Progettazione e sviluppo di un'interfaccia web per la gestione di un impianto fotovoltaico di medie dimensioni

Con questa tesi ho descritto come le tecnologie web odierne possano permettere di sviluppare degli applicativi alternativi ai software da installare nei singoli pc. La gestione dei dati tramite database, la loro ricerca ed esposizione tramite il linguaggio SQL, la gestione semplificata dell'interfaccia grazie al CSS e le molteplici applicazioni rese disponibili da terze parti (come grafici o servizi meteorologici utilizzati nell'elaborato) permettono di soddisfare qualsiasi specifica richiesta. Nella tesi in oggetto tratto, a questo scopo, la creazione di un'interfaccia che consenta di gestire e monitorare un impianto fotovoltaico di medie dimensioni.

Using Web 2.0 tools to facilitate knowledge transfer in complex organisational environments : a primer

An often neglected but well recognised aspect of successful engineering asset management is the achievement of co-operation and collaboration between various occupational, functional and hierarchical levels present within complex technical environments. Engineering and technical contexts have been well documented for the presence of highly cohesive groups based around around functional or role orientations. However while highly cohesive groups are potentially advantageous they are also often correlated with the emergence of knowledge and information silos based around those same functional or occupational clusters. Improved collaboration and co-operation between groups has been demonstrated to result in a number of positive outcomes at an individual, group and organisational level. Example outcomes include an increased capacity for problem solving, improved responsiveness and adaptation to organisational crises, higher morale and an increased ability to leverage workforce capability. However, an essential challenge for organisations wishing to overcome informational silos is to implement mechanisms that facilitate, encourage and sustain interactions between otherwise disconnected groups. This paper reviews the ability of Web 2.0 technologies and mobile computing devices to facilitate and encourage knowledge sharing between “silo’d” groups. Commonly available tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Wiki’s and others will be reviewed in relation to their applicability, functionality and ease-of-use by engineering and technical personnel. The paper also documents three case examples of engineering organisations that have successfully employed Web 2.0 to achieve superior knowledge management. With a number of clear recommendations he paper is an essential starting point for any organization looking at the use of new generation technologies for achieving the significant outcomes associated with knowledge transfer.

Using Web 2.0 tools to facilitate knowledge transfer in complex organisational environments : a primer

An often neglected but well recognised aspect of successful engineering asset management is the achievement of co-operation and collaboration between various occupational, functional and hierarchical levels present within complex technical environments. Engineering and technical contexts have been well documented for the presence of highly cohesive groups based around around functional or role orientations. However while highly cohesive groups are potentially advantageous they are also often correlated with the emergence of knowledge and information silos based around those same functional or occupational clusters. Improved collaboration and co-operation between groups has been demonstrated to result in a number of positive outcomes at an individual, group and organisational level. Example outcomes include an increased capacity for problem solving, improved responsiveness and adaptation to organisational crises, higher morale and an increased ability to leverage workforce capability. However, an essential challenge for organisations wishing to overcome informational silos is to implement mechanisms that facilitate, encourage and sustain interactions between otherwise disconnected groups. This paper reviews the ability of Web 2.0 technologies and mobile computing devices to facilitate and encourage knowledge sharing between “silo’d” groups. Commonly available tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Wiki’s and others will be reviewed in relation to their applicability, functionality and ease-of-use by engineering and technical personnel. The paper also documents three case examples of engineering organisations that have successfully employed Web 2.0 to achieve superior knowledge management. With a number of clear recommendations the paper is an essential starting point for any organization looking at the use of new generation technologies for achieving the significant outcomes associated with knowledge transfer.

Multimedia y Web 2.0.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Birding 2.0: Citizen Science and Effective Monitoring in the Web 2.0 World

The amateur birding community has a long and proud tradition of contributing to bird surveys and bird atlases. Coordinated activities such as Breeding Bird Atlases and the Christmas Bird Count are examples of "citizen science" projects. With the advent of technology, Web 2.0 sites such as eBird have been developed to facilitate online sharing of data and thus increase the potential for real-time monitoring. However, as recently articulated in an editorial in this journal and elsewhere, monitoring is best served when based on a priori hypotheses. Harnessing citizen scientists to collect data following a hypothetico-deductive approach carries challenges. Moreover, the use of citizen science in scientific and monitoring studies has raised issues of data accuracy and quality. These issues are compounded when data collection moves into the Web 2.0 world. An examination of the literature from social geography on the concept of "citizen sensors" and volunteered geographic information (VGI) yields thoughtful reflections on the challenges of data quality/data accuracy when applying information from citizen sensors to research and management questions. VGI has been harnessed in a number of contexts, including for environmental and ecological monitoring activities. Here, I argue that conceptualizing a monitoring project as an experiment following the scientific method can further contribute to the use of VGI. I show how principles of experimental design can be applied to monitoring projects to better control for data quality of VGI. This includes suggestions for how citizen sensors can be harnessed to address issues of experimental controls and how to design monitoring projects to increase randomization and replication of sampled data, hence increasing scientific reliability and statistical power.

