Katy Jordan works at City University, London where she researches the Ensemble Project on using semantic technologies to enhance case-based learning in higher education. Semantic technologies can structure and link educational data to enable new applications like customized reading lists, interactive timelines and visualizations. Jordan provides examples of semantic tools developed for subjects like plants, maths and law and invites others to contribute data to further explore the potential of these technologies for teaching and learning.
Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship Colloquium - 14_1106jeffreylancaster
Presentation on 'The Digital Centers at Columbia University: Strategizing Across Multiple Centers for Diverse Disciplines' at the Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship Colloquium: Pedagogy and Practices
This presentation was provided by Robert Weisberg of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, during a NISO webinar on the Internet of Things, held on October 19, 2016.
Stronger together: community initiatives in journal managementJisc
There has been a recent growth of initiatives to address common problems regarding current and long-term access to e-journal content. Jisc is at the forefront of many of these with the close participation and active input of educational institutions.
This session aims to summarise the current state of key themes with pointers to future directions of areas such as sustainability, the move towards e-only environments, and shared consortia approaches. It will provide an overview and panel discussion on developing the supporting infrastructure to meet the needs of users. The discussion will focus on how institutions, community bodies and service providers can best work together to ensure sustainable, long-term initiatives by seeking to introduce uniformity, standardisation and collaboration to an even greater extent.
The session will introduce two new Jisc-supported projects in this area, the Keepers Registry Extra and SafeNet initiatives, and discuss how these fit alongside existing Jisc services such as Knowledge Base+, UK LOCKSS Alliance, Journal Archives and JUSP (Journal Usage Statistics Portal). The panel will address how this catalogue of services contributes towards a coherent strategy in the management of e-journal content.
This was a presentation delivered at the 10th Northumbria Conference in York during July 2013. It provides a background, and introduction and overview to the Library Analytics and Metrics Project (LAMP) work that Jisc, Mimas (University of Manchester) and University of Huddersfield are collaborating on.
The project will develop a prototype shared library analytics service for UK universities and colleges.
Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship Colloquium - 14_1106jeffreylancaster
Presentation on 'The Digital Centers at Columbia University: Strategizing Across Multiple Centers for Diverse Disciplines' at the Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship Colloquium: Pedagogy and Practices
This presentation was provided by Robert Weisberg of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, during a NISO webinar on the Internet of Things, held on October 19, 2016.
Stronger together: community initiatives in journal managementJisc
There has been a recent growth of initiatives to address common problems regarding current and long-term access to e-journal content. Jisc is at the forefront of many of these with the close participation and active input of educational institutions.
This session aims to summarise the current state of key themes with pointers to future directions of areas such as sustainability, the move towards e-only environments, and shared consortia approaches. It will provide an overview and panel discussion on developing the supporting infrastructure to meet the needs of users. The discussion will focus on how institutions, community bodies and service providers can best work together to ensure sustainable, long-term initiatives by seeking to introduce uniformity, standardisation and collaboration to an even greater extent.
The session will introduce two new Jisc-supported projects in this area, the Keepers Registry Extra and SafeNet initiatives, and discuss how these fit alongside existing Jisc services such as Knowledge Base+, UK LOCKSS Alliance, Journal Archives and JUSP (Journal Usage Statistics Portal). The panel will address how this catalogue of services contributes towards a coherent strategy in the management of e-journal content.
This was a presentation delivered at the 10th Northumbria Conference in York during July 2013. It provides a background, and introduction and overview to the Library Analytics and Metrics Project (LAMP) work that Jisc, Mimas (University of Manchester) and University of Huddersfield are collaborating on.
The project will develop a prototype shared library analytics service for UK universities and colleges.
Presentation given by Stuart Macdonald at the International Workshop on ICT and e-Knowledge for the Developing World in Shanghai International Convention Center, Pudong, Shanghai.
