Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This paper presents an experience of educational podcasting set up at the University of Bergamo (Italy), and derives from that experience some remarks upon the quality of podcasting services, in order to promote the definition of guidelines on podcasting quality. We discuss three main attributes of a podcasting environment: quality of the production environment (recording and editing), quality of the product (content and communication style), quality of the distribution environment (paratext and management).

Context can be utilized as an effective source of information for supporting the user system interface under the ubiquitous environments. The context awareness function forms the basis of the studies regarding the ubiquitous computing environment for creating numerous smart spaces, and a context awareness service is usually based on the context awareness system or middleware. However, conventional context modeling approaches based on ontology bear several problems. First, a context awareness service must share the context information with other context awareness services in the designing phase. Second problem is a context uncertainty, which can arise in the process of deducing the data acquired from the sensor into the context information based on the dynamic modification of the context ontology, must be resolved. This study proposes the context management system based on the dynamic context ontology management method, which involves the hierarchical context management method using common context and the paper proposes a method for resolving the context uncertainty problem of interpreting the data acquired from the sensors as two or more types of context information.

Modern manufacturing industry changes dramatically following the fast progress of mechanical improvement and informatics development. Young people focus on learning new techniques in order to catch up the fast progress. Traditional industrial skills are missing step by step that will be a problem for modern industrial manufactures. The technological generation gap also causes damage in manufacturing industry. Elder experts who accumulated many traditional industrial skills faced the problems of retirement and strict competition. Young novices receive modern industry technique trainings, but still require traditional skill to maintain the industrial manufacture. The skill transmission from elder expert to young novice is known as an important course. In Japan, industry pays a lot of concern at the decline in mastery of skills technology. Based on the importance and difficulties of skill transmissions, an idea model was searched and established in this study. We choice screw manufacture as a representative industry in this study because screw manufacture required traditional skills and modern techniques. A manual introducing traditional skill and integrating computer science could transmit technologies smoothly from elder expert to young novice. Computer science here is used to link generation gap, to introduce traditional skill delicately in order to keep all the detail tricks and lively in order to be accepted by novice. The transmission efficiency and efficacy both will be considered.

The growth of grid computing facilitates the discovery of scientifically meaningful findings from the result of computational simulations by providing enormous amount of computing power and huge volume of storage area. As the computer technology advances, the relative portion of the time required for preparing and analyzing the result of the calculation increases because the complexity of the problem to be solved by grid computing also increases. In order to provide transparent and flexible interface to various groups of users who have different objectives, multi-layer design is applied for developing data portal for climate data. This paper presents three-layer model with four user groups which represents student, teacher, researcher, and administrator. The functionalities for job submission, post-processing, data management, content management are distributed into three different layers of complexity which is categorized as basic, intermediate, and advanced.

ECampus is a project spanning all departments at the University of Fulda. It has been started to create a uniform learning environment at the university. The objective is to research and develop a user-friendly easy-to-use editor to generate SCORM 2004 conform eLearning modules. This editor is based on Open Source software and new technologies such as XSL transformations and the Google web toolkit. Some eLearning modules can be developed with the system immediately. These modules are now being used during the lessons with great success.

In this paper, we introduce a virtual pop-up book system using Augmented Reality technology. This system displays 3D virtual objects on the real book based on pose and position estimation of the camera. Although many marker-based methods have been proposed, a picture book with markers looks unattractive. Our system does not use any markers. We describe four advantages for the virtual pop-up book. Firstly, 3D rendering helps readers understand scenes. Secondly, characters look lively by using motions. Thirdly, author of the picture book can use the new representation, which mixes 2D and 3D rendering. Lastly, it can express time changes using animation.

Due to the diversity of mobile device and wireless network’s progress, mobile learning has become a possible and convenient way to support learning activity, whether it was in or out of classroom. There have been some researches showed that using such devices in the course can improve learners’ performance and arouse their motivation, cases like bird watching, plant observing, museum navigation and tourist guidance. Chinese language was considered difficult to learn all the time, because of its complicated shape, different pronunciations and multiple meanings. In this paper, we propose a system that works on PDA for foreigners to learn Chinese. The design concept derived from geographic information sharing, people will use PDA to explore the city they live, and gradually find virtual messages around them, thus enhance their Chinese communication skill.

Recently, various ways are being explored for enhancing the fun of computer games and lengthening the life cycle of them. Some games, add realistic graphic effect and excellent acoustic effect, and make the tendencies of game players reflected. This paper suggests the method to collect and analyze the action patterns of game players. The game players’ patterns are modeled using FSM (Finite State Machine). The result obtained by analyzing the data on game players is used for creating NPCs (Non-Player Characters) which show new action patterns by altering the FSM defined previously. This characters are adaptable NPCs which is learnable the action patterns of game players. The proposal method can be applied to create characters which play the role of partners with game players or the role of enemies against game players.

An experiment was conducted on the ease with which a car navigation system could be read by elderly, middle-aged and young people. 127 subjects (19-76 years of age) evaluated ease of reading of the displayed characters. The experiment evaluated characters displayed on a liquid crystal display (LCD) similar to those used in car navigation systems, and evaluated readability in 9 stages. Five character sizes for traffic terms and two languages (Japanese and English) were used in the experiment. The experiment was conducted with the LCD in 2 positions: directly in front of the subject and diagonal to the left (about 30 degrees). The results showed that he directly frontward position was significantly more readable than the position of diagonal to the left.

In this paper, we describe life-log content mash-up application called “Sharelog” by using widespread consumer mobile device. By using consumer mobile device as a interface for ubiquitous and mobile computing application, the system developers are enabled to focus on the content side of an application. We have demonstrated our application “Sharelog” at the museum exhibition and realized the capability of consumer mobile device as an interface for ubiquitous computing in public space. We would like to call this kind of mobile devices as public user interface.