Teaching Cultural Heritage using Mobile Augmented Reality

open2noThe relationship between augmented reality, mobile learning, gamification and non-formal education methods provide a great potential. The AR-CIMUVE Augmented Reality for the Walled Cities of the Veneto is an original project in collaboration with Italia Nostra and other associations which deal with transmitting our cultural heritage and which teach primary and middle school children the cultural and historical importance of the Veneto’s and the surrounding territories’ walled cities. In this learning experience students will explore how our environment has developed across the ages using the mobile devices with the technical back-up of the AR App. This will allow them to see maps, examine data, 3D models and will enable them to judge and improve their skills. From a pedagogical and educational point of view the emphasis is on a constructivist social-cultural approach which helps students to become active citizens more aware of their historical identity.openPetrucco, Corrado; Agostini, DanielePetrucco, Corrado; Agostini, Daniel

Potential Improvements to National Park Service Visitor Surveys and Money Generation Modeling in Alaska

This study presents options for improving the use of the Money Generation Model in National Park Service (NPS) land units in Alaska. The Money Generation Model (MGM) is used nationwide to model economic impacts of visitation to public lands, including National Park Units. This analysis identifies potential improvements to the application of the MGM model and visitor survey processes for use in Alaska. Improvements include changes to visitor intercept methods to improve statistical reliability of the sampling process and a more representative sample, changes in the survey instrument to more accurately reflect Alaska visitor travel and expenditure patterns, and better identification of the economic sphere of influence of Alaska national park units.National Park Service, Alaska Director's Office. National Park Conservation Association, Alaska Office.Abstract / Introduction / Purpose of Analysis / Potential Improvements to Visitor Survey and Economic Impact Model / National MGM Economic Impact Estimates / Summary / References / Appendix A. Katmai National Park and Preserve 2006 VSP Survey Instrument / Appendix B. Survey Questions Suggested Re-Write / Appendix C. Maps Showing Access to Alaska National Parks / Appendix D. Alaska Visitor Statistics Survey Instrumen

Demonstrating the feasibility of standardized application program interfaces that will allow mobile/portable terminals to receive services combining UMTS and DVB-T

Crucial to the commercial exploitation of any service combining UMTS and DVB-T is the availability of standardized API’s adapted to the hybrid UMTS and DVB-T network and to the technical limitations of mobile/portable terminals. This paper describes work carried out in the European Commission Framework Program 5 (FP5) project CONFLUENT to demonstrate the feasibility of such Application Program Interfaces (API’s) by enabling the reception of a Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) based application transmitted over DVB-T on five different terminals with parts of the service running on a mobile phone

Reverse Engineering from Assembler to Formal Specifications via Program Transformations

The FermaT transformation system, based on research carried out over the last sixteen years at Durham University, De Montfort University and Software Migrations Ltd., is an industrial-strength formal transformation engine with many applications in program comprehension and language migration. This paper is a case study which uses automated plus manually-directed transformations and abstractions to convert an IBM 370 Assembler code program into a very high-level abstract specification.Comment: 10 page

Analysing the navigational aspect

The Internet and web applications have increased their popularity in the last few years. This boom has provoked the use of new approaches for web-based applications. These new methodologies try to address some new concerns which have appeared in this field and weren’t in traditional methodologies. One of these concerns is navigation. At the same time, it has been proved that there are some concerns that aren’t well treated with the traditional abstraction mechanisms ((functions, objects). They scatter by all the code of the program. This paper tries to join both approaches, crossing the gap between the design level proposed in the methodologies and the implementation level, using for it the proposed ideas in the area of the advanced separation of concerns

Separating the navigational aspect

The first step given to separate concepts in web environments has been to take apart presentation from data. This split has been gotten due to the appearance of the Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) and the application of style sheets. The new ideas from the advanced separation of concerns community and the new abstractions like aspects make us think this original division isn’t rich enough. There are important concepts of Internet applications that should be defined separately. If we look at new web design methodologies, we can realize that one of these aspects is navigation. Following the way started by XML, we propose the use of the XML Linking Language (XLink) as a first stage to obtain the separation of the navigational aspect

Eliciting Public Preferences For Managing Cultural Heritage Sites: Evidence from a Case study on the Temples Of Paestum

This paper discusses ways of improving the management of cultural heritage sites and cities, focusing on new forms of involvement and public participation based on public preferences’ elicitation. The problem of city governance and of the appropriate level of democratic participation needs an integrated approach, capable of bridging the practice of urban design, conservation of the built environment and decision-making support system. This paper reports results from a survey using conjoint choice approach questions to elicit people’s preferences for cultural heritage management strategies for an outstanding world heritage site: the Temples of Paestum, in Italy. The potential of the above-mentioned methodologies’ within the current cultural heritage research scenario is also discussed.

URBANO: A Tour-Guide Robot Learning to Make Better Speeches

—Thanks to the numerous attempts that are being made to develop autonomous robots, increasingly intelligent and cognitive skills are allowed. This paper proposes an automatic presentation generator for a robot guide, which is considered one more cognitive skill. The presentations are made up of groups of paragraphs. The selection of the best paragraphs is based on a semantic understanding of the characteristics of the paragraphs, on the restrictions defined for the presentation and by the quality criteria appropriate for a public presentation. This work is part of the ROBONAUTA project of the Intelligent Control Research Group at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid to create "awareness" in a robot guide. The software developed in the project has been verified on the tour-guide robot Urbano. The most important aspect of this proposal is that the design uses learning as the means to optimize the quality of the presentations. To achieve this goal, the system has to perform the optimized decision making, in different phases. The modeling of the quality index of the presentation is made using fuzzy logic and it represents the beliefs of the robot about what is good, bad, or indifferent about a presentation. This fuzzy system is used to select the most appropriate group of paragraphs for a presentation. The beliefs of the robot continue to evolving in order to coincide with the opinions of the public. It uses a genetic algorithm for the evolution of the rules. With this tool, the tour guide-robot shows the presentation, which satisfies the objectives and restrictions, and automatically it identifies the best paragraphs in order to find the most suitable set of contents for every public profil

The Science Studio – A Workshop Approach to Introductory Physical Science

This paper describes the Science Studio, an innovative workshop approach for instruction in a physical science course that combines aspects of traditional lecture and laboratory. The target audience for this introductory course is non-science majors, including prospective teachers. An inquiry-based, technology-rich learning environment has been created to allow students hands-on, in-depth exploration of topics in physics, and earth and space science. Course philosophy, course development, and sample activities are described in this paper, along with outcomes from a project-wide evaluation of the Virginia Collaborative for Excellence in the Preparation of Teachers (VCEPT), an investigation of change in student attitudes and the lasting impact of the studio model at Norfolk State University