Universal Design for Learning at the Toledo Museum of Art: Mobile Learning Guide

The purpose of this project was to create a mobile learning guide based on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles that would help the casual visitor understand and engage with objects or exhibits located in the Toledo Museum of Art’s Classic Court. Adhering to the UDL principles (i.e., providing multiple means of representation, action and expression, and engagement), the guide showcased four artifacts in the gallery. The contents of the mobile learning guide included an orientation to the guide and the four artifacts highlighted within, an introduction to visual literacy, and a chapter for each artifact, containing information organized thematically. Two evaluations were conducted to qualify and quantify the success of this mobile learning guide. Feedback was positive for both, including suggestions for refinement and further application, which has been reviewed in the body of the report. Constructive suggestions recommended adding an iBook tutorial, more interactive content, and language that supported varied levels of ability. Results showed that the guide was ultimately successful in facilitating learning as identified by the Generic Learning Outcomes outlined by Hooper-Greenhill (2007)

The touristic sector in the 5G technology era: the 5G-TOURS project approach

5G mobile networks are designed to fulfill very stringent requirements and support new vertical use cases. This transition to a vertical oriented delivery model will have a strong impact in the touristic sector. In this context, the "touristic city node" of 5G-TOURS, built in the city of Turin, aims at exploiting the potential of the media vertical. The objective is to develop an innovative tourism concept based on complementary and linked trials for five specific use cases. The trials will promote an overall integrated indoor/outdoor immersive experience to the visitors using any possible device, enhancing the accessibility to the technology especially for disadvantaged and disabled people. They will also utilize 5G to drive "remote tourism" based on AR/VR experiences and bridge the gap between the physical and virtual worlds for tourism. This paper provides an overview of the 5G technology deployed in the touristic node, explaining the different services to be provided and discussing the need of 5G technology to support this vision. This work also assesses the business potential of each of the considered use cases, corroborating their potential in the context of future network services.This work was supported in part by the European Commission under the 5G-TOURS: SmarT mObility, media and e-health for toURists and citizenS (H2020-ICT-2018-2020 call, grant number 856950)

Boston Unplugged: Mapping a Wireless Future

Reviews a variety of models that would allow Boston to provide free or low-cost high-speed Internet access citywide. Outlines the benefits and mechanics of citywide WiFi, and lists factors to consider in designing, developing, and deploying a system

Rethinking 'multi-user': an in-the-wild study of how groups approach a walk-up-and-use tabletop interface

Multi-touch tabletops have been much heralded as an innovative technology that can facilitate new ways of group working. However, there is little evidence of these materialising outside of research lab settings. We present the findings of a 5-week in-the-wild study examining how a shared planning application – designed to run on a walk-up- and-use tabletop – was used when placed in a tourist information centre. We describe how groups approached, congregated and interacted with it and the social interactions that took place – noting how they were quite different from research findings describing the ways groups work around a tabletop in lab settings. We discuss the implications of such situated group work for designing collaborative tabletop applications for use in public settings

UbiComp in Opportunity Spaces: Challenges for Participatory Design

The rise of ubiquitous computing (UbiComp), where pervasive, wireless and disappearing technologies offer hitherto unavailable means of supporting activity, increasingly opens up ‘opportunity spaces’. These are spaces where there is no urgent problem to be solved, but much potential to augment and enhance practice in new ways. Based on our experience of co-designing novel user experiences for visitors to an English country estate, we discuss challenges for PD in such an opportunity space. Key amongst these are how to build a working relationship of value when there are no urgent requirements; how to understand and scope the space of opportunities; and how to leave users with new resources of value to them

Engineering Multimedia-Aware Personalized Ubiquitous Services

Ubiquitous computing focusing on users and tasks instead of devices and singular applications is an attractive vision for the future. Especially the idea of nomadic, mobile users poses new challenges on hardware and software. Mobile devices provide vastly different presentation capabilities and need to integrate into heterogeneous environments. Network bandwidth is far from being constant and services may be available only when online. This paper presents MUNDO, an infrastructure for ubiquitous computing that addresses these challenges. The infrastructure is intended to be non-monolithic with its parts supporting mobile computing using multi-modal user interfaces, mobile data delivery, and ad-hoc communication and networking

TechNews digests: Jan - Nov 2009

TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month

Empowering cultural heritage professionals with tools for authoring and deploying personalised visitor experiences

This paper presents an authoring environment, which supports cultural heritage professionals in the process of creating and deploying a wide range of different personalised interactive experiences that combine the physical (objects, collection and spaces) and the digital (multimedia content). It is based on a novel flexible formalism that represents the content and the context as independent from one another and allows recombining them in multiple ways thus generating many different interactions from the same elements. The authoring environment was developed in a co-design process with heritage stakeholders and addresses the composition of the content, the definition of the personalisation, and the deployment on a physical configuration of bespoke devices. To simplify the editing while maintaining a powerful representation, the complex creation process is deconstructed into a limited number of elements and phases, including aspects to control personalisation both in content and in interaction. The user interface also includes examples of installations for inspiration and as a means for learning what is possible and how to do it. Throughout the paper, installations in public exhibitions are used to illustrate our points and what our authoring environment can produce. The expressiveness of the formalism and the variety of interactive experiences that could be created was assessed via a range of laboratory tests, while a user-centred evaluation with over 40 cultural heritage professionals assessed whether they feel confident in directly controlling personalisation