Introducing Collaboration in Single-user Applications through the Centralized Control Architecture

In this paper we describe a novel Model-View­ Controller based architecture, Centralized Control, that intro­duces collaboration in single-users applications. The architecture is able to add collaboration with no need to modify the source code of the original single-user application, and providing also the capability to introduce group semantics into the new, collab­orative application that is obtained. The architecture is shown in practice, by introducing CollabXMind, a collaborative mind map tool, that is based on a well-known single-user tool, XMind

Environmental Enrichment Promotes Plasticity and Visual Acuity Recovery in Adult Monocular Amblyopic Rats

Loss of visual acuity caused by abnormal visual experience during development (amblyopia) is an untreatable pathology in adults. In some occasions, amblyopic patients loose vision in their better eye owing to accidents or illnesses. While this condition is relevant both for its clinical importance and because it represents a case in which binocular interactions in the visual cortex are suppressed, it has scarcely been studied in animal models. We investigated whether exposure to environmental enrichment (EE) is effective in triggering recovery of vision in adult amblyopic rats rendered monocular by optic nerve dissection in their normal eye. By employing both electrophysiological and behavioral assessments, we found a full recovery of visual acuity in enriched rats compared to controls reared in standard conditions. Moreover, we report that EE modulates the expression of GAD67 and BDNF. The non invasive nature of EE renders this paradigm promising for amblyopia therapy in adult monocular people

Design Issue for a Co-located Collaborative Learning System

Symposia at 12th Conf. of European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI 2007

CoFFEE: An Expandable and Rich Platform for Computer- Mediated, Face-to-Face Argumentation in Classroom

Abstract: CoFFEE (Collaborative Face to Face Educational Environment) is a suite of applications that has been designed to let teachers and students cooperate during classroom discussions. Teachers can author and design CoFFEE sessions, where each step includes instances of different cooperative tools chosen in a significantly large set (more than 10 tools are currently available). The session is, then, executed in classroom/lab where the collaborative discussion takes place. All CoFFEE tools are highly configurable and, thanks to the concept of session, the functionalities can be adapted for schools of different grade and even for university courses. From a technological point of view CoFFEE is an expandable framework: new collaborative functionalities can be added as autonomous components; each component can be developed independently from each other, sharing a common user interface. This result has been achieved by building CoFFEE as a rich framework since it offers a consistent set of basic services that can be used as building blocks for totally new collaborative components