Abstracts - Earli

organizer for this course. The new course, entitled "XML-based Internet-enabled Applications"pertains to XML programming for Web-based applications. A software tool named CmapToolswill be used to develop and deliver the course. It is difficult to understand the relationships amongthe many recommendations, standards and proprietary technologies that comprise the XMLuniverse. Structuring the course around concept maps seems well suited to facilitate understandingof this complex domain. Additionally, the need to organize the many accompanying resources thatthis course will require: side-by-side comparisons of codings of XML documents, exampledocuments from within the CmapTools environment, pages at the W3C website and otherrecommendation websites, etc., suggests that this knowledge modeling scheme will provide anideal framework for the course. Student accesses to the knowledge model will be logged andanalyzed in order to determine patterns of interaction. Data on student performance in the course,on a learning style inventory, and on ways that they accessed the knowledge model will beanalyzed and the results presented in this forum. Additionally, students will complete a survey thatwill address their perceptions of the utility of this representation relative to other course materialorganizers, particularly to the learning management system (LMS) currently employed at theUniversity of West Florida, Pensacola, FL, USA.NatureGate® a R&D and business program in progress: content knowledge, information, digitalconcept mappingMauri Ahlberg, Faculty of Beh. Sciences, University of Helsinki, FinlandIn Finland, we are building a NatureGate¯ server. Summer 2007, it will be opened in the WWW.Its core will be thousands (later on, at least up to 350 000) high quality photographs of floweringplant and habitats. All Scandinavian, and most of Europe’s flowering plants have beensystematically photographed, many of them from seed to flowering stage and even to fruit stage.The photographs are linked to concepts, and texts describing content of photographs. Furthermorethey will be linked to other reliable sources in the WWW. Concept maps will be used forvisualizing content knowledge and information resources. In the paper I’ll elaborate ideasconcerning the intended research on the use of concept maps for representing and communicatingin an integrated manner knowledge and information resources. The first NatureGate¯ server willpromote life long learning in formal, non-formal and informal contexts, including educational andworkplace settings. CmapTools will be offered as a free tool to visualise and communicate contentknowledge, to manage knowledge, to share knowledge, to learn and collaboratively constructknowledge, using many kinds of information resources. CmapTools would allow a very fastpossibility for uploading own digital photographs and video clips to the NatureGate¯ server. I ampersonally in the process of creating examples of how photographs of plants could be organised inmany ways, e.g. into taxonomic structures, into evolutionary and ecosystem models, attached bytexts, and linked to reliable digital resources and information in the WWW. When usersthemselves are using concept maps and CmapTools, it will provide data for research on learning,thinking, and problem solving, e.g. in biology education, in environmental education and ineducation for sustainable development.– 625 –