Multilingual media components directly embeddable in open educational resources in science and technology

The use and reuse of OER (Open Educational Resources) depends on several conditions. Amongst others, the richness of their metadata, their granularity and the languages ​​in which they are made available. This work aims to facilitate efficient production of graphical and language-neutral components. It is assumed that the STEM areas (Science, Technology, Engeneering and Mathematics) share a common mathematical language and, more intuitively, an iconographic approach linked to the structures that satisfy the formulas used in each case. The work is limited to these areas of knowledge, primarily as presentations and animations of very low granularity, which can be directly integrated into larger resources in any language. The overall research design consists of four stages: 1. Initially, the manual generation of presentations and animations, with no literal in any language, and very concisely focused (mainly, definitions of a single concept for each animation). Determination of common graphics primitives to differentiate the common subtasks: presentation of examples to make the concept emerge inductively, graphical construction of the definition, highlighting the generalization or instantiation steps, homogeneous use of icons for emphasising or posing a question to the observer .. . 2. Evaluation of the expressiveness and effectiveness of these resources. Currently, these resources are being presented to small groups of students. This fall begins a multilingual evaluation process on a larger scale: as part of a regular course at the UNED and as LabSpace course in the Open University. Here we attempt to clarify the appropriate assessment tools (preferably in the same graphics language) with the minimum amount of additional external comments to constitute a course in a particular language. 3. The first two stages must provide an intuitive and graphical interface of the selected formalism (mainly Discrete Mathematics and Logic). The third stage addresses the effect of changing the output device on the selection of the graphics primitives for each generic subtask. Possible variations of the graphical language will be studied in the context of HCI analyses. 4. Finally the approach addresses semi-automatic generation, via script, of these resources: from formal description of the definitions or processes (as described, for example, in OMDoc) to the production of the corresponding animation. Additionally, the injection of semantics should facilitate the link between different animations, the navigation and search of conceptual dependency and the identification of concepts that have supporting collections of resources as described. At this point, the current development of this work provides results for the first two stages described

Developing ontologies in OWL: An observational study

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EXTEND-L : an input language for extensible register transfer compilation

This report discusses the model and input language for EXTEND, a synthesis system that permits extensible register transfer synthesis. EXTEND-L fills the need for a language that bridges the gap between existing behavioral input descriptions, which are too abstract, and structural schematics, which cannot capture the high-level behavior. The report first discusses previous work in behavioral synthesis and summarizes the deficiencies of these behavioral specifications. The report then describes the proposed langauge in detail, and concludes with a few examples that show its utility

Abella: A System for Reasoning about Relational Specifications

International audienceThe Abella interactive theorem prover is based on an intuitionistic logic that allows for inductive and co-inductive reasoning over relations. Abella supports the λ-tree approach to treating syntax containing binders: it allows simply typed λ-terms to be used to represent such syntax and it provides higher-order (pattern) unification, the ∇ quantifier, and nominal constants for reasoning about these representations. As such, it is a suitable vehicle for formalizing the meta-theory of formal systems such as logics and programming languages. This tutorial exposes Abella incrementally, starting with its capabilities at a first-order logic level and gradually presenting more sophisticated features, ending with the support it offers to the two-level logic approach to meta-theoretic reasoning. Along the way, we show how Abella can be used prove theorems involving natural numbers, lists, and automata, as well as involving typed and untyped λ-calculi and the π-calculus

Visual Programming: Concepts and Implementations

The computing environment has changed dramatically since the advent of the computer. Enhanced computer graphics and sheer processing power have ushered in a new age of computing. User interfaces have advanced from simple line entry to powerful graphical interfaces. With these advances, computer languages are no longer forced to be sequentially and textually-based. A new programming paradigm has evolved to harness the power of today's computing environment - visual programming. Visual programming provides the user with visible models which reflect physical objects. By connecting these visible models to each other, an executable program is created. By removing the inherent abstractions of textual languages, visual programming could lead computing into a new era

Generating collaborative systems for digital libraries: A model-driven approach

This is an open access article shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Copyright @ 2010 The Authors.The design and development of a digital library involves different stakeholders, such as: information architects, librarians, and domain experts, who need to agree on a common language to describe, discuss, and negotiate the services the library has to offer. To this end, high-level, language-neutral models have to be devised. Metamodeling techniques favor the definition of domainspecific visual languages through which stakeholders can share their views and directly manipulate representations of the domain entities. This paper describes CRADLE (Cooperative-Relational Approach to Digital Library Environments), a metamodel-based framework and visual language for the definition of notions and services related to the development of digital libraries. A collection of tools allows the automatic generation of several services, defined with the CRADLE visual language, and of the graphical user interfaces providing access to them for the final user. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated by presenting digital libraries generated with CRADLE, while the CRADLE environment has been evaluated by using the cognitive dimensions framework