Giovanni M. Bianco

One step further the ACM K-12 final report: a proposal for level 1: computer organization for K-8

Teaching computer science to children is a major priority in most countries in the world. Nevertheless, Computer Science curricula do not seem to address he childrens world, children who need specific languages, models, and presentation methods. In this paper we propose a novel approach of considering a Computer Science Education curriculum based on childrens creativity and imagination. The scope is the computer organization (aka Level 1 in he ACM K-12 Final Report). Materials have been designed for children, teachers and parents and take a gender-neutral approach.

Technology and Services: Cars and Assistance for E-Learning Roadmaps

ELViRA, the University e-learning network of Verona, has been growing, but its context also needs to be welldesigned. Thus, after the starting-up phase, intended to define the strategic planning and service models for the project, follow-up efforts will focus on service analysis. In this account we will describe the planning of these. To do this, we will identify a development structure and the required skills, and assign typical roles to them structuring the different activities of an elearning roadmap for an organization. The service analysis reported in this paper also addresses the costs involved, whereby cost drivers are identified and ranked according to their growth behaviour. The launching of a University e-learning centre is expected to provide a definite start to the implementation of the University e-learning policy. The first objective of the centre will be to support and to promote the activation of a series of pilot courses, thus focusing on content production and experimentation. Their online availability will be possible also thanks to the ELViRA network architecture, designed and structured according to security and stability requirements that prove fundamental in guaranteeing the continuity of the target e-learning services.

Strategic planning and service models for the ELViRA project

Building the e-learning policy of a university is a complex process, that involves several stakeholders, requires strategic planning, and relies on a variety of service models and technologies. Requirements on overall system architecture and on eligibility of e-learning technologies follow from strategic planning decisions, and can be expressed as formal constituents of service models. In this work we put forward a few strategic questions that arise in the process of building the e-learning policy of a university where several forms of technology-enhanced learning have been experimented with, some even employing state-of-art methods and devices, but, to date, little attention has been paid to overall co-ordination. The ELViRA project is aimed at promoting adoption of technology-enhanced education methods which would implement strategic decisions on accessibility of educational services, optimality of educational methods, and seamless service integration for undergraduate as well as post-graduate and lifelong education programs. Key strategic questions induce specific traits of service and development models for the ELViRA network architecture, that are argued by way of example.

The convergence property of goal-based visual navigation

The use of landmarks is a natural and instinctive method to determine the whereabouts of a location or a means to proceed to a particular location. Results provided in this paper indicate that landmark-based navigation possesses a corrective or feedback trait that produces a convergence bound on the movements to the goal position, in contrast to the odometry-based movement, which leads to the drift between successive navigation movements. Experiments show that the vector field approach can be used to explain the convergence property of landmark-based guidance tasks. Experiments have been carried out operating with a Nomad mobile robot equipped with real-time visual landmark tracking system.

Biologically-Inspired Visual Landmark Learning for Mobile Robots

This paper presents a biologically-inspired method for selecting visual landmarks which are suitable for navigating within not pre-engineered environments. A landmark is a region of the goal image which is chosen according to its reliability measured through a phase called Turn Back and Look (TBL). This mimics the learning behavior of some social insects. The TBL phase affects the conservativeness of the vector field thus allowing us to compute the visual potential function which drives the navigation to the goal. Furthermore, the conservativeness of the navigation vector field allows us to assess if the learning phase has produced good landmarks. The presence of a potential function means that classical control theory principles based on the Lyapunov functions can be applied to assess the robustness of the navigation strategy. Results of experiments using a Nomad200 mobile robot and a color camera are presented throughout the paper.

PlayToLearn: a game adventure in the realm of Si Piuh

The Hardware components of a Personal Computer can be imagined as people who live in a Realm. All the people of the Realm can be depicted as Gnomes, each one committed to carrying out a particular role. With a little imagination, there are exactly the same relationships to be found in a Realm that there are in a PC: gates to the external world, artists who produce paintings and sounds, Masters who oversee the whole process, libraries to store material in, buses to transport material, ambassadors who are familiar with the communication protocols, servants and as many other Subjects as one can imagine. The PC (i.e. the Realm) is governed by the CPU, i.e. His Majesty. The name of the king is Si Piuh. Such ideas are analyzed in depth in [1]. Following on from these concepts we have developed a computer application which helps children to interact directly with the Realm (the computer itself). The main criteria behind the application design that we have taken into account are:

Computing Pre-University: Primary Computing Education

This article focuses on computing education for students at the K–8 grade range, when students are not only learning the skills they will need in their careers, but forming opinions and attitudes that will influence what their career choices will be. Keywords: computer science; CS teaching; computing curricula; pedagogical skills; special needs

SFIDE: Challenges Towards Synchronous Interaction in e-Learning

History of the development of a synchronous tool for e-learning, with University of Verona in the unusual role of services provider.