ICTs and the Localisation of the Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are universally seen to be global in their nature and reach, but there is a growing acceptance that they have an important local dimension. At the same time, there is an increasing recognition of the need for appropriate Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to support and monitor the SDGs. This article adopts a qualitative inductive research approach in examining a range of public authority and academic source material, and framework analysis is used to record, categorise and critique this material. The findings provide an overview of the role of the SDGs at the local level and an assessment of how the localisation of the SDGs is being addressed in some urban areas within Western Europe. The findings also indicate how ICTs are being deployed to support the localisation process in Western Europe and the wider world. This is followed by a discussion of some emergent issues related to the localisation of the SDGs, including the increasingly important role of ICTs.

Service Computing for Industry 4.0: State of the Art, Challenges, and Research Opportunities

Recent advances in the large-scale adoption of information and communication technologies in manufacturing processes, known as Industry 4.0 or Smart Manufacturing, provide us a window into how the manufacturing sector will evolve in the coming decades. As a result of these initiatives, manufacturing firms have started to integrate a series of emerging technologies into their processes that will change the way products are designed, manufactured, and consumed. This article provides a comprehensive review of how service-oriented computing is being employed to develop the required software infrastructure for Industry 4.0 and identifies the major challenges and research opportunities that ensue. Particular attention is paid to the microservices architecture, which is increasingly recognized as offering a promising approach for developing innovative industrial applications. This literature review is based on the current state of the art on service computing for Industry 4.0 as described in a large corpus of recently published research papers, which helped us to identify and explore a series of challenges and opportunities for the development of this emerging technology frontier, with the goal of facilitating its widespread adoption.

Internet of Things for Future Smart City Using 5G Networks

The future of cities lies in blending new technologies with existing infrastructure to tackle tangible, pressing issues such as environmental sustainability and economic opportunities. The enormous pressure towards efficient city initiatives by both government and private sector businesses to invest in Information and Communication Technologies to find sustainable solutions to diverse opportunities and challenges (e.g., waste management). Future smart cities are the key to fulfill the ever growing demands of citizens. Successful smart cities will build a strong, flexible, digital infrastructure that integrates new technology into existing structures. The main goal of a smart city is to optimize city functions and promote economic growth while also improving the quality of life for citizens by using smart technologies and data analysis. According to a new report from @NavigantRSRCH, there are more than 250 smart city projects from178 cities around the world, and the majority focus on government and energy, initiatives, followed by transportation. Keywords: 5G network, Internet of things (IOT), Smart Waste Management System, Safety and Security, Sustainable

Toward People’s Community Control of Technology: Race, Access, and Education

This field review explores how the benefits of access to computing for racialized and minoritized communities has become an accepted fact in policy and research, despite decades of evidence that technical fixes do not solve the kinds of complex social problems that disproportionately affect these communities. I use the digital divide framework—a 1990s policy diagnosis that argues that the growth and success of the internet would bifurcate the public into digital “haves” and “have-nots”—as a lens to look at why access to computing frequently appears as a means to achieve economic, political, and social equality for racialized and minoritized communities. First, I present a brief cultural history of computer-assisted instruction to show that widely-held assumptions about the educational utility of computing emerged from utopian narratives about scientific progress and innovation—narratives that also traded on raced and gendered assumptions about users of computers. Next, I use the advent of the digital divide framework and its eventual transformation into digital inequality research to show how those raced and gendered norms about computing and computer users continue to inform research on information and communication technologies (ICTs) used in educational contexts. This is important because the norms implicated in digital divide research are also present in other sites where technology and civic life intersect, including democratic participation, public health, and immigration, among others. I conclude by arguing that naïve or cynical deployments of computing technology can actually harm or exploit the very same racialized and minoritized communities that access is supposed to benefit. In short, access to computing in education—or in any other domain—can only meaningfully contribute to equality when minoritized and racialized communities are allowed to pursue their own collective goals.

Information and communication technologies in food services and restaurants: a systematic review

Purpose Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are a key player in the food services and restaurants sector; thus, the aim of this work consists in studying the previous research on ICTs in food services and restaurants in the context of tourism and hospitality through a systematic literature review. Design/methodology/approach The systematic literature review is performed on full papers published in journals included in the Journal Citation Report of the WoS in the category of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism. A total of 165 articles from 28 journals are analyzed, following different criteria, such as the research methods, perspectives, statistical techniques, geographical focus, topics, technologies, authors and universities. Findings The restaurant sector is more and more based on the creation of experiences and ICTs, through their multiple possibilities, can undoubtedly contribute to adding value to the simple meal and create and recreate experiences to attract and retain customers who are increasingly sophisticated and hooked on ICTs. ICTs are basic for managers taking decision at the highest level in food services and restaurants, so ICTs should not be seen as a technical tool but as an essential element for top management. Research limitations/implications This paper examined articles from very well-known tourism and hospitality journals, leaving aside others as well as different publication formats such as books or papers presented at conferences. Originality/value A significant contribution made with this paper is the availability of a list of topics in the context of ICTs in food services and restaurants. These topics are classified into three areas (Consumers, Suppliers and Environment and Tendencies) that can serve as a future research framework. The paper also provides useful information to restaurant managers about ICTs, to researchers for their future projects and to academics for their courses.