Given at ISWC 2009 as a part of "Legal and Social Frameworks for Sharing Data on the Web" tutorial with Leigh Dodds and Tom Heath from Talis and Jordan Hatcher from Open Data Commons. 25 Oct 2009. (http://www.opendatacommons.org/events/iswc-2009-legal-social-sharing-data-web/)
Brown Bag: New Models of Scholarly Communication for Digital Scholarship, by ...Micah Altman
In his talk for the MIT Libraries Program on Information Science, Steve Griffin discusses how how research libraries can play a key and expanded role in enabling digital scholarship and creating the supporting activities that sustain it.
The present society is considered an information society. A society where the creation, distribution, use, integration, and manipulation of digital information have become the most significant activity in all aspects. Information is producing from every sector of any society, which has resulted in an information explosion. Modern technologies are also having a huge impact. So managing this voluminous information is really a tough job. Again WWW has opened the door to connect anyone or anything within a fraction of a second. This study discussed the Semantic Web and linked data technologies and their effect and application to libraries for the handling of various types of resources.
Open Research Problems in Linked Data - WWW2010Juan Sequeda
These are the Open Research Problems of Linked Data slides that we presented at the Consuming Linked Data tutorial at WWW2010 in Raleigh, NC on April 26, 2010
2015 03 19 (EDUCON2015) eMadrid UPM Towards a Learning Analytics Approach for...eMadrid network
2015 03 19 (EDUCON2015) eMadrid UPM Towards a Learning Analytics Approach for Supporting discovery and reuse of OER. An approach based on Social Networks Analysis and Linked Open Data
Presentation given by Stuart Macdonald at the International Workshop on ICT and e-Knowledge for the Developing World in Shanghai International Convention Center, Pudong, Shanghai.
Given at ISWC 2009 as a part of "Legal and Social Frameworks for Sharing Data on the Web" tutorial with Leigh Dodds and Tom Heath from Talis and Jordan Hatcher from Open Data Commons. 25 Oct 2009. (http://www.opendatacommons.org/events/iswc-2009-legal-social-sharing-data-web/)
Brown Bag: New Models of Scholarly Communication for Digital Scholarship, by ...Micah Altman
In his talk for the MIT Libraries Program on Information Science, Steve Griffin discusses how how research libraries can play a key and expanded role in enabling digital scholarship and creating the supporting activities that sustain it.
The present society is considered an information society. A society where the creation, distribution, use, integration, and manipulation of digital information have become the most significant activity in all aspects. Information is producing from every sector of any society, which has resulted in an information explosion. Modern technologies are also having a huge impact. So managing this voluminous information is really a tough job. Again WWW has opened the door to connect anyone or anything within a fraction of a second. This study discussed the Semantic Web and linked data technologies and their effect and application to libraries for the handling of various types of resources.
Open Research Problems in Linked Data - WWW2010Juan Sequeda
These are the Open Research Problems of Linked Data slides that we presented at the Consuming Linked Data tutorial at WWW2010 in Raleigh, NC on April 26, 2010
2015 03 19 (EDUCON2015) eMadrid UPM Towards a Learning Analytics Approach for...eMadrid network
2015 03 19 (EDUCON2015) eMadrid UPM Towards a Learning Analytics Approach for Supporting discovery and reuse of OER. An approach based on Social Networks Analysis and Linked Open Data
Medical Conferences, Pharma Conferences, Engineering Conferences, Science Conferences, Manufacturing Conferences, Social Science Conferences, Business Conferences, Scientific Conferences Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, Turkey 2014 2015 2016
Global Research & Development Services (GRDS) is a leading academic event organizer, publishing Open Access Journals and conducting several professionally organized international conferences all over the globe annually. GRDS aims to disseminate knowledge and innovation with the help of its International Conferences and open access publications. GRDS International conferences are world-class events which provide a meaningful platform for researchers, students, academicians, institutions, entrepreneurs, industries and practitioners to create, share and disseminate knowledge and innovation and to develop long-lasting network and collaboration.
