As a monk, he was known for his very severe asceticism. Against his will, he was made Bishop of Zahum, where he served his flock faithfully for many years, "keeping it from the cruelty of the Turks and the guile of the Latins" (Prologue). When his monastery was destroyed by the Turks he moved to Ostrog, where he reposed. His body has remained whole, incorrupt, healing and wonderworking to this day. Innumerable miracles have been worked at his grave; both Christians and Muslims seek out his relics for healing from sicknesses and sufferings.   (A story heard from a parishioner at St Basil of Ostrog Church in Illinois: while the Saint's relics remain intact, reputedly his shoes wear out from time to time and need to be replaced.)

In this episode, Fr. Anthony talks with Dn. Michael about three ideal types of parish music; choir, kliros, and congregational. They discuss their attributes, what is required to sustain them, and the way each brings glory to God in its own way. Enjoy the show!

Steve and Christian geek out over Rogue One on their annual Star Wars podcast. They talk about the Force, sacrifice, and the difference between hope and optimism. They end with the top 5 Vader moments.

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen! This is the anthem of Pascha, and since it was in fact Holy Week and Pascha last week, we have decided to "go lite" this program hour and air a 20-minute interview segment we did last month with local Phoenix evangelical drive-time radio program host Andrew Tallman in lieu of a full study hour. So enjoy, and next week we'll tackle another topic. A blessed Bright Week to all.

Steve and Bill got invited to fill in for the vacationing Andrew Tallman, the afternoon drive time talk show host on 1360 KPXQ, the Phoenix area SALEM evangelical radio station. It is a two-hour show from 5 to 7pm, so we are posting the first hour of the program this week and the second hour next week.

Fr. Apostolos shares about spiritual progress on the Sunday of St. John of the Ladder.

How can we progress in our lives as Christians? What principle gives us the ability to progress in our lives? Trying to answer that question, Fr. Dn. Emmanuel called this sermon “The Progress Principle.” The sermon included a science illustration about how catalysts work. This YouTube video will show you the same experiment.

John Maddex interviews Dr. Costas Athanasopoulos of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies about the school's new Distance Learning Program.

Bobby Maddex interviews Valerie Yova of Project Mexico about the ministry's school-buddies program.

Bobby Maddex interviews Kenneth Kidd, the Annual Gifts Officer for the Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC), about OCMC's Agape Canister Program.

Archpriest Gregory Hallam who publishes his sermons here on the Voice from the Isles podcast also hosts on the UK Antiochian Deanery website a three-year diploma in Orthodox theology. The course has the bishop’s blessing, and a distance learning option is available. Fr. Gregory offers this taster podcast from the third year, Lecture 61. If you are interested in this course please visit this web page for details:- http://www.antiochian-orthodox.co.uk/e-quip.htm

Bobby Maddex interviews Dr. David Frost, the principal and administrator of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, England, about the institute's Distance Learning Program, which is currently accepting new applicants.

Dr. Nicholas Reeves, an assistant professor of liturgical music at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, and Dr. Peter Bouteneff, an associate professor of systematic theology at the school, talk about a number of exciting developments at St. Vlad's with regard to music, including what's called the Arvo Pärt Project.

Bobby Maddex interviews Nick Papas, an Orthodox iconographer and artist living in Houston, Texas, who will be exhibiting on February 15 a dozen non-liturgical paintings of the post-schism Western saint known as Drogo the Ugly.

Bobby Maddex interviews George Matsoukas, the Executive Director of Orthodox Christian Laity (OCL), and Alexei Krindatch, the Research Coordinator of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America, about the upcoming OCL Program Meeting at St. Vladimir's Seminary.

We talk with Professor David Frost from the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies program in Cambridge about their new Master of Arts degree, available 100% on line.

Professor Gary Jenkins joins us to talk about a Young Scholars Summer Program at Eastern University. One week in July exposing high schoolers to a Great Books approach to education. Two college credits granted!

Fr. Gregory Hallam joins us from St. Aidan's Orthodox Church in Manchester, United Kingdom, to speak about a new educational program for children designed to teach them about the Orthodox Faith. It is freely available worldwide and it is called Followers. This program is under the pastoral leadership of Metropolitan Silouan, primate of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of the British Isles and Ireland.

Bobby Maddex interviews Dr. Christoph Schneider, the Academic Director of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, about the institute's two new MA programs.

