Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Mashup Personal Learning Environments

Wild, F., Kalz, M., & Palmér, M. (Eds.) (2008). Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Mashup Personal Learning Environments (MUPPLE08). September, 17, 2008, Maastricht, The Netherlands: CEUR Workshop Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073. Available at http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-388.The work on this publication has been sponsored by the TENCompetence Integrated Project (funded by the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme, priority IST/Technology Enhanced Learning. Contract 027087 [http://www.tencompetence.org]) and partly sponsored by the LTfLL project (funded by the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme, priority ISCT. Contract 212578 [http://www.ltfll-project.org

Personalized Service-Oriented E-Learning Environments

6 pages, 4 figures.The social component of Web 2.0-related services is providing a new open and personal approach to how we expect things to solve problems in our information-driven world. In particular, students' learning needs require open, personal e-learning systems adapted to life-long learning needs in a rapidly changing environment. It therefore shouldn't be surprising that a new wave of ideas centered on pervasive systems has drawn so much attention. This article analyzes current trends in the evolution of e-learning architectures and describes a new architecture that captures the needs of both formal (instructor-led) and informal (student-led) learning environments.Spain’s Programa Nacional de Tecnologías de la Sociedad de la Información supported this research through projects TSI2005-08225-C07-01 and -02.Publicad

Educational Technologies In A Personalised Learning Environment (PLE) : An Overview

A personalised learning environment (PLE) is focused on Web 2.0 tools as a way of integrating learning processes in a digital and technologically dynamic environment. The PLE helps in the preparation of future teachers to lead the way in the development of educational approaches that encourage knowledge building. The PLE represents a new, wide-ranging evolution in educational practices by integrating information and communications technology (ICT) applications to create wall-free schools capable of meeting the demands of the information society. In this article, the authors overview a range of PLE tools based on Web 2.0 technologies. The main aim is to assist in the transformation of learning and teaching in higher education, and to prepare learners for future work in a dynamic context with a high degree of digital and technological influence. The key findings could be used as instructions for PLS tools to facilitate structured learning by both teachers and students

Constrained wiki: the Wikiway to validating content

The "WikiWay" is the open editing philosophy of wikis meant to foster open collaboration and continuous improvement of their content. Just like other online communities, wikis often introduce and enforce conventions, constraints, and rules for their content, but do so in a considerably softer way, expecting authors to deliver content that satisfies the conventions and the constraints, or, failing that, having volunteers of the community, the WikiGnomes, fix others' content accordingly. Constrained wikis is our generic framework for wikis to implement validators of community-specific constraints and conventions that preserve the WikiWay and their open collaboration features. To this end, specific requirements need to be observed by validators and a specific software architecture can be used for their implementation, that is, as independent functions (implemented as internal modules or external services) used in a nonintrusive way. Two separate proof-of-concept validators have been implemented for MediaWiki and MoinMoin, respectively, providing an annotated view functions, that is, presenting content authors with violation warnings, rather than preventing them from saving a noncompliant text

Advances in Technology Enhanced Learning

‘Advances in Technology Enhanced Learning’ presents a range of research projects which aim to explore how to make engagement in learning (and teaching) more passionate. This interactive and experimental resource discusses innovations which pave the way to open collaboration at scale. The book introduces methodological and technological breakthroughs via twelve chapters to learners, instructors, and decision-makers in schools, universities, and workplaces. The Open University's Knowledge Media Institute and the EU TELMap project have brought together the luminaries from the European research area to showcase their vision of the future of learning with technology via their recent research project work. The projects discussed range widely over the Technology Enhanced Learning area from: environments for responsive open learning, work-based reflection, work-based social creativity, serious games and many more