A web 2.0 user interface for wide-area resource monitoring

Resource monitoring in distributed systems is required to understand the 'health' of the overall system and to help identify particular problems, such as dysfunctional hardware or faulty system or application software. Monitoring systems such as GridRM provide the ability to connect to any number of different types of monitoring agents and provide different views of the system, based on a client's particular preferences. Web 2.0 technologies, and in particular 'mashups', are emerging as a promising technique for rapidly constructing rich user interfaces, that combine and present data in intuitive ways. This paper describes a Web 2.0 user interface that was created to expose resource data harvested by the GridRM resource monitoring system.

Aplicación web 2.0 para la gestión de dibujos

[ES] El TFG (Trabajo Fin de Grado) de esta aplicación consiste en una Web 2.0 de gestión de dibujos, destacando la participación de cada usuario para gestionar y a su vez comentar, votar o etiquetar dibujos. La Web 2.0 promueve la participación de los usuarios y el intercambio de opiniones e información, colaborando los usuarios entre sí como creadores de contenido. De esta manera se le conoce como web social, proporcionando un medio para gestionar información con el fin de compartir los resultados. Por tanto, la diferencia entre la Web 2.0 frente a una web normal, es que los usuarios no se limitan a observar pasivamente los contenidos que se han creado para ellos. Una de las características principales de la aplicación es la herramienta para crear y editar dibujos, implementado en un Applet. Un Applet es un componente de una aplicación que está desarrollado en Java y se puede ejecutar desde una página web. La herramienta en sí te permite insertar figuras o dibujar a mano alzada y eligiendo el color. Al ser desarrollado en Java, el formato que tiene la aplicación web es JSP (Java Server Page). La principal ventaja de JSP frente a otros lenguajes es que el lenguaje Java es un lenguaje apto para crear clases que manejen lógica de negocio y acceso a datos de una manera prolija. Esto permite separar en niveles las aplicaciones web, dejando la parte encargada de generar el documento HTML en el archivo JSP. Otra ventaja es que JSP hereda la portabilidad de Java, y es posible ejecutar las aplicaciones en múltiples plataformas sin cambios.

Las funcionalidades Web 2.0 en la interface de usuario de los OPACs Web de Latinoamérica

Se presenta el proyecto de investigación aprobado y subsidiado en el marco de la Programación Científica UBACYT 2011-2014 sobre la problemática de las interfaces de usuario de los catálogos en línea de acceso público (OPACs) en entorno web de las bibliotecas nacionales, universitarias, especializadas y públicas de Latinoamérica, a fin de examinar las funcionalidades propias de las áreas de control de operaciones, formulación de la búsqueda y puntos de acceso, control de salida y asistencia al usuario, así como también las funcionalidades Web 2.0. Se adopta una metodología cuantitativa. Se plantea aplicar a una muestra representada por 102 unidades, extraída por muestreo aleatorio simple (de una población compuesta por 846 casos), la lista de funcionalidades que proporciona Hildreth (1982) actualizada; comparar, mediante un diseño experimental de muestras relacionadas, las variaciones producidas en cuanto a presencia/ausencia de funcionalidades y tipo de software adoptado en relación con la situación existente ya verificada en investigaciones previas; identificar, a partir de la observación de las interfaces de los OPACs que constituyen la muestra, la presencia/ausencia de funcionalidades Web 2.0; utilizar para ello como instrumento de recolección la lista de funcionalidades deseables en los OPACs 2.0 confeccionada por Margaix-Arnal (2007); aplicar diferentes pruebas estadísticas para describir las características de la interface de usuario de los OPACs Web de la región a partir del supuesto de que ha aumentado el uso de Sistemas Integrados de Gestión Bibliotecaria y la presencia de funcionalidades en aquellas unidades que han adoptado estos sistemas, aunque carecen aún de funcionalidades 2.0.