Preaching on the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), Fr. Pat urges us to always maintain a proper perspective.

Dan Evans speaks to BBC Breakfast's John Watson before playing for Great Britain in the Davis Cup Finals group stage in Manchester.

Defending champion Mark Allen advances to the semi-finals of the Champion of Champions tournament by beating Jak Jones 6-4 in the Group One final.

Prices in the US rose 2.6% over the 12 months to October, driven by more expensive food and groceries.

Taxpayers lose with poorly designed site preparation program

Une gigantesque panne d'électricité a affecté lundi une large partie du Pakistan, dont ses plus grandes villes Lahore et Karachi, avant que les autorités n'annoncent en soirée le retour progressif du courant.

Les coupures d'électricité sont fréquentes au Pakistan, englué depuis des années dans de graves problèmes budgétaires et énergétiques, et dont le système de distribution est complexe et vétuste.

La panne a été causée par un dysfonctionnement survenu à 07H30 locales (02H30 GMT) à la suite de mesures d'économies prises sur le réseau.

"Nous espérons que le courant sera rétabli partout dans le pays d'ici ce (lundi) soir", a déclaré dans un communiqué vidéo le ministre de l'Energie, Khurram Dastagir Khan.

La nuit avançant, il a assuré sur Twitter que l'électricité commençait à être rétablie progressivement.

Le ministère a tweeté que le courant était revenu dans le centre d'Islamabad et à Gujranwala, à quelque 200 km au sud-est de la capitale.

M. Khan a également retweeté le message d'un usager qui se félicitait qu'il y ait à nouveau "de la lumière à Lahore", la deuxième ville la plus peuplée du pays, avec plus de 10 millions d'habitants.

La panne a été causée par une variation de la fréquence électrique sur le réseau national, au redémarrage des unités de production électrique lundi matin.

Ces unités sont temporairement éteintes la nuit en hiver pour économiser du carburant, a expliqué M. Khan à la presse.

La plupart des hôpitaux, industries et institutions gouvernementales sont équipées de générateurs. Mais les ménages et petits commerces n'ont souvent pas les moyens de s'offrir un tel équipement.

Dans le nord du Pakistan, les températures devaient tomber lundi soir en dessous de 0°. Le chauffage au gaz est le plus répandu, mais n'est pas non plus toujours très fiable, les délestages étant fréquents en raison d'une pénurie de gaz.

Les réseaux de téléphonie mobile ont été également perturbés par la panne, selon un tweet du régulateur pakistanais des télécoms.

L'économie pakistanaise est déjà chancelante avec une inflation galopante, une devise nationale - la roupie - en chute libre et des réserves de change au plus bas. Une telle coupure d'électricité ne fait qu'accroître la pression sur les petits commerces.

A Rawalpindi, ville voisine de la capitale, Muhammad Iftikhar Sheikh, 71 ans, un vendeur d'électroménager, a déploré ne pas pouvoir tester ses appareils devant les clients.

"Les clients n'achètent jamais sans essayer d'abord", pestait-il. Du coup, "on est tous assis là, à ne rien faire".

Dans les écoles, les cours ont souvent eu lieu dans la pénombre, pour celles ne disposant pas d'éclairage sur batterie.

A Karachi (sud), où les températures étaient plus élevées, un commerçant a indiqué à l'AFP craindre que son stock entier de produits laitiers ne soit perdu, sans réfrigération.

Et Khurrum Khan, un imprimeur de 39 ans, voyait les commandes s'empiler, sans pouvoir y répondre. Les problèmes d'électricité sont "une malédiction permanente dont nos gouvernements n'ont pas réussi à se débarrasser", regrettait-il.

Une panne similaire en janvier 2021 avait plongé l'essentiel de ce pays de 220 millions d'habitants dans le noir pendant plusieurs heures, après qu'un dysfonctionnement technique dans le sud eut déclenché une réaction en chaîne dans plusieurs centrales électriques.

Les coupures d'électricité sont un problème récurrent au Pakistan. Mais la situation s'est encore détériorée ces derniers mois, la situation financière dramatique du pays aggravant un peu plus ses difficultés d'approvisionnement énergétique.

Les ménages ont été touchés, mais l'industrie également, notamment le textile, qui représente environ 60% des exportations pakistanaises.