GRDS is a blend of Open Access Publications and world-wide International Conferences and Academic events. The prime mission of GRDS is to make continuous efforts in transforming the lives of people around the world through education, application of research and innovative ideas.
Global Research & Development Services (GRDS) is also active in the field of Research Funding, Research Consultancy, Training and Workshops along with International Conferences and Open Access Publications.
International Conferences 2014 – 2015
Malaysia Conferences, Thailand Conferences, Singapore Conferences, Hong Kong Conferences, Dubai Conferences, Turkey Conferences, Conference Listing, Conference Alerts
Data center network reference pov jeff green 2016 v2Jeff Green
Control and Security - A constant risk to the network, and ultimately XYZ Account, are unapproved applications and rogue devices that may appear on the network and either permit unauthorized access or interfere with other devices. A means to monitor all devices and applications that operate across the network is vital. Just as important are the audit and reporting capabilities necessary to report on who, what, where, when, and how XYZ Account data is accessed. Our centralized management system will leverage data in the network to understand application use.
Maintaining high quality user experience (Single-Pane-of-Glass Control from BYOD to the Data Center).
Minimizing risk from consumer products and mobile devices (automation of routine tasks).
Identifying root-cause of service outage (Make decisions about your network based on analytics, not assumptions.).
Business alignment - Over time, the proliferation of devices has created unnecessary complexity. Control Center delivers centralized visibility and granular control of network resources. One click can equal a thousand actions when you manage your network. Control Center can even manage beyond Extreme Networks switching, routing, and wireless hardware to deliver standards-based control of other vendors’ network equipment.
Transform complex network data into actionable information (Gain visibility from data in your network).
Centralize and simplify the definition, management, and enforcement of policies (Detect anomalies and get alerts based on real network behavior).
Manage third-party devices to provide a complete picture of the entire infrastructure in a heterogeneous network environment (Balance CapEx and OpEx and decrease complexity).
Three fundamental building blocks for Data Center Network Automation Solution:
Orchestration (OpenStack, vRealize-NSX, DCM)
Overlay (VXLAN, NVGRE..)
Underlay (traditional L2/L3 protocols, OSPF, MLAG etc…)
CHALLENGES AND PAIN
POINTS IN ENTERPRISE IT
• Meeting the growing
expectations of users in a mobile
first world
• Flexibility vs. Security: More
devices and applications on the
network challenge security and
control
• Cost vs. Capability
• Reliability vs. Growth
• Managing the network is too
complex and time consuming
• Enterprise mobility/constant
connectivity: the ability to
access company servers,
databases, and network in all
facilities of a company is crucial
to daily business
• State-of-the-art security is
required to prevent access of
personal information
• Require the ability to control
content accessible to individuals
with varying network functions
and limitations based on role of
individual
Developing Resilient Cloud Native Apps with Spring CloudDustin Ruehle
Distributed and massively scalable systems are difficult to design, implement, and operate. Further, microservice architectures are supposed to enable your business to be disruptive and innovative. Thankfully, two communities have emerged to facilitate easier solutions for these concerns and do a lot of the work for you: Spring Cloud OSS and Cloud Foundry. In this talk, we will take a deeper look at preventing cascading failures using Hystrix, as well as illustrate a mechanism for A/B testing using Eureka and blue-green deployments on Cloud Foundry.
Semantic technologies for the enhancement of learning in Higher EducationKaty Jordan
Carmichael, P., Jordan, K., Patel, U., Mackinnon, R., Peart, N. and Roberts, R. (2009) Semantic technologies for the enhancement of learning in Higher Education. Symposium at the annual Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) conference, Brighton, March 2009.
lecture presented by Joseph M. Yap at PAARL’s Seminar /Parallel Session-workshop on Library and Web 2011 (Holy Angel University, Angeles City, Pampanga, 19-20 August 2010)
Twist is an Open World Information Sharing Network which provides a platform to the users searching information on the same project that directly publishes the new updates for a desired category or group of categories to the people who had enrolled as that category for their Personal interest.
