Touch ‘n’ sketch: pen and fingers on a multi-touch sketch application for tablet PC’s

In many creative and technical areas, professionals make use of paper sketches for developing and expressing concepts and models. Paper offers an almost constraint free environment where they have as much freedom to express themselves as they need. However, paper does have some disadvantages, such as size and not being able to manipulate the content (other than remove it or scratch it), which can be overcome by creating systems that can offer the same freedom people have from paper but none of the disadvantages and limitations. Only in recent years has the technology become massively available that allows doing precisely that, with the development in touch‐sensitive screens that also have the ability to interact with a stylus. In this project a prototype was created with the objective of finding a set of the most useful and usable interactions, which are composed of combinations of multi‐touch and pen. The project selected Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools as its application domain, because it addresses a solid and well‐defined discipline with still sufficient room for new developments. This was the result from the area research conducted to find an application domain, which involved analyzing sketching tools from several possible areas and domains. User studies were conducted using Model Driven Inquiry (MDI) to have a better understanding of the human sketch creation activities and concepts devised. Then the prototype was implemented, through which it was possible to execute user evaluations of the interaction concepts created. Results validated most interactions, in the face of limited testing only being possible at the time. Users had more problems using the pen, however handwriting and ink recognition were very effective, and users quickly learned the manipulations and gestures from the Natural User Interface (NUI).

A feasibility study for modelling tie strength with the facebook API

This thesis examines the concept of tie strength and investigates how it can be determined on the fly in the Facebook Social Network Service (SNS) by a system constructed using the standard developer API. We analyze and compare two different models: the first one is an adaptation of previous literature (Gilbert & Karahalios, 2009), the second model is built from scratch and based on a dataset obtained from an online survey. This survey took the form of a Facebook application that collected subjective ratings of the strength of 1642 ties (friendships) from 85 different participants. The new tie strength model was built based on this dataset by using a multiple regression method. We saw that the new model performed slightly better than the original adapted model, plus it had the advantage of being easier to implement. In conclusion, this thesis has shown that tie strength models capable of serving as useful friendship predictors are easily implementable in a Facebook application via standard API calls. In addition to a new tie strength model, the methodology adopted in this work permitted observation of the weights of each predictive variable used in the model, increasing the visibility of the factors that affects peoples’ relationships in online social networks.

Relatório de estágio da intervenção pedagógica na Escola EB1/PE do Tanque-Santo António e no Infantário O Carrocel

Este relatório revela o final do percurso académico e visa espelhar o meu estágio que adotou uma metodologia de investigação ação baseada na problemática: Como promover o trabalho cooperativo em sala de aula? A ação pedagógica foi realizada em duas vertentes, 1.º Ciclo do Ensino Básico na EB1/PE Tanque - Santo António e Educação Pré-Escolar no Infantário - O Carrocel. Esta estabelece uma dinâmica em torno das principais atividades desenvolvidas e abraça um conjunto de pressupostos teóricos e metodológicos. Estes contribuíram para a construção de aprendizagens significativas que dão suporte a uma pedagogia participativa, construcionista e democrática. O relatório é composto por vários capítulos: uma componente teórica e científica, um enquadramento metodológico, em investigação-ação, e uma componente prática nas valências 1.º Ciclo do Ensino Básico e Educação Pré-Escolar. A praxis pedagógica descreve, reflete e avalia a ação em torno da utilização de estratégias baseadas no trabalho cooperativo. Como resposta ao problema encontramos a estratégia da pedagogia participativa com a utilização do programa Scratch no 1.º Ciclo do Ensino Básico que fortaleceu igualmente os objetivos de aprendizagem, a criatividade e a imaginação dos alunos. Na Educação Pré-Escolar a atividade lúdica revelou-se determinante para a resolução da problemática em contexto de sala.