To achieve the benefits as much as possible, it is required to identify the available PEV capacity and prepare scheduling plans based on that. The analysis revealed that the risk-based scheduling of the microgrid could reduce the financial risk completely from $9.89 to $0.00 and increases the expected operation cost by 24% from $91.38 to $112.94, in turn. This implies that the risk-averse decision-maker tends to spend more money to reduce the expected risk-in-cost by using the proposed downside risk management technique. At the end, by the help of fuzzy satisfying method, the suitable risk-averse strategy is determined for the studied case.

Constrained programming is the concept used to select possible alternatives from an incredibly diverse range of candidates. This paper proposes an AI-assisted Backtracking Scheme (AI-BS) by integrating the generic backtracking algorithm with Artificial Intelligence (AI). The detailed study observes that the extreme dual ray associated with the infeasible linear program can be automatically extracted from minimum unfeasible sets. Constraints are used in artificial intelligence to list all possible values for a group of variables in a given universe. To put it another way, a solution is a way of assigning a value to each variable that these values satisfy all constraints. Furthermore, this helps the study reach a decreased search area for smart backtracking without paying high costs. The evaluation results exhibit that the IB-BC algorithm-based smart electricity schedule controller performs better electricity bill during the scheduled periods than comparison approaches such as binary backtracking and binary particle swarm optimiser.

Teaching advanced programming can be a challenge, especially when the students are pursuing different majors with diverse analytical and problem-solving capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to explore the efficacy of using a particular problem as a vehicle for imparting a broad set of programming concepts and problem-solving techniques. We present a classic brain teaser that is used to communicate and demonstrate advanced software development concepts and techniques. Our results show that students with varied academic experiences and goals, assuming at least one procedural/structured programming pre-requisite, can benefit from and also be challenged by such an exercise. Although this problem has been used by others in the classroom, we believe that our use of this problem in imparting such a broad range of topics to a diverse student population is unique.

Pair programming is a collaborative programming practice that places participants in dyads, working in tandem at one computer to complete programming assignments. Pair programming studies with Computer Science (CS) and Software Engineering (SE) majors have identified benefits such as technical productivity, program/design quality, academic performance, and increased satisfaction for their participants. In this paper, pair programming is studied with Management Information Systems (MIS) majors, who (unlike CS and SE majors taking several programming courses) typically take only one programming course and often struggle to develop advanced programming skills within that single course. The researchers conducted two pair programming experiments in an introductory software development course for MIS majors over three semesters to determine if pair programming could enhance learning for MIS students. The program results, researchers’ direct observations, and participants’ responses to a survey questionnaire were analyzed after each experiment. The results indicate that pair programming appears to be beneficial to MIS students’ technical productivity and program design quality, specifically the ability to create programs using high-level concepts. Additionally, results confirmed increased student satisfaction and reduced frustration, as the pairs worked collaboratively to produce a program while actively communicating and enjoying the process.

The nexus between paid work and study is important. Developing opportunities to facilitate this link is a key part of good course design especially in postgraduate programs. Strong communities of practice can also assist with improving links between research and practice. The online study environment affords some challenges to achieving these goals. The current study proposes that offering formalised interaction points— synchronous or asynchronous— during online study, is critical to facilitating the link between work and study. Twenty-five graduates of a postgraduate program were interviewed to explore their experiences of an online program of study. Three key themes emerged and are described in this paper: engaging with study, building a new framework for my practice, and implementing changes to my practice. Online learning programs need to embed opportunities for interaction that are meaningful and allow for development of ideas and discussion, aiming to take learning beyond the program of study.

Prior work demonstrates the importance of introducing young children to programming and engineering content before gender stereotypes are fully developed and ingrained in later years. However, very little research on gender and early childhood technology interventions exist. This pilot study looks at N=45 children in kindergarten through second grade who completed an eight-week robotics and programming curriculum using the KIWI robotics kit. KIWI is a developmentally appropriate robotics construction set specifically designed for use with children ages 4 to 7 years old. Qualitative pre-interviews were administered to determine whether participating children had any gender-biased attitudes toward robotics and other engineering tools prior to using KIWI in their classrooms. Post-tests were administered upon completion of the curriculum to determine if any gender differences in achievement were present. Results showed that young children were beginning to form opinions about which technologies and tools would be better suited for boys and girls. While there were no significant differences between boys and girls on the robotics and simple programming tasks, boys performed significantly better than girls on the advanced programming tasks such as, using repeat loops with sensor parameters. Implications for the design of new technological tools and curriculum that are appealing to boys and girls are discussed.