Web-scale Discovery Services are becoming an integral part of libraries' information gathering arsenal. These services are able to use a single interface to seamlessly integrate results from a wide range of online sources, emulating the experience patrons have come to expect from Internet search engines. But despite their ability to streamline searching, discovery services provide a wide set of challenges for libraries who implement them. This virtual conference will touch on both the potential of discovery services as well as some of the issues involved.
Workshop session given at the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2012 (IWMW 2012) event held at the University of Edinburgh on 18th - 20th June 2012.
Pea, Roy (2011, March 8). Cyberlearning: An endless frontier for fostering learning in a networked world. CyTSE 2011 Conference Keynote, Berkeley California, USA.
Research into Practice case study 2: Library linked data implementations an...Hazel Hall
The research underlying this presentation explored the role that libraries play in the linked data context. Focusing on European national libraries and Scottish libraries, multiple data gathering methods and constant comparative analysis were applied in the study. Amongst the findings, a general lack of awareness within the library community of the Semantic Web and the implications of linked data was identified. At the same time, there is recognition that linked data augments the discoverability and enhances the interoperability of library data. The presentation will include recommendations for the application of the findings of this research in practice.
Linked Data Love: research representation, discovery, and assessment
#ALAAC15
The explosion of linked data platforms and data stores over the last five years has been profound – both in terms of quantity of data as well as its potential impact. Research information systems such as VIVO (www.vivoweb.org) play a significant role in enabling this work. VIVO is an open source, Semantic Web-based application that provides an integrated, searchable view of the scholarly activities of an organization. The uniform semantic structure of VIVO-ISF data enables a new class of tools to advance science. This presentation will provide a brief introduction and update to VIVO and present ways that this semantically-rich data can enable visualizations, reporting and assessment, next-generation collaboration and team building, and enhanced multi-site search. Libraries are uniquely positioned to facilitate the open representation of research information and its subsequent use to spur collaboration, discovery, and assessment. The talk will conclude with a description of ways librarians are engaged in this work – including visioning, metadata and ontology creation, policy creation, data curation and management, technical, and engagement activities.
Kristi Holmes, PhD
Director, Galter Health Sciences Library
Director of Evaluation, NUCATS
Associate Professor, Preventive Medicine-Health and Biomedical Informatics
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Jordan, K. (2015) Characterising the structure of academics’ personal networks on academic social networking sites and Twitter. Presentation at the Computers and Learning Research Group (CALRG) annual conference, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, 17th June 2015.
Futurelearn Academic Network presentationKaty Jordan
Jordan, K. (2015) Trends in MOOC completion rates: The story so far! Futurelearn Academic Network meeting, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, 15th June 2015.
Academics and their online networks: Exploring the role of academic social ne...Katy Jordan
Jordan, K. (2013) Academics and their online networks: Exploring the role of academic social networking sites. Presentation at the Association for Learning Technology Conference (ALT-C), 11th September 2013, University of Nottingham, UK.
Kaleidoscope conference slides - Academic networkingKaty Jordan
Jordan, K. (2013) Reshaping the Higher Education network? Analysis of academic social networking sites. Presentation given at the Kaleidoscope Conference, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, 31st May 2013.
Emerging and potential learning analytics from MOOCsKaty Jordan
Jordan, K. (2013) Emerging and potential learning analytics from MOOCs. Presentation given at 'Let the Learners Speak for themselves: The Potential of Learning Analytics and Big Data', 8th 'What the research says' seminar, London Knowledge Lab, 21st March 2013.
