Extending Learning Objects by Means of Social Networking

Learning objects have been the promise of providing people with high quality learning resources. Initiatives such as MIT Open-CourseWare, MERLOT and others have shown the real possibilities of creating and sharing knowledge through Internet. Thousands of educational resources are available through learning object repositories. We indeed live in an age of content abundance, and content can be considered as infrastructure for building adaptive and personalized learning paths, promoting both formal and informal learning. Nevertheless, although most educational institutions are adopting a more open approach, publishing huge amounts of educational resources, the reality is that these resources are barely used in other educational contexts. This paradox can be partly explained by the dificulties in adapting such resources with respect to language, e-learning standards and specifications and, finally, granularity. Furthermore, if we want our learners to use and take advantage of learning object repositories, we need to provide them with additional services than just browsing and searching for resources. Social networks can be a first step towards creating an open social community of learning around a topic or a subject. In this paper we discuss and analyze the process of using a learning object repository and building a social network on the top of it, with respect to the information architecture needed to capture and store the interaction between learners and resources in form of learning object metadata.

Promoting the Creation, Share and Use of OERs through Open Repositories and Social Networks

In this paper we discuss and analyze the process of using a learning object repository and building a social network on the top of it, including aspects related to open source technologies, promoting the use of the repository by means of social networks and helping learners to develop their own learning paths.

Open Educational Resources: an opportunity for virtual learning institutions

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC, Open University of Catalonia) is involved inseveral research projects and educational activities related to the use of Open Educational Resources (OER). Some of the discussed issues in the concept of OER are research issues which are being tackled in two EC projects (OLCOS and SELF). Besides the research part, the UOC aims at developing a virtual centre for analysing and promoting the concept of OERin Europe in the sector of Higher and Further Education. The objectives are to makeinformation and learning services available to provide university management staff,eLearning support centres, faculty and learners with practical information required to create, share and re-use such interoperable digital content, tools and licensing schemes. In the realisation of these objectives, the main activities are the following: to provide organisationaland individual e-learning end-users with orientation; to develop perspectives and useful recommendations in the form of a medium-term Roadmap 2010 for OER in Higher and Further Education in Europe; to offer practical information and support services about how to create, share and re-use open educational content by means of tutorials, guidelines, best practices, and specimen of exemplary open e-learning content; to establish a larger group ofcommitted experts throughout Europe and other continents who not only share theirexpertise but also steer networking, workshops, and clustering efforts; and to foster and support a community of practice in open e-learning content know-how and experiences.

Versatile iPad forensic acquisition using the Apple Camera Connection Kit

Peer reviewed

JXTA-Overlay P2P Platform and Its Application for Robot Control

The design of an efficient collaborative multirobot framework that ensures the autonomy and the individualrequirements of the involved robots is a very challenging task. This requires designing an efficient platform for inter-robot communication. P2P is a good approach to achieve this goal. P2P aims at making the communication ubiquitous thereby crossing the communication boundary and has many attractive features to use it as a platform for collaborative multi-robot environments. In this work, we present the JXTA Overlay P2P system and its application for robot control. Since JXTAOverlay is able to overcome Firewalls, Routers and NATs, it is possible to control end-devices in a WAN without changing the network security policy. We used JXTA-Overlay for the control of robot motors. We evaluated the proposed system by many experiments and have shown that the proposed system has a good performance and can be used successfully for the control of robot.

Técnicas de Anonimato para Securizar Redes Móviles Ad Hoc

Las redes móviles ad hoc son redes formadas por lainterconexión de terminales inalámbricos que de manera autónoma,sin ninguna administración central, establecen enlaces decomunicación entre ellos. La infraestructura de red la componenlos propios terminales de usuarios que actúan de gestores yencaminadores de paquetes. Así, un usuario cualquiera puedeconectarse con un terminal remoto a través de una conexiónmultisalto entre diferentes usuarios. En este tipo de redes tanabiertas, uno de los retos prioritarios es proteger el anonimatode los sujetos y sus localizaciones. En este artículo hacemos unrepaso de las técnicas existentes a través de los protocolos que sehan propuesto en la literatura, y exponemos los problemas queaun quedan abiertos.

On an IDS Model for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Manet security has a lot of open issues. Due to its character-istics, this kind of network needs preventive and corrective protection. Inthis paper, we focus on corrective protection proposing an anomaly IDSmodel for Manet. The design and development of the IDS are consideredin our 3 main stages: normal behavior construction, anomaly detectionand model update. A parametrical mixture model is used for behav-ior modeling from reference data. The associated Bayesian classi¯cationleads to the detection algorithm. MIB variables are used to provide IDSneeded information. Experiments of DoS and scanner attacks validatingthe model are presented as well.

Job accessibility, employment and job-education mismatch in the metropolitan area of Barcelona

This paper analyses the effect of job accessibility by public and private transport on labour market outcomes in the metropolitan area of Barcelona. Beyond employment, we consider the effect of job accessibility on job-education mismatch, which represents a relevant aspect of job quality. We adopt a recursive system of equations that models car availability, employment and mismatch. Public transport accessibility appears as an exogenous variable in the three equations. Even though it may reflect endogenous residential sorting, falsification proofs suggest that the estimated effect of public transport accessibility is not entirely driven by the endogenous nature of residential decisions.

Instal•lació contra incendis en un camp de maniobres

L’Escola d’Emergències Prevenció i Seguretat de Catalunya S.L. és un centre de formació especialitzat en la lluita contra el foc. Donat la seva necessitat d’expansió, en aquest estudi s’ha projectat una instal•lació contra incendis en l’exterior suficient per poder garantir tant les condicions mínimes legals que recull la norma UNE 23500:2012 sobre sistemes d’abastament d’aigua contra incendis i tota la resta de normes i certificacions de que han de disposar els diversos components d’aquesta xarxa, com els requeriments que ha cregut adequat el client en funció de la seva activitat empresarial i les necessitats que com a usuari de la instal•lació creu oportunes

Are we wasting our talent? Overqualification and overskilling among PhD graduates

Drawing on a very rich data set from a recent cohort of PhD graduates, we examine the correlates and consequences of qualification and skills mismatch. We show that job characteristics such as the economic sector and the main activity at work play a fundamental direct role in explaining the probability of being well matched. However, the effect of academic attributes seems to be mainly indirect, since it disappears once we control for the full set of work characteristics. We detected a significant earnings penalty for those who are both overqualified and overskilled and also showed that being mismatched reduces job satisfaction, especially for those whose skills are underutilized. Overall, the problem of mismatch among PhD graduates is closely related to demand-side constraints of the labor market. Increasing the supply of adequate jobs and broadening the skills PhD students acquire during training should be explored as possible responses.