Stimulating Personal Development and Knowledge Sharing

Koper, R., Stefanov, K., & Dicheva, D. (Eds.) (2009). Proceedings of the 5th International TENCompetence Open Workshop "Stimulating Personal Development and Knowledge Sharing". October, 30-31, 2008, Sofia, Bulgaria: TENCompetence Workshop.The fifth open workshop of the TENCompetence project took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, from 30th to 31st October 2008. These proceedings contain the papers that were accepted for publication by the Program Committee.The work on this publication has been sponsored by the TENCompetence Integrated Project that is funded by the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme, priority IST/Technology Enhanced Learning. Contract 027087 [http://www.tencompetence.org

Open Educational Practices and Resources. OLCOS Roadmap 2012

As a Transversal Action under the European eLearning Programme, the Open e-Learning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS) project carries out a set of activities that aim at fostering the creation, sharing and re-use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Europe and beyond.OER are understood to comprise content for teaching and learning, software-based tools and services, and licenses that allow for open development and re-use of content, tools and services.The OLCOS road mapping work was conducted to provide decision makers with an overview of current and likely future developments in OER and recommendations on how various challenges in OER could be addressed.While the results of the road mapping will provide some basis for policy and institutional planning, strategic leadership and decision making is needed for implementing measures that are likely to promote a further uptake of open educational practices and resources.OER are understood to be an important element of policies that want to leverage education and lifelong learning for the knowledge economy and society. However, OLCOS emphasises that it is crucial to also promote innovation and change in educational practices.In particular, OLCOS warns that delivering OER to the still dominant model of teachercentred knowledge transfer will have little effect on equipping teachers, students and workers with the competences, knowledge and skills to participate successfully in the knowledge economy and society.This report emphasises the need to foster open practices of teaching and learning that are informed by a competency-based educational framework. However, it is understood that a shift towards such practices will only happen in the longer term in a step-by-step process. Bringing about this shift will require targeted and sustained efforts by educational leaders at all levels

Sharing Semantic Resources

The Semantic Web is an extension of the current Web in which information, so far created for human consumption, becomes machine readable, “enabling computers and people to work in cooperation”. To turn into reality this vision several challenges are still open among which the most important is to share meaning formally represented with ontologies or more generally with semantic resources. This Semantic Web long-term goal has many convergences with the activities in the field of Human Language Technology and in particular in the development of Natural Language Processing applications where there is a great need of multilingual lexical resources. For instance, one of the most important lexical resources, WordNet, is also commonly regarded and used as an ontology. Nowadays, another important phenomenon is represented by the explosion of social collaboration, and Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia in the world, is object of research as an up to date omni comprehensive semantic resource. The main topic of this thesis is the management and exploitation of semantic resources in a collaborative way, trying to use the already available resources as Wikipedia and Wordnet. This work presents a general environment able to turn into reality the vision of shared and distributed semantic resources and describes a distributed three-layer architecture to enable a rapid prototyping of cooperative applications for developing semantic resources

MediaSync: Handbook on Multimedia Synchronization

This book provides an approachable overview of the most recent advances in the fascinating field of media synchronization (mediasync), gathering contributions from the most representative and influential experts. Understanding the challenges of this field in the current multi-sensory, multi-device, and multi-protocol world is not an easy task. The book revisits the foundations of mediasync, including theoretical frameworks and models, highlights ongoing research efforts, like hybrid broadband broadcast (HBB) delivery and users' perception modeling (i.e., Quality of Experience or QoE), and paves the way for the future (e.g., towards the deployment of multi-sensory and ultra-realistic experiences). Although many advances around mediasync have been devised and deployed, this area of research is getting renewed attention to overcome remaining challenges in the next-generation (heterogeneous and ubiquitous) media ecosystem. Given the significant advances in this research area, its current relevance and the multiple disciplines it involves, the availability of a reference book on mediasync becomes necessary. This book fills the gap in this context. In particular, it addresses key aspects and reviews the most relevant contributions within the mediasync research space, from different perspectives. Mediasync: Handbook on Multimedia Synchronization is the perfect companion for scholars and practitioners that want to acquire strong knowledge about this research area, and also approach the challenges behind ensuring the best mediated experiences, by providing the adequate synchronization between the media elements that constitute these experiences