How we understand research practices: The example of the semantic spiderKaty Jordan
Jordan, K. and Rimpilainen, S. (2010) How we understand research practices: The example of the semantic spider. Presentation at 'Socio-material and Posthuman Readings of Digital Learning: An Ensemble Project Seminar Day', Liverpool John Moores University, 17th September 2010.
Jordan, K. (2010) The Molecular Basis of Photosynthesis. Invited presentation at the Jorum session, ALT-C 2010, 8th September 2010, University of Nottingham.
Authentic Data and Visualisation: Semantic tools from the Ensemble ProjectKaty Jordan
Jordan, K. (2010) Authentic Data and Visualisation: Semantic tools from the Ensemble Project. Learning and Teaching Support lunchtime seminar, Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies, Cambridge, 27th January 2010.
Executive Directors Chat Leveraging AI for Diversity, Equity, and InclusionTechSoup
Let’s explore the intersection of technology and equity in the final session of our DEI series. Discover how AI tools, like ChatGPT, can be used to support and enhance your nonprofit's DEI initiatives. Participants will gain insights into practical AI applications and get tips for leveraging technology to advance their DEI goals.
June 3, 2024 Anti-Semitism Letter Sent to MIT President Kornbluth and MIT Cor...Levi Shapiro
Letter from the Congress of the United States regarding Anti-Semitism sent June 3rd to MIT President Sally Kornbluth, MIT Corp Chair, Mark Gorenberg
Dear Dr. Kornbluth and Mr. Gorenberg,
The US House of Representatives is deeply concerned by ongoing and pervasive acts of antisemitic
harassment and intimidation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Failing to act decisively to ensure a safe learning environment for all students would be a grave dereliction of your responsibilities as President of MIT and Chair of the MIT Corporation.
This Congress will not stand idly by and allow an environment hostile to Jewish students to persist. The House believes that your institution is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and the inability or
unwillingness to rectify this violation through action requires accountability.
Postsecondary education is a unique opportunity for students to learn and have their ideas and beliefs challenged. However, universities receiving hundreds of millions of federal funds annually have denied
students that opportunity and have been hijacked to become venues for the promotion of terrorism, antisemitic harassment and intimidation, unlawful encampments, and in some cases, assaults and riots.
The House of Representatives will not countenance the use of federal funds to indoctrinate students into hateful, antisemitic, anti-American supporters of terrorism. Investigations into campus antisemitism by the Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Committee on Ways and Means have been expanded into a Congress-wide probe across all relevant jurisdictions to address this national crisis. The undersigned Committees will conduct oversight into the use of federal funds at MIT and its learning environment under authorities granted to each Committee.
• The Committee on Education and the Workforce has been investigating your institution since December 7, 2023. The Committee has broad jurisdiction over postsecondary education, including its compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, campus safety concerns over disruptions to the learning environment, and the awarding of federal student aid under the Higher Education Act.
• The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating the sources of funding and other support flowing to groups espousing pro-Hamas propaganda and engaged in antisemitic harassment and intimidation of students. The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is the principal oversight committee of the US House of Representatives and has broad authority to investigate “any matter” at “any time” under House Rule X.
• The Committee on Ways and Means has been investigating several universities since November 15, 2023, when the Committee held a hearing entitled From Ivory Towers to Dark Corners: Investigating the Nexus Between Antisemitism, Tax-Exempt Universities, and Terror Financing. The Committee followed the hearing with letters to those institutions on January 10, 202
A Strategic Approach: GenAI in EducationPeter Windle
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Generative AI, Image Generators and Large Language Models have had a dramatic impact on teaching, learning and assessment over the past 18 months. The most immediate threat AI posed was to Academic Integrity with Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) focusing their efforts on combating the use of GenAI in assessment. Guidelines were developed for staff and students, policies put in place too. Innovative educators have forged paths in the use of Generative AI for teaching, learning and assessments leading to pockets of transformation springing up across HEIs, often with little or no top-down guidance, support or direction.
