A game-based approach to the teaching of object-oriented programming languages

Students often have difficulties when trying to understand the concepts of object-oriented programming (OOP). This paper presents a contribution to the teaching of OOP languages through a game-oriented approach based on the interaction with tangible user interfaces (TUIs). The use of a specific type of commercial distributed TUI (Sifteo cubes), in which several small physical devices have sensing, wireless communication and user-directed output capabilities, is applied to the teaching of the C# programming language, since the operation of these devices can be controlled by user programs written in C#. For our experiment, we selected a sample of students with a sufficient knowledge about procedural programming, which was divided into two groups: The first one had a standard introductory C# course, whereas the second one had an experimental C# course that included, in addition to the contents of the previous one, two demonstration programs that illustrated some OOP basic concepts using the TUI features. Finally, both groups completed two tests: a multiple-choice exam for evaluating the acquisition of basic OOP concepts and a C# programming exercise. The analysis of the results from the tests indicates that the group of students that attended the course including the TUI demos showed a higher interest level (i.e. they felt more motivated) during the course exposition than the one that attended the standard introductory C# course. Furthermore, the students from the experimental group achieved an overall better mark. Therefore, we can conclude that the technological contribution of Sifteo cubes – used as a distributed TUI by which OOP basic concepts are represented in a tangible and a visible way – to the teaching of the C# language has a positive influence on the learning of this language and such basic concepts

Autogestió de temàtica, data de presentació i membres de grup: una forma diferent d’utilitzar el recurs WIKI

Assignatura de Psicofisiologia, 2n semestre, Grau de Psicologia UB. 2013-201

Influence of Input/output Operations on Processor Performance

Nowadays, computers are frequently equipped with peripherals that transfer great amounts of data between them and the system memory using direct memory access techniques (i.e., digital cameras, high speed networks, . . . ). Those peripherals prevent the processor from accessing system memory for significant periods of time (i.e., while they are communicating with system memory in order to send or receive data blocks). In this paper we study the negative effects that I/O operations from computer peripherals have on processor performance. With the help of a set of routines (SMPL) used to make discrete event simulators, we have developed a configurable software that simulates a computer processor and main memory as well as the I/O scenarios where the periph-erals operate. This software has been used to analyze the performance of four different processors in four I/O scenarios: video capture, video capture and playback, high speed network, and serial transmission

Educar en el diálogo interreligioso es una urgencia

La actual situación sociopolítica internacional, posterior al fin de la tensión de\ud bloques, hace urgente plantearnos la educación en el diálogo intercultural e\ud interreligioso. Se ha propuesto, desde algunas instancias y con éxito, una visión del\ud panorama mundial basado en el 'choque de civilizaciones'. Este esquema mental trae\ud consigo, además, una determinada forma de convivir con la diversidad religiosa en\ud cada nación, que apuesta por reforzar los rasgos identitarios frente al 'extranjero '.\ud Sin embargo, es posible aportar una nuevo esquema, basado en el diálogo entre\ud culturas y religiones. Ahora bien, el diálogo no se improvisa, sino que tiene sus características\ud y exigencias propias. Estos presupuestos de un verdadero diálogo nos llevan\ud a concluir que el diálogo no es una estrategia, sino una forma de vida. Educar\ud hacia esta forma de vida implica incluir no sólo contenidos conceptuales, sino también\ud procedimentales y actitudinales en nuestros programas educativos para ayudar\ud a nacer una verdadera alternativa a la cultura del enfrentamiento y la violencia que\ud nos rodea

Potenciales evocados cerebrales en el contexto de la investigación psicológica: una actualización

Event-related brain potentials (ERPS) are presented in the context of the psychological research. Firstly, aspects such as how un ERP is obtained, their characteristic features, the way in which they are classified, or their main advantages with respect to another type of measures usually used in Psychology, are presented. Then, two cognitive processes that have been extensively investigated with this technique are briejly reviewed, concretely, attention and language, and the recent research in the study of emotional processes is also commented. The main ERPs that have been used to study these psychological processes are discussed

TPU Cloud-Based Generalized U-Net for Eye Fundus Image Segmentation

Medical images from different clinics are acquired with different instruments and settings. To perform segmentation on these images as a cloud-based service we need to train with multiple datasets to increase the segmentation independency from the source. We also require an ef cient and fast segmentation network. In this work these two problems, which are essential for many practical medical imaging applications, are studied. As a segmentation network, U-Net has been selected. U-Net is a class of deep neural networks which have been shown to be effective for medical image segmentation. Many different U-Net implementations have been proposed.With the recent development of tensor processing units (TPU), the execution times of these algorithms can be drastically reduced. This makes them attractive for cloud services. In this paper, we study, using Google's publicly available colab environment, a generalized fully con gurable Keras U-Net implementation which uses Google TPU processors for training and prediction. As our application problem, we use the segmentation of Optic Disc and Cup, which can be applied to glaucoma detection. To obtain networks with a good performance, independently of the image acquisition source, we combine multiple publicly available datasets (RIM-One V3, DRISHTI and DRIONS). As a result of this study, we have developed a set of functions that allow the implementation of generalized U-Nets adapted to TPU execution and are suitable for cloud-based service implementation.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2016-77785-

Reseña de la obra “Experiencias y aprendizajes en la evaluación de la intervención socioeducativa”

Reseña de la obra/ Book Review: Martín Cuadrado, A. M. y Rubio Roldán, M. J. (coords.) (2019). Experiencias y aprendizajes en la evaluación de la intervención socioeducativa. Volumen II. Madrid: UNED. ISBN: 978-84-362-7576-

Application of bus emulation techniques to the design of a PCI/MC68000 bridge

Bridges easy the interconnection and communication of devices that operate using different buses. In fact, we can see a computer as a hierarchy of buses to which devices are connected. In this paper we design a PCI/MC68000 bridge in order to improve communications between a Personal Computer and a MC68000 based system. The previous interface between both devices was based on the old 16-bit ISA bus, which represented a bottleneck in their communication. However, the methodology described here is generic and can be applied to the design of PCI bridges to other buses. We finish this work with an analysis of the bridge performance improvement which can also be easily adapted to other situations. As an example our interface is used in an interesting situation, i.e., updating the obsolete control unit of a highly valuable system (an industrial robot)

Block-Based Development of Mobile Learning Experiences for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things enables experts of given domains to create smart user experiences for interacting with the environment. However, development of such experiences requires strong programming skills, which are challenging to develop for non-technical users. This paper presents several extensions to the block-based programming language used in App Inventor to make the creation of mobile apps for smart learning experiences less challenging. Such apps are used to process and graphically represent data streams from sensors by applying map-reduce operations. A workshop with students without previous experience with Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile app programming was conducted to evaluate the propositions. As a result, students were able to create small IoT apps that ingest, process and visually represent data in a simpler form as using App Inventor's standard features. Besides, an experimental study was carried out in a mobile app development course with academics of diverse disciplines. Results showed it was faster and easier for novice programmers to develop the proposed app using new stream processing blocks.Spanish National Research Agency (AEI) - ERDF fund