification of dynamic data, we design a novel Accumulative Authentication Tag (AAT) based on the symmetric-key cryptography to generate an authentication tag for each keyword. Benefiting from the accumulation property of our designed AAT, the authentication tag can be conveniently updated when dynamic operations on cloud data occur. In order to achieve efficient data update, we design a new secure index composed by a search table ST based on the orthogonal list and a verification list VL containing AATs. Owing to the connectivity and the flexibility of ST, the update efficiency can be significantly improved. The security analysis and the performance evaluation results show that the proposed scheme is secure and efficient (Ge, et al., 2019).

Action Research Procedural Outline, Timeline and Action Plan

                                                                                   

Action Research Procedural Outline, Timeline and Action Plan

Action Research Question: "How does integrating Jolly phonics apps on Ipad improve Literacy Reading in Kindergarten?

Control Group: 12 Kindergarten students ranging between ages 5 and 6

Experimental Group: 12 Kindergarten students

Constant Variables: Jolly Phonics Apps

Independent Variables: Jolly Phonics Apps

Dependent Variables: Improvement in literacy reading of Kindergarten students using of Jolly Phonics apps / How many Kindergarten students improve their reading?

Setting: An international school with 86 diverse nationalities of early years students. The class is comprised of 5 boys and 7 girls. Of the 12 students, there is one Mexican, Japanese, Canadian, two are Germans, and the remaining students are Chinese.

Timeline	Processes/ Actions / Steps (What am I going to do?)	Context / Description of the setting (How am I going to do it?)	Needed Resources/ Permissions (What do I need in order to execute such actions?)	Evaluation /Data collection (How this procedure is going to be valuable for my study? How am I going to use the different types of data collected to prove my hypotheses?)
Week 1 Oct. 8 – 12, 2018	The researcher would like to see how K2 students are comfortable with their classroom set-up.	She will conduct a survey. The survey determines how the control group students feel if new learning tools are added in the classroom. It will help her decide if students can work together or work alone on an Ipad.	It will happen in room 208. The researcher will re arrange the literacy centers by adding reading manipulative. She will display the iPads. The students will be called in three’s when doing the survey.	Quantitative – Survey ·         The use of 5 survey questions with yes or no answers and 1 open-ended question will determine how the students respond of different teaching tools.
Week 2 Oct. 15 - 19, 2018	In this week, during their center time, the researcher would be inspecting how the students respond to the use JP flashcards when reading the first and second group letter sound.	The researcher will call students in pairs and will record any observations how they read by combining the first and second group sounds.	Descriptive notes will be gathered. It will happen in room 208. ·         Jolly Phonics group 1 to 3 flashcards ·         Jolly Phonics Group 3 Smart board activity app	Qualitative ·         The use Observation and Quick notes will give the researcher ideas how the use JP flashcards engage students to read. ·         The use of Notes and reflection will add information if flashcards are effective for reading.
Week 3 Oct. 22 - 26, 2018	K2 students will be asked to answer some worksheets. In this paper, they will be asked to read words by sounding the letter sound. Example: p a n t             r e s t c r e p t           f l a t c a m p           m u s t h a n d           l a m p	The researcher will give 2 tasks to each student. ·         She will call the students in three group with 4 students on the semi round table. Each child will have a worksheet. ·         She will use the Red Level books as a questionnaire guide.	It will happen in room 208. ·         Jolly Phonics letter sound group 1 to 3 and 12 Red Level Books. Descriptive notes will be gathered.	Quantitative ·         Work sheets ·         Jolly Books Red Level Questionnaires The results will be examine and interpreted after the students answer the worksheet through a data.
	Later on the week, Jolly phonics apps will be added on their literacy centers.	The researcher will observe how the students will react to the new teaching tool in their literacy center.		Qualitative ·         The use of Observation will help the researcher understand how students respond to JP apps on the iPads.
Week 4 Oct. 29 – Nov. 2, 2018	The result of their scores on the Jolly Phonics worksheets will be gathered.	After the students took the tests, the researcher will gather and collate the result.		Quantitative ·         Work sheets ·         Questionnaire
	The researcher will be observing the students how they engage with the iPads and JP apps.	This would allow the researcher to observe students how students feel using the introduced JP application on their Ipad. ·         How many of the students can use and can’t use JP app? ·         Who shows better performance when using the app? ·         Who demonstrated failure when using the app?	Descriptive notes will be gathered. There will be 3 literacy centers. ·         JP flashcards ·         JP Red Level Books ·         JP apps on iPad	Qualitative The use of Observation will help the researcher understand how students respond to JP apps on the iPads. The result will give the researcher feedback if students will show improvement when using the JP app.
Week 5 Nov. 5 - 9, 2018	The researcher will be inviting the 12 students to answer some series of questions regarding using the Jolly Phonics apps.	This interview will be conducted after the K2 students work on their iPad. The students will be asked series of close and open questions regarding their use of Ipad and use of Jolly Phonics when reading. She will interview the students across the week to avoid students imitating answers.	Descriptive notes will be gathered.	Qualitative The use of Interview can be a determiner of how students feel about how the app helps them read words, phrases, and sentences.
Week 6 Nov. 12 - 16, 2018	Collate and interpret results	The researcher will analyze the result of the student’s improvement when using the JP apps. She will equate the results and examine conclusions.	The researcher will use excel for interpreting data.	After gathering the data from their surveys, observation, and interviews, the researcher would collate all the findings if the use of Jolly Phonics app is useful when integrated to literacy. ·         Qualitative ·         Notes and reflection