This Gasta posits a strategic approach to integrating AI into HEIs to prepare staff, students and the curriculum for an evolving world and workplace. We will highlight the advantages of working with these technologies beyond the realm of teaching, learning and assessment by considering prompt engineering skills, industry impact, curriculum changes, and the need for staff upskilling. In contrast, not engaging strategically with Generative AI poses risks, including falling behind peers, missed opportunities and failing to ensure our graduates remain employable. The rapid evolution of AI technologies necessitates a proactive and strategic approach if we are to remain relevant.
This slide is special for master students (MIBS & MIFB) in UUM. Also useful for readers who are interested in the topic of contemporary Islamic banking.
Unit 8 - Information and Communication Technology (Paper I).pdfThiyagu K
This slides describes the basic concepts of ICT, basics of Email, Emerging Technology and Digital Initiatives in Education. This presentations aligns with the UGC Paper I syllabus.
An introduction to the Semantic Web and Semantic Technologies for Learning and Teaching
1. Semantic Technologies for Teaching
and Learning
Katy Jordan, Learning Development
Center, City University, London
Email: katy.jordan.1@city.ac.uk
2. The Ensemble Project
• ‘Semantic technologies for the enhancement of
case-based learning in higher education’
• October 2008 to 2011
• Six UK Universities (Liverpool John
Moores, Cambridge, City, UEA, Stirling, Essex) and
two international partners (MIT and UT Sydney)
• Project website: www.ensemble.ac.uk
3. The Semantic Web
• Vision set out by Tim Berners-Lee: “a web of data
that can be processed directly and indirectly by
machines.”
• Gained popularity in 2001 Scientific American article
• Underpinning principles:
• data being independent from presentation
• structured data
1 Berners-Lee, T., Hendler, J. &Lassila, O. (2001) "The Semantic Web". Scientific American
Magazine. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-semantic-web&print=true
5. 2. Structured data
Miss Katy Jordan works at City University, London where she works on the
Ensemble Project. Her homepage is www.katyjordan.com .
<rdf:RDF
xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#”
xmlns:foaf=http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
<foaf:Personrdf::about=“http://www.katyjordan.com”>
<foaf:name>Katy Jordan</foaf:name>
<foaf:title>Miss</foaf:title>
<foaf:workplaceHomepage>http://www.city.ac.uk</foaf:workplaceHomepage
>
<foaf:currentProject>Ensemble</foaf:currentProject>
</foaf:Person>
</rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>
6. Life with the Semantic Web
“At the doctor's office, Lucy instructed her Semantic
Web agent through her handheld Web browser. The
agent promptly retrieved information about Mom's
prescribed treatment from the doctor's agent, looked
up several lists of providers, and checked for the ones
in-plan for Mom's insurance within a 20-mile radius of
her home and with a rating of excellent or very good
on trusted rating services. It then began trying to find
a match between available appointment times
supplied by the agents …”
Berners-Lee et al, 2001
8. Semantic web, Semantic technologies
Semantic technologies use principles from the SW
vision, such as:
• Aggregation of heterogeneous datasets
• Visualisations
•Ontologies, taxonomies, vocabularies
• Artificial intelligence
E.g. SIMILE Toolkit (Semantic Interoperability of
Metadata and Information in unLike
Environments)
10. Semantic technologies in education:
Reading lists – ‘under the bonnet’
• To begin with, references were just listed at the end of each
lecture handout (PDF)
• The references were collected into a single spreadsheet
• This was converted to JSON using Babel
• Then, data hooked into an Exhibit page
11. Semantic technologies in education: Maths
for Engineers
http://groups.tlrp.org/access/content/group/e14f080b-4954-4c3b-80ae-
15. Semantic technologies in education:
What’s next?
• These are all examples of what can be achieved by
practitioners with existing structured data
• We want you! (And your spreadsheets!)
