The Web allows ubiquitous access to distributed databases through standard browser technology. However, appropriate middleware software needs to be developed to provide the tools both for accessing databases over the Web and ensuring that querying the knowledge base is possible. In this article we explore a number of these Web technologies and examine a case study based around the acquisition of respiratory flow signals from a Web-enabled spirometer.
This article presents some requirements imposed on data format specifications derived from different biosignal recording environments. This is followed by a review of four particularly interesting data formats and some notes about other specifications. Finally, the merits of different formats are discussed and some views about future developments are given.
Though support for learning computing in schools is growing, many children still begin learning to program without formal support in open-ended programming environments. While researchers have evaluated the final code of these types of projects, we know little about how users’ behaviors and usage of support tools relate to understanding. We ran a study where participants had open-ended programming time with access to one of two support tools: suggestions or tutorials. Participants then completed four tasks which required understanding of the suggestion or tutorial content. We did not find an effect of suggestions compared to tutorials on knowledge application, but we did find that many participants who performed better tended to explore more of the interface, code behaviors, and support tools. Our results suggest that future tools for encouraging learning during open-ended programming should likely focus on supporting users who tend to explore less on their own.