TFC e-learning estàndards : Anàlisi de la qualitat de les metadades presents als documents LOM

Aquest projecte vol estudiar la qualitat de les metadades presents en els documents que representen objectes de coneixement LOM (

When the mummy is digital : preservation and dissemination

Most educational institutions include nowadays a digital repository as part of their development and positioning strategy. The main goals of a digital repository are preservation and dissemination, which are some how contradictory, especially if the repository follows an open approach, as it is designed, built and managed from an institutional perspective, although it is intended to be used by teachers and learners. This fact may lead to a low level of usage, as final users are not able to integrate the learning object repository into their learning process. In this paper we will discuss how to promote open educational resources by connecting open repositories with open social networks, bridging the gap between resources and final users (teachers and learners).

Handshake ecosystem for Educational Contents between Institutional Repository and OER based Repository

Poster at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

A Trainable Object Detection System: Car Detection in Static Images

This paper describes a general, trainable architecture for object detection that has previously been applied to face and peoplesdetection with a new application to car detection in static images. Our technique is a learning based approach that uses a set of labeled training data from which an implicit model of an object class -- here, cars -- is learned. Instead of pixel representations that may be noisy and therefore not provide a compact representation for learning, our training images are transformed from pixel space to that of Haar wavelets that respond to local, oriented, multiscale intensity differences. These feature vectors are then used to train a support vector machine classifier. The detection of cars in images is an important step in applications such as traffic monitoring, driver assistance systems, and surveillance, among others. We show several examples of car detection on out-of-sample images and show an ROC curve that highlights the performance of our system.

Opera-Learning : integración de estándares de distribución de contenidos multimedia y learning objects.

El artículo está incluido en un número monográfico especial con los trabajos del I Simposio Pluridisciplinar sobre Diseño, Evaluación y Descripción de Contenidos Educativos Reutilizables (Guadalajara, Octubre 2004).Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Ontology-based metadata for e-learning content

Nowadays, the popularity of the Web encourages the development of Hypermedia Systems dedicated to e-learning. Nevertheless, most of the available Web teaching systems apply the traditional paper-based learning resources presented as HTML pages making no use of the new capabilities provided by the Web. There is a challenge to develop educative systems that adapt the educative content to the style of learning, context and background of each student. Another research issue is the capacity to interoperate on the Web reusing learning objects. This work presents an approach to address these two issues by using the technologies of the Semantic Web. The approach presented here models the knowledge of the educative content and the learner’s profile with ontologies whose vocabularies are a refinement of those defined on standards situated on the Web as reference points to provide semantics. Ontologies enable the representation of metadata concerning simple learning objects and the rules that define the way that they can feasibly be assembled to configure more complex ones. These complex learning objects could be created dynamically according to the learners’ profile by intelligent agents that use the ontologies as the source of their beliefs. Interoperability issues were addressed by using an application profile of the IEEE LOM- Learning Object Metadata standard.

Teaching and learning data structures supported by computers: An experiment using CADILAG tool

This paper aims to present the use of a learning object (CADILAG), developed to facilitate understanding data structure operations by using visual presentations and animations. The CADILAG allows visualizing the behavior of algorithms usually discussed during Computer Science and Information System courses. For each data structure it is possible visualizing its content and its operation dynamically. Its use was evaluated an the results are presented. © 2012 AISTI.