BRIDGING THE SKILLS GAP BY ASSESSING THE PROMOTION OF 21ST CENTURY SKILLS AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

Background: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) and the Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS) instituted the STEM Careers Program to inspire potential youth of the country to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Their two-fold mission is to inspire the Pakistani youth to opt for careers in science, mathematics and engineering and come up with innovative solutions to problems of national interest. To ensure that the graduates of Pakistan’s education system are certified against a singular scale, a scale recognized in every country around the globe, the HEC and Microsoft have set up and appointed status to the Microsoft Imagine Academy to all private and public sector universities and Certiport Testing Center to all public universities across Pakistan. The goal of the Microsoft IT Academy is to provide a complete IT education solution that would bridge the gap between what the world of education provides and what the world of work actually needs.  The program is designed to help boost employability, digital literacy, technical and STEM-focused training and certification and 21^st century workforce development for students.  Studies have suggested that in the next 5 to 10 years, there will be a significant shortage in the supply of skilled IT professionals. It is the goal of the Microsoft Imagine Academy to bridge the skills gap by providing institutions the curriculum for technology education and the learning tools that will enable students and educators to achieve success.

Objectives: This study wants to assess if Pakistani universities are giving the university students 21^st century skills, thus bridging the gap between what the technology industries require and the quality of graduates the Pakistani universities are producing. More specifically, the research wants to know the following: 1) assess the technology curriculum from the point of view of the employers; 2) gauge the employability of the university graduates; and 3) appraise the current technology curriculum from the point of view of the educators.

Methods: The study will employ a sequential explanatory design. The data-gathering tools for this study will be semi-interviews and a pre-designed survey questionnaire. The respondents for the interviews will be top technology human resource officers of the country’s top technology companies and the top Pakistani university officials in the fields of engineering and the sciences. Moreover, 100 university graduates majoring in engineering and computer science who are now working in the technology industry, will answer the survey questionnaire which will assess if their skills are what is expected in the technology industry.

Expected Results: The researcher expects the current technology curriculum to meet the needs of the employers especially that it was based on what the Microsoft Imagine Academy is teaching to the university students. The researcher will find out that the human resource officers will be satisfied with the current graduates and that these graduates will meet the needs required by the companies. The researcher also sees the employability of the current crop of university graduates since they have been through a very thorough and relevant curriculum. The researcher expects the problems to come from a gender imbalance in the university graduates, skewed largely towards men and with only a few women graduates. Furthermore, the researcher should find the number of graduates as still insufficient to fulfill the needs of the country’s technology industry. The researcher should find out that the country’s basic education system is still hobbling to provide topnotch basic mathematics and science education to a caliber that would attract many intelligent students to pursue a STEM career. And even if they do choose a STEM career, many of them lack the basic skills needed to be successful in their university studies, resulting in many dropouts.

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Expected Conclusions: The researcher expects the following conclusions. First, there is still a huge number of unfilled job postings in the technology industry by the few number of university STEM graduates annually.  There is a need to encourage more Pakistani youth to consider a STEM career. The researcher will find favorable reviews regarding the university technology curriculum and the quality of the university graduates the Pakistani universities are producing. The researcher will find out that there is a huge mortality rate in the Pakistani universities of students being kicked out of the program due to academic deficiencies brought about by lack of basic knowledge in the maths and sciences.

