Christian Safran

The benefits of Geo-Tagging and microblogging in m-Learning: a use case

The recent years have shown the remarkable potential use of Web 2.0 technologies in education, especially in the context of informal learning. The application of Wikis for collaborative work is one example for this theory applied. The support of learning in those fields of education, which are strongly based on visual location-based information, could also benefit from Geo-Tagging, a technique that has become popular lately, and m-Learning, which allows learning in-the-field. This paper presents first developments on the combination of these three concepts into a geospatial Wiki for higher education, TUGeoWiki. Our solution proposal supports mobile scenarios where textual data and images are managed and retrieved in-the-field as well as some desktop scenarios in the context of collaborative e-Learning. Within this scope, one critical issue arises while adding and updating textual information via the collaborative interface, which can be cumbersome in mobile scenarios. To solve this problem, we integrated another popular concept into our solution approach, Microblogging. Thus, the information pushed via short messages from mobile clients or microblogging tools to our m-Learning environment enables the creation of Wiki-Micropages as basis for subsequent collaborative learning scenarios.

A Geospatial Wiki for m-Learning

In subjects, where a major part of the education is based on visual information, like geosciences, architecture or civil engineering, this information is often tied to a specific location. Field studies and excursions are thus an essential part of the education in such subjects. This paper describes an application designed to bring the advantages of collaborative, technology enhanced learning into these environments. The development is based on the idea of a Wiki specially designed for collaboratively compiling location-bound information. Other key features are the inclusion geographic coordinates to all Wiki articles, the integration of external map material and providinga mobile interface for the use ldquoin the fieldrdquo. The result of this development process is a geoWiki application tailored for the needs of m-Learning. With a user interface based on widely known applications, TUGeoWiki offers learners and teachers alike the possibility to collaborate on geospatial information.

Emerging Web Based Learning Systems and Scalability Issues

The recent yearspsila changes in the Web and its application have also had an enormous impact on learning. This paper discusses a shift of Web based learning systems towards scalable web learning services. It provides an overview of current state of development and evolution path of Web based learning systems. Desired characteristics of modern systems are identified and role of service oriented computing (SOC) to support this development is exemplified.

Personalized Interactive Newscast (PINC): Towards a Multimodal Interface for Personalized News

The contemporary information infrastructure gives way to a massive offer of news sources and subsequently news contents. Finding such sources and filtering relevant news according to personal preferences is a time-consuming task in the daily effort to stay informed. Moreover many of these sources are not accessible when spare time to read news is available, especially while being en-route. Personalized interactive newscast (PINC) is a system which aggregates vast numbers of news contents and associates them by semantic equivalence. By filtering and arranging by personal preferences a personal newscast is created, embracing recommendations for interesting news articles. This newscast is made accessible via various interfaces to provide a central source of information which is accessible in most situations.