Reviews

Integrating Information Technology into Education edited by Deryn Watson and David Tinsley, London, Chapman & Hall, 1995, ISBN: 0–412–62250–5, 316 pages

Reviews

The Hutchinson Electronic Encyclopedia, First Electronic Version, Oxford, Random Century and Attica Cybernetics, 1991. ISBN: 1–873472–00–5. Price £99

An interactive learning environment in geographical information systems

The Unigis Learning Station is a computer‐based learning management tool for the Postgraduate Diploma in Geographical Information Systems by distance learning (correspondence). Unigis is an international network of universities co‐operating in the delivery of such courses. The students on Unigis courses are mature mid‐career professionals who study in addition to undertaking full time jobs. The Learning Station offers these students information about the course, resources for independent study, a structured set of exercises, assessments and feedback opportunities, and an integrated and easy way to interact with other course software. Following a brief introduction to the Unigis curriculum, this paper discusses the design of the Learning Station. The roles the Learning Station adopts are outlined, and the range of multimedia and communications tools used discussed. Evaluation of the Learning Station is presented and the issued raised by this provide useful lessons for other computer‐based learning management tools, and the adaptation of the Learning Station to other teaching and learning situations

Reviews

Europe In the Round CD‐ROM, Guildford, Vocational Technologies, 1994

Addressing the tacit knowledge of a digital library system

Recent surveys, about the Linked Data initiatives in library organizations, report the experimental nature of related projects and the difficulty in re-using data to provide improvements of library services. This paper presents an approach for managing data and its "tacit" organizational knowledge, as the originating data context, improving the interpretation of data meaning. By analyzing a Digital Libray system, we prototyped a method for turning data management into a "semantic data management", where local system knowledge is managed as a data, and natively foreseen as a Linked Data. Semantic data management aims to curates the correct consumers' understanding of Linked Datasets, driving to a proper re-use

Reviews

Brian Clegg, Mining The Internet — Information Gathering and Research on the Net, Kogan Page: London, 1999. ISBN: 0–7494–3025–7. Paperback, 147 pages, £9.99

Hypermedia Learning Objects System - On the Way to a Semantic Educational Web

While eLearning systems become more and more popular in daily education, available applications lack opportunities to structure, annotate and manage their contents in a high-level fashion. General efforts to improve these deficits are taken by initiatives to define rich meta data sets and a semanticWeb layer. In the present paper we introduce Hylos, an online learning system. Hylos is based on a cellular eLearning Object (ELO) information model encapsulating meta data conforming to the LOM standard. Content management is provisioned on this semantic meta data level and allows for variable, dynamically adaptable access structures. Context aware multifunctional links permit a systematic navigation depending on the learners and didactic needs, thereby exploring the capabilities of the semantic web. Hylos is built upon the more general Multimedia Information Repository (MIR) and the MIR adaptive context linking environment (MIRaCLE), its linking extension. MIR is an open system supporting the standards XML, Corba and JNDI. Hylos benefits from manageable information structures, sophisticated access logic and high-level authoring tools like the ELO editor responsible for the semi-manual creation of meta data and WYSIWYG like content editing.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure