Toni Navarrete

Educational Patterns as a Guide to Create Units of Learning and Assessment

With the aim of facilitating teachers the design of units of learning and assessment, this paper proposes the use of different educational pattern types. Depending on the type of patterns, the resulting didactic materials are specified using IMS Learning Design or IMS Question and Test Interoperability extended with integrated Web2.0-like services.

Supporting Distance Learning Activities and Social Interaction: A Case Study

The success of Web 2.0 technologies in providing support for social interaction in educational spaces depends on how learning environments benefit from the affordances of Web 2.0 services. These services can be combined with the management of learning activities as done by IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) compliant systems. In this paper, we analyze the ability of an integrated system (blog, forum, and IMS LD activities) to instigate and support learner activity and interaction with other members of the learning network. This analysis takes the form of a case study in which a small professional learning community uses the integrated system. Four different aspects are studied in this case: The role of the tutor, the role of socially outgoing learners, the influence of the adopted educational approach, and the systems components. The paper explains how each of these aspects can play a role in augmenting learner activity and interaction, and consequently incrementing the success of learning systems.

An algorithm for merging geographic datasets based on the spatial distributions of their values

In this paper we describe an algorithm for merging ontologies from heterogeneous geographic data sources. The algorithm is based on an asymmetric similarity function that considers the spatial distribution of thematic values in the datasets. It has been used in the context of a semantic framework that provides a set of semantic services to enable external clients to find, translate and integrate thematic information from different geographic datasets in a repository. An optimised version of the algorithm is also described enabling its execution in real time, even with large datasets. The algorithm has been tested in the context of merging datasets with more than 108 spatial units.

Semantic interoperability of field-based thematic geographic information

A model for semantic interoperability among a repository of geographic datasets from different providers is proposed in this article. Specifically, this approach focuses on qualified field-based geographic information. Our solution is based on an ontology describing geographic themes. We present a method to build up this ontology from the data schemas of each dataset in the repository. We have developed a tool, which is currently being evaluated by users, to support this process.