Rich media content adaptation in e-learning systems

The wide use of e-technologies represents a great opportunity for underserved segments of the population, especially with the aim of reintegrating excluded individuals back into society through education. This is particularly true for people with different types of disabilities who may have difficulties while attending traditional on-site learning programs that are typically based on printed learning resources. The creation and provision of accessible e-learning contents may therefore become a key factor in enabling people with different access needs to enjoy quality learning experiences and services. Another e-learning challenge is represented by m-learning (which stands for mobile learning), which is emerging as a consequence of mobile terminals diffusion and provides the opportunity to browse didactical materials everywhere, outside places that are traditionally devoted to education. Both such situations share the need to access materials in limited conditions and collide with the growing use of rich media in didactical contents, which are designed to be enjoyed without any restriction. Nowadays, Web-based teaching makes great use of multimedia technologies, ranging from Flash animations to prerecorded video-lectures. Rich media in e-learning can offer significant potential in enhancing the learning environment, through helping to increase access to education, enhance the learning experience and support multiple learning styles. Moreover, they can often be used to improve the structure of Web-based courses. These highly variegated and structured contents may significantly improve the quality and the effectiveness of educational activities for learners. For example, rich media contents allow us to describe complex concepts and process flows. Audio and video elements may be utilized to add a “human touch” to distance-learning courses. Finally, real lectures may be recorded and distributed to integrate or enrich on line materials. A confirmation of the advantages of these approaches can be seen in the exponential growth of video-lecture availability on the net, due to the ease of recording and delivering activities which take place in a traditional classroom. Furthermore, the wide use of assistive technologies for learners with disabilities injects new life into e-learning systems. E-learning allows distance and flexible educational activities, thus helping disabled learners to access resources which would otherwise present significant barriers for them. For instance, students with visual impairments have difficulties in reading traditional visual materials, deaf learners have trouble in following traditional (spoken) lectures, people with motion disabilities have problems in attending on-site programs. As already mentioned, the use of wireless technologies and pervasive computing may really enhance the educational learner experience by offering mobile e-learning services that can be accessed by handheld devices. This new paradigm of educational content distribution maximizes the benefits for learners since it enables users to overcome constraints imposed by the surrounding environment. While certainly helpful for users without disabilities, we believe that the use of newmobile technologies may also become a fundamental tool for impaired learners, since it frees them from sitting in front of a PC. In this way, educational activities can be enjoyed by all the users, without hindrance, thus increasing the social inclusion of non-typical learners. While the provision of fully accessible and portable video-lectures may be extremely useful for students, it is widely recognized that structuring and managing rich media contents for mobile learning services are complex and expensive tasks. Indeed, major difficulties originate from the basic need to provide a textual equivalent for each media resource composing a rich media Learning Object (LO). Moreover, tests need to be carried out to establish whether a given LO is fully accessible to all kinds of learners. Unfortunately, both these tasks are truly time-consuming processes, depending on the type of contents the teacher is writing and on the authoring tool he/she is using. Due to these difficulties, online LOs are often distributed as partially accessible or totally inaccessible content. Bearing this in mind, this thesis aims to discuss the key issues of a system we have developed to deliver accessible, customized or nomadic learning experiences to learners with different access needs and skills. To reduce the risk of excluding users with particular access capabilities, our system exploits Learning Objects (LOs) which are dynamically adapted and transcoded based on the specific needs of non-typical users and on the barriers that they can encounter in the environment. The basic idea is to dynamically adapt contents, by selecting them from a set of media resources packaged in SCORM-compliant LOs and stored in a self-adapting format. The system schedules and orchestrates a set of transcoding processes based on specific learner needs, so as to produce a customized LO that can be fully enjoyed by any (impaired or mobile) student.

Conceptual Model and Security Requirements for DRM Techniques Used for e-Learning Objects Protection

This paper deals with the security problems of DRM protected e-learning content. After a short review of the main DRM systems and methods used in e-learning, an examination is made of participators in DRM schemes (e-learning object author, content creator, content publisher, license creator and end user). Then a conceptual model of security related processes of DRM implementation is proposed which is improved afterwards to reflect some particularities in DRM protection of e-learning objects. A methodical way is used to describe the security related motives, responsibilities and goals of the main participators involved in the DRM system. Taken together with the process model, these security properties are used to establish a list of requirements to fulfill and a possibility for formal verification of real DRM systems compliance with these requirements.