• We will set up a community in Moodle soon to
include examples, ‘how to’ guides and a forum to
help you create your own semantic applications
Editor's Notes
Just to give you a quick bit about my background and why I’m here; I’ve been working on a project called Ensemble since October 2008, which is funded under the technology enhanced learning research programme. Ensemble has been conducting research into case-based learning in higher education, and exploring the potential for semantic technologies to support this. It involves six UK universities; I’m based at two of the institutions involved, with posts at the university of Cambridge and here at City, where I work in the Learning Development Centre. But what do I mean when I say ‘semantic technologies’? When I talk to people about the project, they’ve often heard of the semantic web or semantic technologies, but these terms are not synonymous and need clarification.
To get to grips with semantic technologies, we need to talk about the semantic web first. I know I just said that they aren’t the same thing, but you need to be a bit familiar with the semantic web for semantic technologies to make sense. The semantic web is the concept of all the data and information available online being available in standardized, machine-readable formats. Standardised formats would mean that computers can apply logic and reasoning across datasets.You might be thinking, isn’t the internet machine-readable anyway? Just because information is digital, doesn’t necessarily mean it is machine readable. Machine readable means that computers can actually make sense of the data that is presented to an extent, being able to reason across and make inferences from data. I’m not going to go too much into the technical details about the semantic web, but I find it is helpful to think about these two principles being required for the semantic web to work: one, that data and presentation are separated. two, that data is structured.
Taking that first point, that data and presentation are separated. The information should exist separately from the way it is being displayed. For example, let’s consider this graph showing changes in the level of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. If it was embedded in a website as a static picture file like a bitmap or jpeg, because there is no actual numerical data in the file, it’s just a picture, all that a computer can do with it is to display the picture on the screen. But, if the actual data exists as a file, and it is displayed on the screen using a visualisation tool rather than as a static picture, there is much more that can be done with it. You could bring in other datasets too – for example, here’s how oxygen levels varied over the same period. The computer might then be able to apply reasoning to detect the dramatic fall in CO2 levels here, and cross-reference this with data about developments in plant morphology from the fossil record to find a correlation with the appearance of roots, and suggest further reading about types of plants that appeared in that period. Having data being independent from presentation also means that if you wanted to take that data and use it in a different visualisation, you wouldn’t have to start again from scratch.
This kind of thing is only possible if the data is available in standard formats, which are logically structured so that computers can read them. The standard format for data in the semantic web is something called RDF, which is short for ‘Resource description framework’. This format allows hierarchies within information to be maintained. To think about RDF and its importance, let’s take this piece of text about me as an example. A person can read it and comprehend it quite easily, but the semantic web would need it to be formatted in a way that a machine could make use of it. This is the same information but rendered in RDF. It first specifies the vocabulary that it is going to use – this sets out the available fields for the tags here – and because the information is about a person, we’re going to use one called FOAF, which stands for ‘friend of a friend’. So it’s using my homepage here as a unique identifier, and then specifying that I’ve got the following properties: my name, title, workplace homepage, and current project. The semantic web would then be able to use this information if you wanted to run queries like ‘show me all my publications’, using the name tag to search bibliographic databases, or ‘who does Katy work with’, looking for others sharing the currentProject tag.
A great deal of work has gone into working through the technical issues such as the specifications for different data formats and vocabularies and such; although this is important, it’s been largely unseen and behind the scenes. Although the semantic web is a bit patchy, and there remains a lot of data providers which you wish ‘if only so-and-so type of data was available in a SW-ready format… ‘, there has been progress with this in recent years; some high profile providers of semantic web data are data.gov.uk, Ordnance Survey, and various other providers involved in the Linked Data initiative. It is an enormous, seismic shift for the internet, so it’s understandably a slow process, but you’ve probably used semantic web-based websites without even realising it; LinkedIn and the BBC website both use semantic technology, for example.