Key Words: skills gap, 21^st century skills, employability, STEM, technology curriculum

Place-Based Curriculum Model for East Asian Growth Area (EAGA)

Abstract

The place-based curriculum model emphasizes the locality of the students as part of their educational experience in all their subject areas. This study wants to find out if a place-based curriculum model can be a success in four selected EAGA countries – the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. The study employed a sequential explanatory design. The data-gathering tools for this study were semi-interview and a pre-designed survey questionnaire. The respondents for the interview were twelve key personnel from the countries’ educational system – four teachers, four school administrators, and four employees from their own countries’ ministries of education. Twenty teachers and sixty students answered the survey questionnaire.  The researcher assessed what the respondents felt about the place-based curriculum model using thematic analysis, mean, simple linear correlation and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The emerged themes during the interview were the challenges and successes, the impact of the place-based curriculum model on the students, the teachers and on the school administration. Meanwhile, the data showed a strong sense of national identity among  the respondents. Hence. The place-based curriculum model helps the students learn concepts that are culturally aligned with their environment, their culture, and their daily way of life. It is therefore recommended that the place-based curriculum model be utilized by all schools in the four different countries of the EAGA to make the learning experience of their students more organic and culturally aligned.

Sample of A Thesis Abstract

SATISFACTION AND EXPERIENCE OF TEACHERS AND STUDENTS ON THE CONTEXTUALIZED LEARNING MATERIALS IN ARALING PANLIPUNAN 3

Abstract

Indigenous People’s Education Curriculum serves as a guide to provide opportunities for children. The study aimed to assess the satisfaction and experience of teachers and students on the contextualized learning materials in Araling Panlipunan (AP) for Grade 3 indigenous pupils in the Quirino District. The study employed a sequential explanatory design. The data-gathering tools for this study were semi-interview and a pre-designed survey questionnaire. The respondents for the interview were ten AP teachers and a principal while 100 AP Grade 3 pupils answered the survey questionnaire.  The researcher assessed what the respondents felt about the contextualized curriculum using thematic analysis, mean, simple linear correlation and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The emerged themes during the interview were challenges and successes, impact of the contextualized materials, and support for the implementation. Meanwhile, the data showed a strong sense of identity of the respondents. Hence, the contextualized curriculum helps pupils learn concepts that are culturally aligned with their environment, their culture, and their daily way of life. It is therefore recommended that maximum utilization of the contextualized curriculum be utilized in all schools of the district to have a better learning of the pupils.

Impression Management - Goffman: Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Goffman: Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Part 1: Concepts

1.      Impression Management

Erving Goffman prepared the key ideas behind the discussion on the values wherein the ideas in theorizing the social roles and relations that are present in the contemporary society. According to the book of Goffman, a person can demonstrate a role that can be also varied depending on their audience or the people around them. Those individuals as actors have an intention in manipulating the role that they play in aim to provide the others’ impressions pertaining to them. Usually, this occurs through the interaction of the individuals in their everyday life (Barnhart, 1994). Since the society presents the interactions that usually matters with the human social relations or group of life, there is a natural involvement of disciplines that goes right with the study of sociology including the economics, political science, and psychology because they all fall within the topic of human society. 

2.      Front stage and Back stage

Goffman’s dramaturgical model is seen and plays a valuable function in understanding the relationship within contemporary society. It is often referred as a concept that has mirrored the aspect of sociology (Giddens, 2009). Goffman’s elaboration on the ‘front stage’, ‘back stage’ and ‘performance’ addresses the functions in the society and is in part in the idea of social interactions and form a culture. Through this function, the society can understand the certain level of understanding that shapes the social interactions with others. Through Goffman’s work, the theories and relationships is discussed to recognize the power that shapes the social relations. In addition, the methodological choice of Goffman is filled with criticism and doubts regarding the validity of a research method. It is described that the research method Goffman established overemphasized the metaphors and paid a little scientific investigations in the social behavior. The use of metaphors as a form of analysis and describing the phenomenon in the society is an outline of the dramaturgical model, although being question in the validity of his theory, is still valued in the entire society.

3.      Performance Team

Goffman, presented the theory that tells us about the capacity of an individual to engage in manipulating their role in the society in several aspects. According to Goffman and his ideas towards the theatre regarding how the “individuals are, in essence, dramatic actors on a stage playing parts dictated by culture” and this explains on how the presentation can be accepted because of the emphasis on manipulation. Through the use of talents and the experience of those actors, they can be successful which in return; their role can be established for their audiences. Goffman emphasized the idea about the key on this successful performance which drives from their ability to control various information that audience has accessed to (Goffman, 1959).

