Gemma Webster

Technology for Supporting Care Staff in Residential Homes

Care staff, those who attend to the day-to-day needs of people in residential facilities, represent an important segment of the health-care provision of those entrusted to their care. The potential use of technology by care staff has not been a focus of researcher attention. The work reported here provides initial steps in addressing that gap, considering both the design requirements for this population and presentation of early work on a software system for use by care staff. We describe the development of a software tool for use by care staff, called Portrait, and report two studies related to factors affecting technology use by this population. The results of this research are promising, with Portrait being very positively received by care managers and care staff. Use of this software in a care home for over a month indicated continued use, with care staff returning to the system throughout the test period. The contributions of this research are the identification of factors important in working with a care staff population, the introduction and evaluation of a novel software tool for care staff in residential homes, and the highlighting of potential benefits of technology in assisting care staff.

The Geographies of Community History Digital Archives in Rural Scotland

Abstract The CURIOS (Cultural Repositories and Information Systems) project has been working with community heritage groups to co-produce sustainable solutions for the production of heritage archives in digital form. This process has produced an opportunity for fascinating geographical research into the ways in which community heritage groups produce history from their own perspective. This paper will therefore begin to open up these ongoing processes to consider, through case study examples, the ways in which the production of digital archives alters the geography of community heritage production. A number of community heritage groups have been converting their ‘analogue’ collections into ‘digital’ forms and the paper will argue how this significantly alters the positionality of the archive. This will be shown by detailing the ways in which the processes of collection and preservation, conducted by community volunteers, take place. The paper will then move to consider the ways in which this historical material, representative of place, is presented back to a wider audience. In doing this, it will discuss the rationales and processes involved in these practices and how this relates to broader themes of research within geography. Whether for historical research or for theoretical positioning, geographers have, on a number of levels, engaged with archives. Yet, the digital archive has seen little attention especially in terms of thinking through the ways in which digital mediums alter perceptions of space and place.

CURIOS Mobile: Linked Data Exploitation for Tourist Mobile Apps in Rural Areas

As mobile devices proliferate and their computational power has increased rapidly over recent years, mobile applications have become a popular choice for visitors to enhance their travelling experience. However, most tourist mobile apps currently use narratives generated specifically for the app and often require a reliable Internet connection to download data from the cloud. These requirements are difficult to achieve in rural settings where many interesting cultural heritage sites are located. Although Linked Data has become a very popular format to preserve historical and cultural archives, it has not been applied to a great extent in tourist sector. In this paper we describe an approach to using Linked Data technology for enhancing visitors’ experience in rural settings. In particular, we present CURIOS Mobile, the implementation of our approach and an initial evaluation from a case study conducted in the Western Isles of Scotland.

Determining Content for Unknown Users: Lessons from the MinkApp Case Study

If an NLG system needs to be put in place as soon as possible it is not always possible to know in advance who the us-ers of a system are or what kind of in-formation will interest them. This paper describes the development of a system and contextualized text for unknown us-ers. We describe the development, design and initial findings with a system for un-known users that allows the users to de-sign their own contextualised text.

Portraits of People With Dementia Three Case Studies of Creating Portraits

Communication difficulties associated with late-stage dementia can make it difficult for care staff in residential environments to get to know people with dementia. This lack of knowledge can have a negative effect on the social environment of residential facilities, which can have a detrimental effect on the health and well-being of the residents and the job satisfaction of the staff. In this article, we discuss the creation of portraits of people with dementia to aid care staff in understanding the individual. The major findings of these case studies include that it is possible for families to create portraits of their relatives within a relatively short period of time and families found the process enjoyable and a good trigger for reminiscence.

Youth digital participation: Measuring social impact

Current scholarly debate around digital participatory youth projects and approaches to their evaluation are examined in this article. The analysis of the literature presented here reveals (1) an over-reliance on traditional evaluation techniques for such initiatives, and (2) a scarcity of models for the assessment of the social impact of digital participatory youth projects. It is concluded that the challenges and limitations of social impact evaluation practice in digital participatory youth projects should be addressed through the adoption of alternative, participant-centred approaches. These issues are discussed in reference to a current ongoing study that seeks to identify solutions for enhancing social impact evaluations of participatory digital initiatives by young people.

Workshop on Interactivity in Healthcare Systems (IHS)

We are all living longer with average life expectancy increasing across the globe [1]. However, chronic conditions such as heart disease, strokes and cancer, coupled with an increasing global obesity problem still cause a growing number of premature deaths [1]. These conditions combined with an aging population cause a huge strain on healthcare provision.

A Lightweight Treatment of Inexact Dates

This paper presents a lightweight approach to representing inexact dates on the semantic web, in that it imposes minimal ontological commitments on the ontology author and provides data that can be queried using standard approaches. The approach is presented in the context of a significant need to represent inexact dates but the heavyweight nature of existing proposals which can handle such information. Approaches to querying the represented information and an example user interface for creating such information are presented.