Pupils' recall of an interactive storybook on CD-ROM

Abstract This small-scale study compares two groups of Year 4 (8/9 year-old) pupils either reading or playing an interactive storybook . The study considered pupils' recall of propositions, which formed the story setting and episodes, and of micro-propositions and characters' names, and pupils' responses to inferential items derived from the 'interactive storybook'. The study indicates that, whether reading or playing, pupils' recall of the story setting was sound, but pupils who had read the interactive storybook demonstrated greater recall of the story event structure than those who had engaged in interactive picture-play. Pupils who had played the interactive storybook demonstrated significantly greater recall of micro-propositions and names.     

Designing collaborative,constructionist and contextual applications for handheld devices

This paper explores current applications for handheld devices and questions which of these make full use of the unique attributes of handheld devices in order to facilitate learning in a pedagogically sensible manner. In order to do so, the paper presents a functional framework which analyses handheld application in relation to their use as well as the pedagogical underpinning, if any, that informs their development. Our framework currently consists of seven distinct categories of application, which we term: administrative, referential, interactive, microworld, data collection, location aware and collaborative. We argue that three categories, namely data collection, location aware and collaborative, are particularly suited to learning with handheld devices when they are informed by collaborative, contextual and constructionist learning theories. Furthermore, we contend that applications of the type just outlined deserve further research since they are not attempting to replicate, or even augment, existing learning scenarios but rather they try to create new learning opportunities which would not be possible without (mobile) technology. Finally, the authors introduce a number of applications and learning scenarios that they have developed for handheld devices and explain their position within the framework.     

Improving human robot collaboration through Force/Torque based learning for object manipulation

Human–Robot Collaboration (HRC) is a term used to describe tasks in which robots and humans work together to achieve a goal. Unlike traditional industrial robots, collaborative robots need to be adaptive; able to alter their approach to better suit the situation and the needs of the human partner. As traditional programming techniques can struggle with the complexity required, an emerging approach is to learn a skill by observing human demonstration and imitating the motions; commonly known as Learning from Demonstration (LfD). In this work, we present a LfD methodology that combines an ensemble machine learning algorithm (i.e. Random Forest (RF)) with stochastic regression, using haptic information captured from human demonstration. The capabilities of the proposed method are evaluated using two collaborative tasks; co-manipulation of an object (where the human provides the guidance but the robot handles the objects weight) and collaborative assembly of simple interlocking parts. The proposed method is shown to be capable of imitation learning; interpreting human actions and producing equivalent robot motion across a diverse range of initial and final conditions. After verifying that ensemble machine learning can be utilised for real robotics problems, we propose a further extension utilising Weighted Random Forest (WRF) that attaches weights to each tree based on its performance. It is then shown that the WRF approach outperforms RF in HRC tasks.     

Exploring Virtual Librarianship: Second Life Library 2.0

ABSTRACT

In April 2006, Alliance Library System and Online Programming for All Libraries partnered to start the Second Life Library 2.0 in the online world Second Life and in August 2006 purchased an island on the Teen grid of Teen Second Life. Second Life is a virtual world, a descendant of multiplayer online games. Educational institutions have recently been drawn into Second Life's robust economy and vibrant cultural life. The Second Life Library 2.0 works with librarians from around the world and with other educational partners such as TechSoup, WorldBridges, and the New Media Consortium. Second Life Library 2.0 provides “traditional” library services such as ready reference, book discussions, and search assistance, but, at heart, it explores what it means to be a virtual library in a virtual world.     

基于角色权限分配的协同电子政务访问控制模型研究

首先分析了电子政务的协同性特点,阐述了多域协同工作环境下电子政务系统面临的安全问题.借鉴基于角色的访问控制思想,提出了基于用户、角色和权限分配的电子政务访问控制模型,通过引入权限期和作用域的概念,建立了角色和权限分配机制,描述了模型的运行机制,并就发生访问冲突情况下的调停问题给出了算法实现思想.最后以一项典型的政务活动--文件流转会签为例,具体说明了模型的使用方法,有效地解决了多域环境下电子政务的系统安全和信息保密问题.     

全球电子政府发展的若干动向

本文介绍了今年6月14-15日在新加坡召开的iGOV2010全球论坛的主题和主旨报告,概述了社会协作网络对电子政府改革的深刻影响并对全球电子政府发展的若干动向作简要分析。     

基于VRML和JAVA3D的图形协同模式

对于网络三维图形协同系统而言,如何构建在异地、异构CAD系统下能为各设计方所普遍接受的讨论模型是该系统的关键。本文结合VRML的强大表征功能和JAVA3D的强大操作功能,应用了基于VRML模型范本生成JAVA3D世界中的镜像,从而直接在JAVA中对该镜像进行协同浏览的设计模式。根据这一模式,结合即时通讯和电子白板模块,作者实现了一个网络图形协同的原型系统。