Las funcionalidades Web 2.0 en la interface de usuario de los OPACs Web de Latinoamérica

Se presenta el proyecto de investigación aprobado y subsidiado en el marco de la Programación Científica UBACYT 2011-2014 sobre la problemática de las interfaces de usuario de los catálogos en línea de acceso público (OPACs) en entorno web de las bibliotecas nacionales, universitarias, especializadas y públicas de Latinoamérica, a fin de examinar las funcionalidades propias de las áreas de control de operaciones, formulación de la búsqueda y puntos de acceso, control de salida y asistencia al usuario, así como también las funcionalidades Web 2.0. Se adopta una metodología cuantitativa. Se plantea aplicar a una muestra representada por 102 unidades, extraída por muestreo aleatorio simple (de una población compuesta por 846 casos), la lista de funcionalidades que proporciona Hildreth (1982) actualizada; comparar, mediante un diseño experimental de muestras relacionadas, las variaciones producidas en cuanto a presencia/ausencia de funcionalidades y tipo de software adoptado en relación con la situación existente ya verificada en investigaciones previas; identificar, a partir de la observación de las interfaces de los OPACs que constituyen la muestra, la presencia/ausencia de funcionalidades Web 2.0; utilizar para ello como instrumento de recolección la lista de funcionalidades deseables en los OPACs 2.0 confeccionada por Margaix-Arnal (2007); aplicar diferentes pruebas estadísticas para describir las características de la interface de usuario de los OPACs Web de la región a partir del supuesto de que ha aumentado el uso de Sistemas Integrados de Gestión Bibliotecaria y la presencia de funcionalidades en aquellas unidades que han adoptado estos sistemas, aunque carecen aún de funcionalidades 2.0.

Las funcionalidades Web 2.0 en la interface de usuario de los OPACs Web de Latinoamérica

Se presenta el proyecto de investigación aprobado y subsidiado en el marco de la Programación Científica UBACYT 2011-2014 sobre la problemática de las interfaces de usuario de los catálogos en línea de acceso público (OPACs) en entorno web de las bibliotecas nacionales, universitarias, especializadas y públicas de Latinoamérica, a fin de examinar las funcionalidades propias de las áreas de control de operaciones, formulación de la búsqueda y puntos de acceso, control de salida y asistencia al usuario, así como también las funcionalidades Web 2.0. Se adopta una metodología cuantitativa. Se plantea aplicar a una muestra representada por 102 unidades, extraída por muestreo aleatorio simple (de una población compuesta por 846 casos), la lista de funcionalidades que proporciona Hildreth (1982) actualizada; comparar, mediante un diseño experimental de muestras relacionadas, las variaciones producidas en cuanto a presencia/ausencia de funcionalidades y tipo de software adoptado en relación con la situación existente ya verificada en investigaciones previas; identificar, a partir de la observación de las interfaces de los OPACs que constituyen la muestra, la presencia/ausencia de funcionalidades Web 2.0; utilizar para ello como instrumento de recolección la lista de funcionalidades deseables en los OPACs 2.0 confeccionada por Margaix-Arnal (2007); aplicar diferentes pruebas estadísticas para describir las características de la interface de usuario de los OPACs Web de la región a partir del supuesto de que ha aumentado el uso de Sistemas Integrados de Gestión Bibliotecaria y la presencia de funcionalidades en aquellas unidades que han adoptado estos sistemas, aunque carecen aún de funcionalidades 2.0.

Digital kids, analogue students : a mixed methods study of students' engagement with a school-based Web 2.0 learning innovation