Ampliando as ações educativas dos museus por meio da formação de comunidades virtuais de aprendizagem

Este artigo tem como objetivo mostrar que é possível incentivar a aprendizagem informal em museus através da construção de comunidades virtuais, com base em repositórios de objetos de aprendizagem, ferramentas comunicacionais e produção de OAs por parte dos visitantes. O enfoque é incentivar a aprendizagem no sentido de motivar a participação/envolvimento do visitante nas atividades da comunidade virtual. Nesta perspectiva, partimos do pressuposto de que a informação, a comunicação, a interação e a cooperação são essenciais para o processo de aprender no contexto informal dos museus. Acreditamos que a interação e a cooperação são partes integrantes do processo de aprendizagem proporcionado por comunidades virtuais e que o principal recurso de aprendizagem oferecido nessas comunidades são os objetos de aprendizagem. Diante do exposto, construímos a Comunidade Virtual do Muzar e realizamos uma experimentação do ambiente de modo a verificar o quanto os visitantes são incentivados a produzir novos conhecimentos.

Tecniche di deep learning per il monitoraggio del processo nell’industria dello pneumatico

Il seguente elaborato affronta l'implementazione di un algoritmo che affronta un problema di controllo di processo in ambito industriale utilizzando algoritmi di object detection. Infatti, il progetto concordato con il professore Di Stefano si è svolto in collaborazione con l’azienda Pirelli, nell’ambito della produzione di pneumatici. Lo scopo dell'algoritmo implementato è di verificare il preciso orientamento di elementi grafici della copertura, utilizzati dalle case automobilistiche per equipaggiare correttamente le vetture. In particolare, si devono individuare delle scritte sul battistrada della copertura e identificarne la posizione rispetto ad altri elementi fissati su di essa. La tesi affronta questo task in due parti distinte: la prima consiste nel training di algoritmi di deep learning per il riconoscimento degli elementi grafici e del battistrada, la seconda è un decisore che opera a valle del primo sistema utilizzando gli output delle reti allenate.

E-partilha: desenvolvimento e utilização de um repositório de objectos de aprendizagem

Nos novos ambientes de aprendizagem, construídos a partir das tecnologias digitais, a necessidade de promover a qualidade dos recursos educativos, normalmente designados por Learning Objects, que podem suportar a aprendizagem à distância, formal e informal, emerge como um dos grandes desafios que as instituições de ensino têm de enfrentar. Sendo dispendiosos, a reutilização e a partilha tornam-se, assim, uma necessidade premente. Este artigo apresenta um Learning Object Repository que tem como objectivo armazenar, disseminar e manter acessíveis Learning Objects.

PCMAT Metadata Authoring Tool

This paper introduces the PCMAT platform project and, in particular, one of its components, the PCMAT Metadata Authoring Tool. This is an educational web application that allows the project metadata creators to write the metadata associated to each learning object without any concern for the metadata schema semantics. Furthermore it permits the project managers to add or delete elements to the schema, without having to rewrite or compile any code.

Porque ler não chega… da biblioteca escolar à sala de aula: um percurso de leitura e escrita

Projeto de Intervenção apresentado à Escola Superior de Educação de Lisboa para a obtenção de grau de Mestre em Didática da Língua Portuguesa no 1º e 2º CEB

ONET – Observatório Nacional da Educação em Turismo. A importância da tecnologia na educação em turismo

Esta tese pretende fazer um estudo sobre a influência que a evolução tecnológica tem, de forma direta e indireta, sobre a educação em turismo. Os fatores indiretos (fornecedores turísticos, agências…) acabam por ter o maior peso devido às constantes evoluções que sofrem para poderem dar um serviço cada vez melhor aos seus clientes. A ideia surgiu da necessidade de elaboração de um modelo para a reformulação do portal do Observatório Nacional de Educação em Turismo (ONET), cujo planeamento e parte da implementação decorreu numa parte mais prática da tese. Os pontos principais da reformulação do portal passaram pela modificação do seu design, elaboração de um repositório de objetos de aprendizagem e de uma rede social. A propósito do repositório, decidiu-se elaborar também um objeto de aprendizagem sobre o tema “A História do Turismo no Mundo”. Toda esta evolução tecnológica, que se tem verificado nos últimos anos, veio agilizar muitos procedimentos, sendo necessários profissionais qualificados. É aqui que entra o papel das escolas. Têm de se adaptar em termos de utilização das mais recentes tecnologias, nomeadamente software. Algumas empresas produtoras de software desenvolvem também simuladores que são utilizados nas escolas para um ensino semelhante ao que será a futura vida profissional.