RADICALLY NEW FEATURES OF THE POSITIVE KEYBOARD

The article highlights a new alternative to traditional keyboards - a positive keyboard. The positive keyboard sharply reduces the complexity of the keyboard, namely the number of keys from 30 to 9 by increasing the length of a codeword from 1 to 2. This is made possible by graphical support, which is laid out in the geometry of the 9-key layout. One or two of these keys generate a signal, and the rest, as it turns out, can be quite close in their shape to the entered characters. That's why this keyboard is positive: all of its 9 keys are useful at any time, unlike traditional keyboards, which have a performance of 1/30 (approximately 3%). Therefore, a positive keyboard does not require marking, which is also a source of errors. Thanks to this, a positive keyboard frees up the creative abilities of a person.

Encouraging legibility and comprehensibility through multimodal patient information guides

Medical texts intended for patients are a key instrument in doctor–patient communication. Through a process of heterofunctional translation, they can be adapted to the needs and expectations of their recipients. Most techniques aimed at making reading and understanding easier are linguistic in nature, and little attention has been paid to the role played by visuals. Through a questionnaire and a focus group, this pilot study explored patients’ perception and reception of images in a patient information guide. Our main finding was that visuals depicting medical concepts can be graphical support for unfamiliar concepts and encourage comprehension of texts aimed at patients. The most useful type of visual appears to be simplified images describing concepts with clarity and preventing recipients from recalling unpleasant experiences.

E-Learning Solution for Enhancing Entrepreneurship Competencies in the Service Sector

The chapter proposes an e-Learning solution for the entrepreneurship education, based on several simulation modules integrated into a classical learning management system. The originality of the approach is that the solution is domain independent and applied advanced IT technologies, such as agent-based simulations and extended graphical support. Using this e-learning solution, the students can learn how to choose characteristics/aspects for particular type of business and how important is each of them according specific criteria; how to set realistic values for different characteristics/aspects of the business, how a business scenario can be changed in order to fit better to the business context (business reality), modeled through by the scenario pattern and how to assess/evaluate business scenarios.

EXPLOTACIONES MINERAS EN PATRIMONIO INDUSTRIAL: UN CASO DE USO DE DOCUMENTACIÓN Y SIMULACIÓN

Mining operations are an essential part of Industrial Heritage. They provide an important reference in order to understand changing past realities, relationships between groups and reconfiguration in the communication between regions whose consequences still remain reference. These realities and relationships have led to the current socio- economic and political framework, which is projected into the future. The documentation of physical vestiges and machinery, now obsolete, is a metaphor that serves to illustrate and understand the past from our present perspective. Threedimensional models from the fusion of different techniques and physical structures contextualization allow to simulatethe mechanisms to promote sustainable tourism as paradigms of a modernity that only serves the immediate appearances. Our approach for documentation and simulation of mechanisms for the extraction and the treatment of mineral is provided as graphical support to understand a reality that goes beyond the “ThematicPark” approach. Moreover, the visualization provides a metaphor for the destruction of natural, physical and human resources of entire areas doomed to depopulation and disappearance. This also opens the door to broader developments that can use multimedia resources to support an all-embracing narrative experience.

A Knowledge-Based Approach of Modeling an Internet-Based Intelligent Learning Environment for Comprehending Common Fraction Operations

The goal of the study in this chapter is to support learners to engage in the active learning of common fraction operations from the constructivists’ perspective. An Internet-based Fraction-learning Intelligent Learning Environment (IFILE) is designed under the knowledge-based approach to model the learning process of the target topic. It is intended to optimize the interaction opportunity of learners by providing pedagogical tools and intelligent features. The two pedagogical tools provided are graphical support and electronic blank sheet. The intelligent feature discussed in this chapter is the Next Step Support for helping learners to break the impasse in fraction operations. The key activity of the construction of the Next Step Support of this knowledge-based application is designing rules as embedded units to sense and react to all facets of the fraction evaluation process. This chapter discusses further how the IFILE is designed for developing learning properties from the constructivists’ standpoint.