Defining Configurable Virtual Reality Templates for End Users

This paper proposes a solution for supporting end users in configuring Virtual Reality environments by exploiting reusable templates created by experts. We identify the roles participating in the environment development and the means for delegating part of the behaviour definition to the end users. We focus in particular on enabling end users to define the environment behaviour. The solution exploits a taxonomy defining common virtual objects having high-level actions for specifying event-condition-Action rules readable as natural language sentences. End users exploit such actions to define the environment behaviour. We report on a proof-of-concept implementation of the proposed approach, on its validation through two different case studies (virtual shop and museum), and on evaluating the approach with expert users

Decoding learning: the proof, promise and potential of digital education

With hundreds of millions of pounds spent on digital technology for education every year – from interactive whiteboards to the rise of one–to–one tablet computers – every new technology seems to offer unlimited promise to learning. many sectors have benefitted immensely from harnessing innovative uses of technology. cloud computing, mobile communications and internet applications have changed the way manufacturing, finance, business services, the media and retailers operate. But key questions remain in education: has the range of technologies helped improve learners’ experiences and the standards they achieve? or is this investment just languishing as kit in the cupboard? and what more can decision makers, schools, teachers, parents and the technology industry do to ensure the full potential of innovative technology is exploited? There is no doubt that digital technologies have had a profound impact upon the management of learning. institutions can now recruit, register, monitor, and report on students with a new economy, efficiency, and (sometimes) creativity. yet, evidence of digital technologies producing real transformation in learning and teaching remains elusive. The education sector has invested heavily in digital technology; but this investment has not yet resulted in the radical improvements to learning experiences and educational attainment. in 2011, the Review of Education Capital found that maintained schools spent £487 million on icT equipment and services in 2009-2010. 1 since then, the education system has entered a state of flux with changes to the curriculum, shifts in funding, and increasing school autonomy. While ring-fenced funding for icT equipment and services has since ceased, a survey of 1,317 schools in July 2012 by the british educational suppliers association found they were assigning an increasing amount of their budget to technology. With greater freedom and enthusiasm towards technology in education, schools and teachers have become more discerning and are beginning to demand more evidence to justify their spending and strategies. This is both a challenge and an opportunity as it puts schools in greater charge of their spending and use of technolog

FOSS4G 2016 Proceedings: Academic Program - selected papers and posters

This Conference Proceedings is a collection of selected papers and posters submitted to the Academic Program of the International Conference for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G 2016), 24th to 26th August 2016 in Bonn, Germany. Like in previous FOSS4G conferences on national and international level the academic papers and posters cover an extensive wide range of topics reflecting the contribution of the academia to this field by the development of open source software components, in the design of open standards, in the proliferation of web-based solutions, in the dissemination of the open principles important in science and education, or in the collection and the hosting of freely available geo-data

Harnessing customizationinWeb Annotation: ASoftwareProduct Line approach

222 p.La anotación web ayuda a mediar la interacción de lectura y escritura al transmitir información, agregar comentarios e inspirar conversaciones en documentos web. Se utiliza en áreas de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Investigación Periodística, Ciencias Biológicas o Educación, por mencionar algunas. Las actividades de anotación son heterogéneas, donde los usuarios finales (estudiantes, periodistas, conservadores de datos, investigadores, etc.) tienen requisitos muy diferentes para crear, modificar y reutilizar anotaciones. Esto resulta en una gran cantidad de herramientas de anotación web y diferentes formas de representar y almacenar anotaciones web. Para facilitar la reutilización y la interoperabilidad, se han realizado varios intentos durante las últimas décadas para estandarizar las anotaciones web (por ejemplo, Annotea u Open Annotation), lo que ha dado como resultado las recomendaciones de anotaciones del W3C publicadas en 2017. Las recomendaciones del W3C proporcionan un marco para la representación de anotaciones (modelo de datos y vocabulario) y transporte (protocolo). Sin embargo, todavía hay una brecha en cómo se desarrollan los clientes de anotación (herramientas e interfaces de usuario), lo que hace que los desarrolladores vuelvan a re-implementar funcionalidades comunes (esdecir, resaltar, comentar, almacenar,¿) para crear su herramienta de anotación personalizada.Esta tesis tiene como objetivo proporcionar una plataforma de reutilización para el desarrollo de herramientas de anotación web para la revisión. Con este fin, hemos desarrollado una línea de productos de software llamada WACline. WACline es una familia de productos de anotación que permite a los desarrolladores crear extensiones de navegador de anotación web personalizadas, lo que facilita la reutilización de los activos principales y su adaptación a su contexto de revisión específico. Se ha creado siguiendo un proceso de acumulación de conocimientos en el que cada producto de anotación aprende de los productos de anotación creados previamente. Finalmente, llegamos a una familia de clientes de anotación que brinda soporte para tres prácticas de revisión: extracción de datos de revisión sistemática de literatura (Highlight&Go), revisión de tareas de estudiantes en educación superior (Mark&Go), y revisión por pares de conferencias y revistas (Review&Go). Para cada uno de los contextos de revisión, se ha llevado a cabo una evaluación con partes interesadas reales para validar las mejoras de eficiencia y eficacia aportadas por las herramientas de anotación personalizadas en su práctica

WinkBall, ViewTalk and QR Touch TV White Paper

The following internal document details a summary of the impact and technical achievements undertaken in the development of three companies, WinKBall, ViewTalk, QR Touch TV . The technical details contained within this white paper was submitted to the UK government and I've been recognised as innovative and worthy of UK Government funding

Validation and Evaluation

In this technical report, we present prototypical implementations of innovative tools and methods for personalized and contextualized (multimedia) search, collaborative ontology evolution, ontology evaluation and cost models, and dynamic access and trends in distributed (semantic) knowledge, developed according to the working plan outlined in Technical Report TR-B-12-04. The prototypes complete the next milestone on the path to an integral Corporate Semantic Web architecture based on the three pillars Corporate Ontology Engineering, Corporate Semantic Collaboration, and Corporate Semantic Search, as envisioned in TR-B-08-09