Metadata and ontologies for organizing students’ memories and learning: standards and convergence models for context awareness

Este artículo trata de las ontologías que sirven para la comprensión en contexto y la Gestión de la Información Personal (PIM)y su aplicabilidad al proyecto Memex Metadata(M2). M2 es un proyecto de investigación de la Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill para mejorar la memoria digital de los alumnos utilizando tablet PC, la tecnología SenseCam de Microsoft y otras tecnologías móviles(p.ej. un dispositivo de GPS) para capturar el contexto del aprendizaje. Este artículo presenta el proyecto M2, dicute el concepto de los portafolios digitales en las actuales tendencias educativas, relacionándolos con las tecnologías emergentes, revisa las ontologías relevantes y su relación con el proyecto CAF (Context Awareness Framework), y concluye identificando las líneas de investigación futuras.This paper focuses on ontologies supporting context awareness and Personal Information Management (PIM) and their applicability in Memex Metadata (M2) project. M2 is a research project of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to improve student digital memories using the tablet PC, Microsoft’s SenseCam technology, and other mobile technologies (e.g., a GPS device) to capture context. The M2 project offers new opportunities studying students’ learning with digital technologies. This paper introduces the M2 project; discusses E-portfolios and current educational trends related to pervasive computing; reviews relevant ontologies and their relationship to the projects’ CAF (context awareness framework), and concludes by identifying future research directions

Open semantic service networks

Online service marketplaces will soon be part of the economy to scale the provision of specialized multi-party services through automation and standardization. Current research, such as the *-USDL service description language family, is already defining the basic building blocks to model the next generation of business services. Nonetheless, the developments being made do not target to interconnect services via service relationships. Without the concept of relationship, marketplaces will be seen as mere functional silos containing service descriptions. Yet, in real economies, all services are related and connected. Therefore, to address this gap we introduce the concept of open semantic service network (OSSN), concerned with the establishment of rich relationships between services. These networks will provide valuable knowledge on the global service economy, which can be exploited for many socio-economic and scientific purposes such as service network analysis, management, and control

TRECVID 2008 - goals, tasks, data, evaluation mechanisms and metrics

The TREC Video Retrieval Evaluation (TRECVID) 2008 is a TREC-style video analysis and retrieval evaluation, the goal of which remains to promote progress in content-based exploitation of digital video via open, metrics-based evaluation. Over the last 7 years this effort has yielded a better understanding of how systems can effectively accomplish such processing and how one can reliably benchmark their performance. In 2008, 77 teams (see Table 1) from various research organizations --- 24 from Asia, 39 from Europe, 13 from North America, and 1 from Australia --- participated in one or more of five tasks: high-level feature extraction, search (fully automatic, manually assisted, or interactive), pre-production video (rushes) summarization, copy detection, or surveillance event detection. The copy detection and surveillance event detection tasks are being run for the first time in TRECVID. This paper presents an overview of TRECVid in 2008

Active E-Learning by Doing with ALDO

It has been proved how teaching and learning educational processes can largely benefit from the application of ICT-based services within e-learning platforms, such as collaborative editing and advanced data visualizations. However, among state-of-the-art solutions, no one is able to tackle the problem in a comprehensive way. In this extended abstract, we discuss ALDO (Active e-Learning by DOing), a novel, advanced digital framework supporting integrated facilities for effective, active e-learning. ALDO includes an active repository for collecting, sharing, retrieving, and analyzing relevant materials, collaborative editing services, an e-learning platform, and advanced visualization tools to inspect the spatial and temporal dimension of specific data contexts. All such services and tools are made available to teachers/students through a dedicated Web portal. Although the present research was carried out within the H2020 Project DETECt (Detecting Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives), by focusing on the specific data context of European crime narrative, the generality of the framework makes it suitable for any type of educational task. The design and creation of above tools and services, together with their uses, are presented and discussed through a series of real examples taken from DETECt

From Sensor to Observation Web with Environmental Enablers in the Future Internet

This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communities’ environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term ?envirofied? Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management)

Simple identification tools in FishBase

Simple identification tools for fish species were included in the FishBase information system from its inception. Early tools made use of the relational model and characters like fin ray meristics. Soon pictures and drawings were added as a further help, similar to a field guide. Later came the computerization of existing dichotomous keys, again in combination with pictures and other information, and the ability to restrict possible species by country, area, or taxonomic group. Today, www.FishBase.org offers four different ways to identify species. This paper describes these tools with their advantages and disadvantages, and suggests various options for further development. It explores the possibility of a holistic and integrated computeraided strategy

Share.TEC Final Project Report

This report provides an overview of Share.TEC, a three-year project co-funded by the EC that supports access to, exchange and re-use of digital resources and practitioner experiences within Teacher Education at European level. The document comprises a number of sections that can either be read consecutively, to gain the full picture of the project and its outcomes, or in combinations so as to grasp particular aspects, how these were approached and what results were achieved. Section 2 describes the project\u27s overall objectives in terms of both its technological ambitions and its wider mission as part of the overall educational landscape. Section 3 gives brief profiles of the partners who made up the Share.TEC consortium. In Section 4 the results and achievements of the project are reported. This includes a description of the portal and its features; the system architecture, tools and services; the models underpinning the Share.TEC system; and the approach taken to its multilingual dimension. Section 5 addresses the question of Share.TEC\u27s target users and their needs. It describes the strategies and means employed for incorporating the user perspective, and for ensuring that the project direction was in line with users\u27 concerns so that the resulting portal responds suitably to the actual requirements of the people it\u27s designed for. Section 6 examines the critical aspect of underlying content. In keeping with the Share.TEC mission, the focus is largely on aggregated metadata records that describe digital resources for TE and which are expressed in terms defined by the project for TE purposes. Section 7 reports the activities undertaken in the project and thus narrates the processes that unfolded through the project lifetime as the consortium pursued its objectives and generated its outcomes. Section 8 describes the effort to establish the Share.TEC portal within its natural ecosystem. It looks at the global strategy for maximising impact both at regional/national level and internationally, and analyses the conditions and prospects for continuity and growth. Readers interested in the technical/technological dimension of Share.TEC (the system, portal, models, metadata, etc.) are likely to find Sections 4, 5 and 6 to be the ones closest to their concerns. Conversely, those whose interests lie elsewhere could simply consult Section 4.1 to get an idea of the portal from the user\u27s viewpoint and go to Sections 2, 3, 7 and 8 for a vision of the project and how Share.TEC is positioned in the panorama of digital resources and Teacher Education

Automatic generation of audio content for open learning resources

This paper describes how digital talking books (DTBs) with embedded functionality for learners can be generated from content structured according to the OU OpenLearn schema. It includes examples showing how a software transformation developed from open source components can be used to remix OpenLearn content, and discusses issues concerning the generation of synthesised speech for educational purposes. Factors which may affect the quality of a learner's experience with open educational audio resources are identified, and in conclusion plans for testing the effect of these factors are outlined