An Ontology based Text-to-Picture Multimedia m-Learning System

Multimedia Text-to-Picture is the process of building mental representation from words associated with images. From the research aspect, multimedia instructional message items are illustrations of material using words and pictures that are designed to promote user realization. Illustrations can be presented in a static form such as images, symbols, icons, figures, tables, charts, and maps; or in a dynamic form such as animation, or video clips. Due to the intuitiveness and vividness of visual illustration, many text to picture systems have been proposed in the literature like, Word2Image, Chat with Illustrations, and many others as discussed in the literature review chapter of this thesis. However, we found that some common limitations exist in these systems, especially for the presented images. In fact, the retrieved materials are not fully suitable for educational purposes. Many of them are not context-based and didn’t take into consideration the need of learners (i.e., general purpose images). Manually finding the required pedagogic images to illustrate educational content for learners is inefficient and requires huge efforts, which is a very challenging task. In addition, the available learning systems that mine text based on keywords or sentences selection provide incomplete pedagogic illustrations. This is because words and their semantically related terms are not considered during the process of finding illustrations. In this dissertation, we propose new approaches based on the semantic conceptual graph and semantically distributed weights to mine optimal illustrations that match Arabic text in the children’s story domain. We combine these approaches with best keywords and sentences selection algorithms, in order to improve the retrieval of images matching the Arabic text. Our findings show significant improvements in modelling Arabic vocabulary with the most meaningful images and best coverage of the domain in discourse. We also develop a mobile Text-to-Picture System that has two novel features, which are (1) a conceptual graph visualization (CGV) and (2) a visual illustrative assessment. The CGV shows the relationship between terms associated with a picture. It enables the learners to discover the semantic links between Arabic terms and improve their understanding of Arabic vocabulary. The assessment component allows the instructor to automatically follow up the performance of learners. Our experiments demonstrate the efficiency of our multimedia text-to-picture system in enhancing the learners’ knowledge and boost their comprehension of Arabic vocabulary

Surround-Screen Mobile based Projection: Design and Implementation of Mobile Cave Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) is the employment of computer devices to simulate real or imaginary environments. Conventional user interfaces stresses the usage of screen displays to interact with the developed environment. The prospect of VR enables the user to be virtually inside the environment. CAVE is one kind of room-shaped VR technology that displays the environment on its walls. We observe some common limitations in the existing CAVE technology, such as fixed space requirements and the difficulty in moving it. In the current work, we present a novel mobile-CAVE system that uses light-weighted materials and portable powered devices. It solves the limitation of re-using the allocated space by packing it and the ability to move it easily. We have assessed our technology by performing usability analysis, power consumption, and mobility experimental study. The profound experiments demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed technology in comparison with former CAVE system. OAPAScopu

Virtual reality for ambulance simulation environment

Simulations are beneficial in evaluating clinicians’ empirical competencies through practical skills, prioritizing, and decision-making as part of patient care scenarios generally run in a full-scale physical context. However, such simulations require physical space, manufacturing, and replacement of damaged or used equipment. On the other hand, virtual reality (VR) computerized simulators are comparatively modern instruments for use in practical training. VR can be employed to simulate real-world situations without the actual need for physical devices. This work presents an ambulance patient compartment VR simulation that can be used by emergency medical services (EMS) staff to customize the configuration of the ambulance patient compartment according to their preference as well as for vehicle orientation or training purposes. The proposed simulation can be used repeatedly enabling the paramedics to access equipment in a fully immersive and safe environment. The user studies have demonstrated the usability and perceived effectiveness of the proposed simulation

An Arabic mobile educational system

Digital devices and computer software can assist children in improving their learning capabilities and comprehension skills. However most of these items are built without taking into consideration the effective needs and background of Arab children. We propose in this paper an Arabic-based mobile educational system that processes natural questions, extract pertinent answers from animal domain ontology, and illustrate pictures automatically. It combines the transformation of natural language questions into SPARQL queries and finds solutions for multi-phased based questions. In order to process questions, different phases are carried out which include extracting concepts from the Arabic questions, determining the pattern, extraction of word-to-word relationships, extracting knowledge from the ontology, and finding answers through direct or indirect linked data. The aim of our proposed system is to generate substantial pedagogic answers, for asked questions in the natural language, in a specific domain.Scopu

An arabic ontology-based learning system for children with intellectual challenges

Children with intellectual challenges (IC) are growing up with extensive exposure to computer technology. Computer software and assistive devices have the potential to help these children in education, career development, and independent living. However, most of the software, tools and web sites that these children interact with are designed without consideration of their special needs, making these elements less effective or completely inaccessible for them. This paper proposes an assistive education system that dynamically generates multimedia tutorials for children with IC in the state of Qatar. We use several techniques to generate the tutorials which include: Arabic text processing, entities relationship extraction, multimedia-based ontology, and online retrieval of multimedia contents. The main aim of our system is to enhance those children learning capabilities, understanding, communications, thinking and memorization skills through multimedia.Qatar National Research Fund under its award NPRP 09-052-5-003Scopu

Virtual reality for ambulance simulation environment

Simulations are beneficial in evaluating clinicians’ empirical competencies through practical skills, prioritizing, and decision-making as part of patient care scenarios generally run in a full-scale physical context. However, such simulations require physical space, manufacturing, and replacement of damaged or used equipment. On the other hand, virtual reality (VR) computerized simulators are comparatively modern instruments for use in practical training. VR can be employed to simulate real-world situations without the actual need for physical devices. This work presents an ambulance patient compartment VR simulation that can be used by emergency medical services (EMS) staff to customize the configuration of the ambulance patient compartment according to their preference as well as for vehicle orientation or training purposes. The proposed simulation can be used repeatedly enabling the paramedics to access equipment in a fully immersive and safe environment. The user studies have demonstrated the usability and perceived effectiveness of the proposed simulation.Other Information Published in: Multimedia Tools and Applications License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0See article on publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11042-022-12980-3</p

Glossario, per la lettura dell'Affigurato

Il capitolo ricostruisce il glossario dei termini tecnici relativi all'arte del costruire, secondo le terminologie in uso a Ferrara in età estense, che sono ricorrenti nella stima trascritta nel volume. Ogni voce del glossario è ampiamente commentata, con puntuali rimandi bibliografici e riferimenti ad altri documenti archivistici. Le voci del glossario sono state completate da alcune brevi citazioni che ne esemplificano l'uso nelle diverse accezioni e nelle varianti di scrittura