A Pedagogy for Original Synners

Part of the Volume on Digital Young, Innovation, and the UnexpectedThis essay begins by speculating about the learning environment of the class of 2020. It takes place entirely in a virtual world, populated by simulated avatars, managed through the pedagogy of gaming. Based on this projected version of a future-now-in-formation, the authors consider the implications of the current paradigm shift that is happening at the edges of institutions of higher education. From the development of programs in multimedia literacy to the focus on the creation of hybrid learning spaces (that combine the use of virtual worlds, social networking applications, and classroom activities), the scene of learning as well as the subjects of education are changing. The figure of the Original Synner is a projection of the student-of-the-future whose foundational literacy is grounded in their ability to synthesize information from multiple information streams

Socially communicative characters for interactive applications

Interactive Face Animation - Comprehensive Environment (iFACE) is a general-purpose software framework that encapsulates the functionality of “face multimedia object” for a variety of interactive applications such as games and online services. iFACE exposes programming interfaces and provides authoring and scripting tools to design a face object, define its behaviours, and animate it through static or interactive situations. The framework is based on four parameterized spaces of Geometry, Mood, Personality, and Knowledge that together form the appearance and behaviour of the face object. iFACE can function as a common “face engine” for design and runtime environments to simplify the work of content and software developers

Handheld Computing and Programming for Mobile Commerce.

Using Internet-enabled mobile handheld devices to access the World Wide Web is a promising addition to the Web and traditional e-commerce. Mobile handheld devices provide convenience and portable access to the huge information on the Internet for mobile users from anywhere and at anytime. However, mobile commerce has not enjoyed the same level of success as the e-commerce has so far because mobile Web contents are scarce and mostly awkward for browsing. The major reason of the problems is most software engineers are not familiar with handheld devices, let alone programming for them. To help software engineers better understand this subject, this article gives a comprehensive study of handheld computing and programming for mobile commerce. It includes live major topics: (i) mobile commerce systems, (ii) mobile handheld devices, (iii) handheld computing, (iv) server-side handheld computing and programming, and (v) client-side handheld computing and programming. The most popular server-side handheld applications are mostly functioning through mobile Web contents, which are constructed by using only few technologies and languages. On the other hand, various environments/languages are available for client-side handheld computing and programming. Five of the most popular are (i) BREW, (ii) J2ME, (iii) Palm OS, (iv) Symbian OS, and (v) Windows Mobile. They are using either C/C++ or Java programming languages. This article will explain J2ME, a micro version of Java, and Palm OS programming, using C, by giving step-by-step procedures of J2ME and Palm application development

Visualizing Processes on the Web

In this paper, we describe 3WPS, a framework to build distributed systems that are able to monitor and interact with a process through a 3D interface that is accessible via the World Wide Web (WWW). The 3WPS is easily configurable, easily adaptable to different processes with high reuse of ts software components and its distributed architecture leverages on off-the-shelf components of the WWW infrastructure such as Java applets and Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) browsers. We describe the characteristics of 3WPS framework by mainly focusing on the issue of programmability and by contextually providing an example tour of its usage

A bluetooth educational content distribution system modelled on a service-oriented architecture

In this research, we design and prototype an educational content distribution system modeled on a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm and implemented using Web services, XML and Bluetooth technology. In the prototype, we use an Open Source Learning Management System (LMS) Sakai implemented in Java and branded Vula for the University of Cape Town (UCT). Web services and its specification of SOAP, XML and Bluetooth technology are used to integrate the disparate technologies that form the service architecture. The disparate technologies include among others Bluetooth enabled mobile phones and PDAs, services (modules) which may be running on different operating systems, and deployed over Local Area Networks (LANs) or Internet. The service is meant to leverage the existing infrastructure to provide a new, cheap channel for education content distribution to mobile devices in learning institutions especially Universities in the developing world and Africa in particular. We design, implement and evaluate the prototype for performance and scalability. During the designing and implementation of the architecture, we incorporate SOA principles of service/module re-use, service composition, loose-coupling, standard data exchange within the system or services, and extensibility of the services among others. The aim of the service is to distribute education content uploaded in Learning Management Systems (LMSs) to Bluetooth enabled mobile devices that are increasingly held by students in developing world Universities. The service is intended to supplement existing Web-based and lecture room content distribution channels by opening up the mobile device space. For the prototype, we focus on repackaging structured text content and distributing it to Bluetooth enabled phones and PDAs using Bluetooth technology. We evaluate our prototype for performance using experimental studies