4.      Barriers to Perception

In the shade of interdisciplinary fields, the oldest and most important would be the social psychology in which Goffman justified through explaining the things around and at present through the simple interaction. Actually, it is considered that the social interaction of the individuals is a separate discipline for the practitioners on the fields of sociology and psychology.  In the role of sociologists, they are primarily concerned on the social norms, and the structure of groups, while on the other hand, the social psychologists focuses on the roles and social norms or the elements found in sociologists and recognize the impacts of the individual personality (Barnhart, 1994). Many experts in sociology have studied the interaction that emerged smaller groups; such as their beliefs and understanding the attitudes within the population; and the shaping of personality through the experience of socialization, or the formulation of character and outlook under the influence or interaction with the family, education, friends, and others like the involvement on other social activities. The work of Sigmund Freud and his contemporaries in the field of psychoanalysis created significant contribution in the field of psychology. This might be also played a significant part in the study of Goffman in presenting one-self. 

Part 2: Applications

(1) What are the implications of impression management and identity management for both professional and personal settings?

Unlike the sociological theories wherein the individuals are linked with the disciplines early states, Goffman’s dramaturgical model outlines the existence of the human’s perspective on the stages where as an actor he usually plays. Giddens (2009) explains that there are situations within which an individual can act formal roles that is essential to present themselves. The performances, like the theatre sometime needs teamwork just to be successful. Managing the impression is an important concern of the actor or individual to deliver the kind of impressions about him. According to Goffman, he suggested that “when an individual appears before others, he will have many motives for trying to control the situation”. However, at the back of the stage or the contrast of what an individual shows, he is preparing for the role he is going to play. With regards to the theatre roles (profession), the individuals involved usually discuss and rehearse their performances before the presentation. To emphasize their roles, there are props which can be used and design appropriately for the actor and establish their role within a performance. The function of those props in general, is to assist the role of the actors and convince the audiences that the actors’ performances are true.

(2) What are some of the privacy and ethical concerns?

Actually, Goffman focuses on how the men are interacting with the society and his environment which mainly involves the changes in the objectives. In today, the development in the society came to the point where in the discussion leads to “human security” which became the certain aim and role of the networking sites, nowadays in order to develop the multidimensional activities. Through the development of the multi-dimensional activities in peace, the development in the social environment is aided. Furthermore, the changes in the international setting which affects the local and global norms of society are also enhanced. Therefore, a new generation of society is formed which is more focused on the issues of ethical considerations, security methods, conflict resolution and transformation of information (Mujtaba, et al., 2004).

(3) What are some of the other related social issues brought about by social media (for example, cyberbullying)?

Within the theories of sociology, there is a partial reversal of the previous direction of influence has occurred, with theoretical currents once again and the different ideas of sociologists. Aside from the changes in the society, particularly the introduction of social media, there are issues related to the theoretical diversification which introduced other concepts or subfields in the sociology such as the role of genders and its inequalities, relationships, interactions, aging, and so on (Mujtaba, et al., 2004).

(4) How applicable are Goffman’s concepts in today’s networked society?

Goffman’s works impressively left a great contribution in sociology and explaining the interaction of individuals as much as giving the light emphasize on how an individual represents in the crowd. Therefore, his part in sociological field of work is utilized to use as basis in developing the society in a most attractive way. The study of Goffman in explaining the behavior and attitudes of an individual and their significance in the entire society resulted in the dramaturgical model which interpreted on how an individual acted on his “audience” or other people. Despite of the representations that this model created in explaining those various attitudes and its connection with the changes and developments in the society, still, it creates a good structure on how an individual can act in front of others and gives the social networking sites to connect them.

References:

Barnhart, A., (1994) Erving Goffman: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life [Online] Available at: <http://www.cfmc.com/adamb/writings/goffman.htm> [Accessed 04 Aug 2011].

Giddens, A., (2009) Sociology (Sixth Edition). Cambridge: Polity.

Goffman, E., (1959) 'Performances' in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, New York: Double Day Anchor Books, pp. 22-30.

Mujtaba, B., Griffin, C., & Oskal, C., (2004) Emerging Ethical Issues in Technology and Countermeasures for Management and Leadership Consideration in the Twenty First Century’s Competitive Environment of Global Interdependence, Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, 9(3): 34