The role of ICT for school leadership and management activities: an international comparison

PurposeInformation and communication technologies (ICT) has an increasing impact on schools. School leaders play a key role in this context as drivers of innovation including those related to ICT. Against this background, the study presented in this article focuses on school leadership and management activities with ICT and related challenges. It sought to analyze how frequently German school principals use ICT compared to principals in other countries, what distinct clusters of German principals could be identified in terms of ICT usage and how principals viewed ICT in schools and related challenges.Design/methodology/approachA mixed-methods approach was chosen, using quantitative data from both the international comparative large-scale assessment study ICILS 2018 and the explorative qualitative data from Germany. For the international comparison, the school principal data sets of the 12 international participants of the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) 2018 were taken into account: Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Kazakhstan, Republic of Korea, Luxembourg, Portugal, Uruguay and the United States. To look beyond averaged frequencies, a latent class analysis (LCA) was conducted to identify possible clusters of school leaders with distinct usage patterns of ICT for leadership and management activities.FindingsThe results indicate that, in general, German principals use ICT for leadership and management activities on a similar level as their international colleagues. However, they seem to communicate with education authorities significantly more often than their international colleagues, whereas representative activities (presentations, home page) are rather infrequent. The qualitative data point to significant barriers to fully harnessing the potential of using ICT for leadership, management and school improvement such as lack of competencies and lack of adequate support.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that focuses on school leadership and management activities using ICT with such a data set. The results provide insights into how German principals use ICT to lead and manage their schools compared to their international counterparts. The qualitative data offers additional insights into possible reasons hindering a more effective use of ICT.

Current State of High-School Students’ Multiliteracy after a Year of Online Lessons in the Context of Chile

<p style="text-align: justify;">The worldwide pandemic Coronavirus disease, affected every aspect of people’s lives due to being locked at their homes, therefore many difficulties began to appear, especially in education. Scholars were the leading group that has been affected the most due to the online lessons that began from one day to another, without any kind of previous training specifically in these types of contexts at home. According to some national diagnostical studies, most of the students could not achieve the minimum educational objectives in mathematics and language, which are the essential subjects in Chilean education. In this study, in which qualitative phenomenology analysis was used, the aim was to reveal the current state of students after a whole year of online lessons in terms of personal technological use and personal perceptions about e-learning. In this study, in which the criterion sampling was used, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 adolescents from different sorts of schools who experienced online lessons using their previous personal knowledge in Information and Communication Technologies. The data were analyzed in Nvivo node tree, which revealed six main themes that define the experience and personal perception of the participants: adaptation to the new order, learning by their own, how to use better the technology, use of social media, new ways of personal knowledge sharing, importance of classmates. It is believed that the results obtained from this study will contribute to schools’ view of learning and teaching education in the 21st century and to improve students’ experiences in online lessons.</p>

Fish Farmers’ Willingness to Pay for Improved Information and Communication Technologies During COVID-19: A Case of Ibadan, Nigeria

Coronavirus has disrupted aquaculture activities at all levels. The pandemic has had effect on farmer&rsquo;s input, output, market, revenue, and contact with Extension officers. To reduce the growing effect of the pandemic, the use of Information Communication Technologies has become necessary as farmers can get easy access to extension agents and monitor farm activities while reducing exposure to the virus. Hence, this research was conducted to determine fish farmer&rsquo;s willingness to pay for improved Information Communication Technologies in bridging the gap caused by the Coronavirus outbreak. The study used cross-sectional survey with data collected from Ibadan, Nigeria. Simple random sampling technique was used to select a sample size of 40 farmers. Primary data was analysed using StataSE13.0 and the results revealed that; 80% of farmers were affected by Coronavirus and acknowledged that Information Communication Technologies play a role in their activities (55%). The probit regression revealed that the scale of operation, age of farmer, household size, status in the household, and usage of Information Communication Technologiess were found to be statistically significant determinants of farmer&rsquo;s willingness to pay. These points to the fact that improved Information Communication Technologies are relevant to sustain aquaculture output in the face of Coronavirus. The study recommends that the government, the ministry for aquaculture, and stakeholders in aquaculture should support small-scale in the form of training, credit and provision of support systems to help them acquire and use improved ICTs.

Digital Leisure: An Opportunity for Intergenerational Well-Being in Times of Pandemic?

Leisure activities shared by grandparents and grandchildren provide important benefits. The health and humanitarian crisis caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has made it necessary to use digital tools to alleviate the lack of contact between adults and children. This paper had as its aim to identify the digital leisure shared by grandparents and their pre-adolescent grandchildren (10-12 years old) before and during the pandemic, as well as its contribution to intergenerational well-being from a holistic paradigm, ultimately aiming to determine whether that digital leisure constitutes an experience of human development for young and old people alike. The sample was made up of 153 grandparents of 10-to-12-year-old children living in the north of Spain. Alongside the use of an ad hoc questionnaire, descriptive and inferential analyses were carried out. Most intergenerational leisure activities ceased to be performed during the lockdown, except for those that could be carried out remotely, thanks to information and communication technologies, which ensured the continuity of social and family interactions. Technological connectivity between generations provided greater support to communication and meaningful relationships, additionally facilitating active aging processes.