Having established what is meant by the semantic web, and ascertained that ‘creating the semantic web’ is a task far beyond the scope of one project, what then are semantic technologies? ‘Semantic technologies’ doesn’t have a fixed definition, but instead has been applied as a generic term to cover a wide range of online technologies which are constructed with the principles behind the semantic web in mind. Semantic technologies use the benefits of the semantic web vision, even if they are not in a position to be able to fully exploit the semantic web itself yet. So, some of the implications of a machine-readable web are the ability to be able to integrate different types of data; another is that if you’re making the data easier for machines to read, visualisations are going to be important to allow it to be accessible to humans again; or they might use ontologies or taxonomies to structure complex data, or perhaps use simple artificial intelligence such as recommender systems. There are no fixed ‘rules’ though about what semantic technologies do or how they work; any tools which use one or more of these affordances could be argued to be a semantic technology.One of the main types of semantic technology we’ve been using throughout the Ensemble Project is the SIMILE toolkit. This was developed at MIT, with the aim of making it easier for non-technical people to develop semantic applications. it’s a collection of tools such as things to convert data from spreadsheets into semantic-web style formats, and visualisation tools, for example. The examples that I’m about to show you were created using SIMILE, using the principles of having structured data separate from presentation, by people involved in education in different disciplines.
I just want to take a minute here to unpick these stages a bit and show you whats going on ‘behind the scenes’ at each of these stages. Existing practice was to list references at the end of each lecture handout. Each lecture handout was available as a PDF, like this one. There isn’t much you can do with this, each lecture is isolated.The first and most labour intensive step of translating this information into a semantic application involved collecting the references from all the lecture handouts and putting them into a spreadsheet. Information about which lecture handout they feature in now becomes a type of metadata for each reference. By splitting up the citation data into different columns, this allows each column to now become a potential way of filtering the data. This was labour intensive to populate initially, but once you’ve got the initial spreadsheet, it’s easy to make changes from year to year.The spreadsheet was then converted to a format called JSON, using an online web service called Babel, which is provided by SIMILE. If we take a look at this, this is starting to look a lot more like the RDF we saw earlier. The data is now ready to be hooked into a visualisation, such as Exhibit. Exhibits are normal HTML pages, which called up the Exhibit API from SIMILE in the header. This then means that you can use whats known as the ‘dot notation’ to specify where the page should display information from different fields in the spreadsheet; for example, this puts in a facet allowing the data to be filtered by lecture.
This tool is calledMaths for Engineers, and it was created in a very similar way. This is a collection of resources intended to help new engineering students with the preparatory problems booklet they have to complete before starting their course at Cambridge. The resources were initially kept in a website with a hierarichical structure of pages, which made it difficult to find the right help. Now, this data-driven page means that students can approach the resources fromd different angles, from a broad topic to a specific question.
This is an example based on data from an online database called the global biodiversity information facility, using data about the distribution of a number of rare plant species in the UK. Like the others it is spreadsheet based which allows facetted browsing (EXPLAIN); the map visualisation can be used if you have location-based data, and also means you can bring in overlays from Google Maps too.
This is one of our most widely used tools, an interactive timeline of plant evolution. This visualisation tool brings together data about the various different biotic and abiotic factors which have influenced the evolution of plants over millions of years. It has proved popular with learners in Cambridge and also across the globe as we make it publicly available through our website.
The Programme Overview Browser was created by James Toner, who works in the City Law School. Ituses the technology to allow students on the Bar Professional Training Course to browsethe programme components in novel ways such as by case, by week or by subject area, which is much more flexible and provides a clearer overview than conventional course documentation.
So: These are all examples of things that have been achieved by academic practitioners using semantic technologies. If you’re thinking ‘great! I’ve got something which I use in my teaching that would really benefit from this kind of transformation’, great – to take this forward, we’re planning on setting up a community on Moodle, this presentation will go on there along with demos and information about how they were created, and discussion forums for help and support. I hope this has been informative and interesting, thank-you for your attention – any questions?