The inquiry documented in this thesis is located at the nexus of technological innovation and traditional schooling. As we enter the second decade of a new century, few would argue against the increasingly urgent need to integrate digital literacies with traditional academic knowledge. Yet, despite substantial investments from governments and businesses, the adoption and diffusion of contemporary digital tools in formal schooling remain sluggish. To date, research on technology adoption in schools tends to take a deficit perspective of schools and teachers, with the lack of resources and teacher ‘technophobia’ most commonly cited as barriers to digital uptake. Corresponding interventions that focus on increasing funding and upskilling teachers, however, have made little difference to adoption trends in the last decade. Empirical evidence that explicates the cultural and pedagogical complexities of innovation diffusion within long-established conventions of mainstream schooling, particularly from the standpoint of students, is wanting. To address this knowledge gap, this thesis inquires into how students evaluate and account for the constraints and affordances of contemporary digital tools when they engage with them as part of their conventional schooling. It documents the attempted integration of a student-led Web 2.0 learning initiative, known as the Student Media Centre (SMC), into the schooling practices of a long-established, high-performing independent senior boys’ school in urban Australia. The study employed an ‘explanatory’ two-phase research design (Creswell, 2003) that combined complementary quantitative and qualitative methods to achieve both breadth of measurement and richness of characterisation. In the initial quantitative phase, a self-reported questionnaire was administered to the senior school student population to determine adoption trends and predictors of SMC usage (N=481). Measurement constructs included individual learning dispositions (learning and performance goals, cognitive playfulness and personal innovativeness), as well as social and technological variables (peer support, perceived usefulness and ease of use). Incremental predictive models of SMC usage were conducted using Classification and Regression Tree (CART) modelling: (i) individual-level predictors, (ii) individual and social predictors, and (iii) individual, social and technological predictors. Peer support emerged as the best predictor of SMC usage. Other salient predictors include perceived ease of use and usefulness, cognitive playfulness and learning goals. On the whole, an overwhelming proportion of students reported low usage levels, low perceived usefulness and a lack of peer support for engaging with the digital learning initiative. The small minority of frequent users reported having high levels of peer support and robust learning goal orientations, rather than being predominantly driven by performance goals. These findings indicate that tensions around social validation, digital learning and academic performance pressures influence students’ engagement with the Web 2.0 learning initiative. The qualitative phase that followed provided insights into these tensions by shifting the analytics from individual attitudes and behaviours to shared social and cultural reasoning practices that explain students’ engagement with the innovation. Six indepth focus groups, comprising 60 students with different levels of SMC usage, were conducted, audio-recorded and transcribed. Textual data were analysed using Membership Categorisation Analysis. Students’ accounts converged around a key proposition. The Web 2.0 learning initiative was useful-in-principle but useless-in-practice. While students endorsed the usefulness of the SMC for enhancing multimodal engagement, extending peer-topeer networks and acquiring real-world skills, they also called attention to a number of constraints that obfuscated the realisation of these design affordances in practice. These constraints were cast in terms of three binary formulations of social and cultural imperatives at play within the school: (i) ‘cool/uncool’, (ii) ‘dominant staff/compliant student’, and (iii) ‘digital learning/academic performance’. The first formulation foregrounds the social stigma of the SMC among peers and its resultant lack of positive network benefits. The second relates to students’ perception of the school culture as authoritarian and punitive with adverse effects on the very student agency required to drive the innovation. The third points to academic performance pressures in a crowded curriculum with tight timelines. Taken together, findings from both phases of the study provide the following key insights. First, students endorsed the learning affordances of contemporary digital tools such as the SMC for enhancing their current schooling practices. For the majority of students, however, these learning affordances were overshadowed by the performative demands of schooling, both social and academic. The student participants saw engagement with the SMC in-school as distinct from, even oppositional to, the conventional social and academic performance indicators of schooling, namely (i) being ‘cool’ (or at least ‘not uncool’), (ii) sufficiently ‘compliant’, and (iii) achieving good academic grades. Their reasoned response therefore, was simply to resist engagement with the digital learning innovation. Second, a small minority of students seemed dispositionally inclined to negotiate the learning affordances and performance constraints of digital learning and traditional schooling more effectively than others. These students were able to engage more frequently and meaningfully with the SMC in school. Their ability to adapt and traverse seemingly incommensurate social and institutional identities and norms is theorised as cultural agility – a dispositional construct that comprises personal innovativeness, cognitive playfulness and learning goals orientation. The logic then is ‘both and’ rather than ‘either or’ for these individuals with a capacity to accommodate both learning and performance in school, whether in terms of digital engagement and academic excellence, or successful brokerage across multiple social identities and institutional affiliations within the school. In sum, this study takes us beyond the familiar terrain of deficit discourses that tend to blame institutional conservatism, lack of resourcing and teacher resistance for low uptake of digital technologies in schools. It does so by providing an empirical base for the development of a ‘third way’ of theorising technological and pedagogical innovation in schools, one which is more informed by students as critical stakeholders and thus more relevant to the lived culture within the school, and its complex relationship to students’ lives outside of school. It is in this relationship that we find an explanation for how these individuals can, at the one time, be digital kids and analogue students.

Legal aspects of Web 2.0 activities : management of legal risk associated with use of YouTube, MySpace and Second Life

This Report, prepared for Smart Service Queensland (“SSQ”), addresses legal issues, areas of risk and other factors associated with activities conducted on three popular online platforms—YouTube, MySpace and Second Life (which are referred to throughout this Report as the “Platforms”). The Platforms exemplify online participatory spaces and behaviours, including blogging and networking, multimedia sharing, and immersive virtual environments.