Software functionalities so far designed

To date, in Homm-sw three types of software tools have been designed.

The first relates to the user in the context of the visit. A selection of digitized information, such as text, photos, video and voice comments made during the visit can be stored. All this information can be retrieved and used in subsequent activities to be shared by classmates and by others selected from the groups of registered users. The teachers accompanying the class can re-elaborate the texts, build narratives, browse storytelling of their students, share activities and collaboration with peers, and more others.

A second type of functionality concerns  potentials of personalization of information for the individual user. The elementary unit in the network-of-stories is the clip (a video, a photo album, a text). Each clip is a narrative with a nucleus around which develops a beginning and an end. Through the connections between clips, individual narratives form a network-of-stories. The connections between the clips are a trace for an open narrative, non-unique. Each object (media clip) is included in a network of content and applications at different levels (for specific users and different needs). In the network-of-stories, some of the objects will be connected according to the narrative logic proposed by the author who created the navigation between those contents. Links or other items can be added by users. Other networks-of-stories are possible: following the links between clips proposed by the author, the explorer (“user”/”navigator”, as we call it) can change the order in which to read, listen to, view the clips; but also new links can be defined by the explorers, depending on their perspectives/ interests/ skills in exploring and analyzing the individual clips (verbal and textual content, images, sequences, music and sound). This constitutes an important tool for teachers that can build original tracks of multimedia documents  in  support  of  the  proposed  activities  to  their students, taking into account the needs of their specific educational programming, as well as skills in starting and learning goals that characterize each class. It is then possible to produce, with little effort, different documents and stories,

• Multimedia clip repository
• Activity authoring and use of clip repository
• Activitiy engines and custom activities
• Personal space and activity instances
• User interaction state_generalization
• User lifecycle by using Homm_sw
• User identification and user roles

customized to suit the needs of students who have special educational needs.

A third type of functionality is the validation of the contents created by users. This feature will allow the users to create a customized network-of-stories, to be shared with a selected group of users (e.g. a team of students in the class working on a specific subject). The contents implemented on the web with Homm-sw are then validated by the administrator of the activity undertaken who can authorize online  sharing of the authored contents, or highlight restriction to the individual communities or individuals.