Semantic Utilities and E-Learning
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2010 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | DIVAI 2010 - distance learning in applied informatics, conference proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | fulltext |
| Field | Informatics |
| Keywords | e-learning; semantics; OWL; Fresnel; visualization; annotation |
| Description | The semantic web was introduced nine years ago. The description of the semantics of all web documents seems to be useful for many applications. Students (or learners more generally) create their subjective model of the transmitted knowledge, sometimes from the scratch. If the computer "knows" the document content, it could offer the suitable visualization of the issue, or help to identify its basic characteristics. The lack of user-friendly tools for acquiring, storing and utilization document semantics inflicts very low usage of semantics among non-specialized users. A great majority of the semantic-web research concerns with the theoretical issues. Developed tools stand mainly for use-case of the technology with no intended real use. That is why the SELE (Semantic e-learning) project was designed at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Brno. The goal of this still open project is to create a framework of light-weighted tools for document semantics processing. These tools should use the well-established standardized technology, e.g. ontology language OWL, ontology visualization language Fresnel, XSLT, SVG etc., and open-source systems to manage them (XML or RDF databases). They should also comply with processes that are already used in the e-learning. This paper describes structure of the framework and its basic processes, but also the tools, framework modules, per se. The core of the framework is the modified semantic database Sesame 2. The other modules comprise of: A) Light-weight enterprise content management system ASCMS. This system uses the service oriented architecture (SOA), and hence can be distributed. Every document is stored with basic metadata semantics and could be further semantically described, or it could be a client of the semantic-aware visualization. B) Fresnel Editor, the unique application for editing the visualization language Fresnel style sheets (in nearly-WYSIWYG way) and its sub-module capable to parse and process them. C) Heavily modified wiki of the Trac bug-tracking system. This wiki is updated to introduce semantic wiki characteristics. It adds the capabilities of annotating the wiki-page content, semantic search, project and user automatic semantic description and visualization of the semantic data. D) User friendly annotation editor and browser for semantic annotation of images based on the general multimedia ontology COMM (Core ontology for multimedia). The paper also describes the relation between the framework and learning processes of programming-centered courses at Faculty of Informatics (several courses about Java, Mark up languages) and usage of the development of some minor tools or tool modules for the learning purposes. The partial evaluation of the tools within the learning processes and the discussion of the further development are also present. |
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