The Hour of Code is a one-hour introduction to computer science organized by Code.org, a non-profit dedicated to expanding participation in computer science. This study investigated the impact of the Hour of Code on students’ attitudes towards computer programming and their knowledge of programming. A sample of undergraduate students from two universities was selected to participate. Participants completed an Hour of Code tutorial as part of an undergraduate course. An electronic questionnaire was implemented in a pre-survey and post-survey format to gauge the change in student attitudes toward programming and their programming ability. The findings indicated the positive impact of the Hour of Code tutorial on students’ attitude toward programming. However, the students’ programming skills did not significantly change. The authors suggest that a deeper alignment of marketing, teaching, and content would help sustain the type of initiative exemplified by the Hour of Code.

This paper examines how to leverage the design studio learning environment throughout long-term Digital Design education in order to support students to progress from tactical, well-defined, device-centric routine design, to confidently design sustainable solutions for strategic, complex, problems for a wide range of devices and platforms in the digital space. We present a framework derived from literature on design, creativity, and theories on learning that: (a) implements a theory of formal learning sequences as a user-centered design process in the studio; and (b) describes design challenge progressions in the design studio environment modeled in seven dimensions. The framework can be used as a tool for designing, evaluating, and communicating course progressions within – and between series of – design studio courses. This approach is evaluated by implementing a formal learning sequence framework in a series of design studio courses that progress in an undergraduate design-oriented Informatics program. Reflections from students, teachers, and external clients indicate high student motivation and learning goal achievement, high teacher satisfaction and skill development, and high satisfaction among external clients.

Aim/Purpose: Compared student academic performance on specific course requirements in a C# programming course across three instructional approaches: traditional, online, and flipped. Background: Addressed the following research question: When compared to the online and traditional instructional approaches, does the flipped instructional approach have a greater impact on student academic performance with specific course requirements in a C# programming course? Methodology: Quantitative research design conducted over eight 16-week semesters among a total of 271 participants who were undergraduate students en-rolled in a C# programming course. Data collected were grades earned from specific course requirements and were analyzed with the nonparametric Kruskal Wallis H-Test using IBM SPSS Statistics, Version 23. Contribution: Provides empirical findings related to the impact that different instructional approaches have on student academic performance in a C# programming course. Also describes implications and recommendations for instructors of programming courses regarding instructional approaches that facilitate active learning, student engagement, and self-regulation. Findings: Resulted in four statistically significant findings, indicating that the online and flipped instructional approaches had a greater impact on student academic performance than the traditional approach. Recommendations for Practitioners: Implement instructional approaches such as online, flipped, or blended which foster active learning, student engagement, and self-regulation to increase student academic performance. Recommendation for Researchers: Build upon this study and others similar to it to include factors such as gender, age, ethnicity, and previous academic history. Impact on Society: Acknowledge the growing influence of technology on society as a whole. Higher education coursework and programs are evolving to encompass more digitally-based learning contexts, thus compelling faculty to utilize instructional approaches beyond the traditional, lecture-based approach. Future Research: Increase the number of participants in the flipped instructional approach to see if it has a greater impact on student academic performance. Include factors beyond student academic performance to include gender, age, ethnicity, and previous academic history.

