Context gathering in Ubiquitous Environments: Enhanced Service Discovery

Delivering individualized services that conform to the user’s current situation will form the focus of ubiquitous environments. A description of the networked environment at a semantic level will necessitate contextually oriented knowledge acquisition methods. This then engenders unique challenges for the crucial step of resource discovery. A number of service discovery protocols exist to perform this role. In this paper, we identify the requirements inherent for such an environment and investigate the suitability of the available protocols against these. A suitable candidate solution is proposed with an implementation with semantic extensions and reference points for further enhancements

Learner-centred Accessibility for Interoperable Web-based Educational Systems

This paper describes the need for an information model and specifications that support a new strategy for delivering accessible computer-based resources to learners based on their specific needs and preferences in the circumstances in which they are operating. The strategy augments the universal accessibility of resources model to enable systems to focus on individual learners and their particular accessibility needs and preferences. A set of specifications known as the AccessForAll specifications is proposed

Visualizing practical knowledge: The Haughton-Mars Project

To improve how we envision knowledge, we must improve our ability to see knowledge in everyday life. That is, visualization is concerned not only with displaying facts and theories, but also with finding ways to express and relate tacit understanding. Such knowledge, although often referred to as "common," is not necessarily shared and may be distributed socially in choreographies for working together—in the manner that a chef and a maitre d’hôtel, who obviously possess very different skills, coordinate their work. Furthermore, non-verbal concepts cannot in principle be inventoried. Reifying practical knowledge is not a process of converting the implicit into the explicit, but pointing to what we know, showing its manifestations in our everyday life. To this end, I illustrate the study and reification of practical knowledge by examining the activities of a scientific expedition in the Canadian Arctic—a group of scientists preparing for a mission to Mar