Aim/Purpose: The aims of this study were to investigate the feasibility of automatic assessment of programming tasks and to compare manual assessment with automatic assessment in terms of the effect of the different assessment methods on the marks of the students. Background: Manual assessment of programs written by students can be tedious. The assistance of automatic assessment methods might possibly assist in reducing the assessment burden, but there may be drawbacks diminishing the benefits of applying automatic assessment. The paper reports on the experience of a lecturer trying to introduce automated grading. Students’ solutions to a practical Java programming test were assessed both manually and automatically and the lecturer tied the experience to the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). Methodology: The participants were 226 first-year students registered for a Java programming course. Of the tests the participants submitted, 214 were assessed both manually and automatically. Various statistical methods were used to compare the manual assessment of student’s solutions with the automatic assessment of the same solutions. A detailed investigation of reasons for differences was also carried out. A further data collection method was the lecturer’s reflection on the feasibility of automatic assessment of programming tasks based on the UTAUT. Contribution: This study enhances the knowledge regarding benefits and drawbacks of automatic assessment of students’ programming tasks. The research contributes to the UTAUT by applying it in a context where it has hardly been used. Furthermore, the study is a confirmation of previous work stating that automatic assessment may be less reliable for students with lower marks, but more trustworthy for the high achieving students. Findings: An automatic assessment tool verifying functional correctness might be feasible for assessment of programs written during practical lab sessions but could be less useful for practical tests and exams where functional, conceptual and structural correctness should be evaluated. In addition, the researchers found that automatic assessment seemed to be more suitable for assessing high achieving students. Recommendations for Practitioners: This paper makes it clear that lecturers should know what assessment goals they want to achieve. The appropriate method of assessment should be chosen wisely. In addition, practitioners should be aware of the drawbacks of automatic assessment before choosing it. Recommendation for Researchers: This work serves as an example of how researchers can apply the UTAUT theory when conducting qualitative research in different contexts. Impact on Society: The study would be of interest to lecturers considering automated assessment. The two assessments used in the study are typical of the way grading takes place in practice and may help lecturers understand what could happen if they switch from manual to automatic assessment. Future Research: Investigate the feasibility of automatic assessment of students’ programming tasks in a practical lab environment while accounting for structural, functional and conceptual assessment goals.

Aim/Purpose: The goal of this paper is to examine whether having female robotics teachers positively impacts girls’ performance on programming and robotics tasks Background: Women continue to be underrepresented in the technical STEM fields such as engineering and computer science. New programs and initiatives are needed to engage girls in STEM beginning in early childhood. The goal of this work is to explore the impact of teacher gender on young children’s mastery of programming concepts after completing an introductory robotics program. Methodology: A sample of N=105 children from six classrooms (2 Kindergarten, 2 first grade, and 2 second grade classes) from a public school in Somerville, Massachusetts, participated in this research. Children were taught the same robotics curriculum by either an all-male or all-female teaching team. Upon completion of the curriculum, they completed programming knowledge assessments called Solve-Its. Comparisons between the performance of boys and girls in each of the teaching groups were made. Findings: This paper provides preliminary evidence that having a female instructor may positively impact girls’ performance on certain programming tasks and reduce the number of gender differences between boys and girls in their mastery of programming concepts. Recommendations for Practitioners: Practitioners should expose children to STEM role-models from a variety of backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, and experiences. Future Research: Researchers should conduct future studies with larger samples of teachers in order to replicate the findings here. Additionally, future research should focus on collecting data from teachers in the form of interviews and surveys in order to find out more about gender-based differences in teaching style and mentorship and the impact of this on girls' interest and performance in STEM.

Aim/Purpose: This paper presents a data mining approach for analyzing responses to advanced declarative programming questions. The goal of this research is to find a model that can explain the results obtained by students when they perform exams with Constructed Response questions and with equivalent Multiple-Choice Questions. Background: The assessment of acquired knowledge is a fundamental role in the teaching-learning process. It helps to identify the factors that can contribute to the teacher in the developing of pedagogical methods and evaluation tools and it also contributes to the self-regulation process of learning. However, better format of questions to assess declarative programming knowledge is still a subject of ongoing debate. While some research advocates the use of constructed responses, others emphasize the potential of multiple-choice questions. Methodology: A sensitivity analysis was applied to extract useful knowledge from the relevance of the characteristics (i.e., the input variables) used for the data mining process to compute the score. Contribution: Such knowledge helps the teachers to decide which format they must consider with respect to the objectives and expected students results. Findings: The results shown a set of factors that influence the discrepancy between answers in both formats. Recommendations for Practitioners: Teachers can make an informed decision about whether to choose multiple-choice questions or constructed-response taking into account the results of this study. Recommendation for Researchers: In this study a block of exams with CR questions is verified to complement the area of learning, returning greater performance in the evaluation of students and improving the teaching-learning process. Impact on Society: The results of this research confirm the findings of several other researchers that the use of ICT and the application of MCQ is an added value in the evaluation process. In most cases the student is more likely to succeed with MCQ, however if the teacher prefers to evaluate with CR other research approaches are needed. Future Research: Future research must include other question formats.