A Positive Thinking Training Application Spyros Argyropoulos, Euripides G.M. Petrakis, Panos Milios The 1 st International Conference on Technological.

A Positive Thinking Training Application

Spyros Argyropoulos, Euripides G.M. Petrakis, Panos Milios

The 1st International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality

14 -15 November 2013 Salamanca, Spain

Authors:

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Motivation

To encourage the collection and dissemination of positive (good) news by students across the EU using the Web.

To integrate non-formal training methods, services and pedagogical approaches, based on ICT practical applications, in order to train the target user groups.

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EU Life-Long Learning Project

PoTrain: Positive Thinking Training EU Life-Long Learning, Comenius, Project No. 509925

Partners: The Bucharest School Inspectorate, Romania Secondary schools from Bulgaria, Slovakia,

Romania and Greece DIAN Publishing – Consulting – Education, Greece TUC, Greece

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Overview

Introduction News Collection & Categorization Types of Users Presentation Issues: Web Page Structure,

News Filtering Functionality Issues: News Voting, News

Comments, News Article Creation System Management Issues:

Administration

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Introduction

Basic concepts: Collecting the most popular positive

news articles The role of the students Students news articles & News channels

articles News creation, news voting, comments

on news System Administration

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News Collection

PoTrain Articles

News Channels Articles

Students Articles

Insert Article

Student

Vote

Write

Vote

News Source

s

PoTrain Databa

se

Users

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News Categorization

All Articles

Art

News article 1 news channel

article

News article 2 student article

Environment

News article 1 student article

News article 2 news channel

article

News article 3 student article

Humanity News article 1 news channel

article

…

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Types of Users

Visitorsview articles

Registered Usersvote, write, comment

articles

Administratorsmanage system

information

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Web Page Structure - Visitors

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Web Page Layout - Visitors

HeaderNavigatio

n Bar

Menu onInternalInformation

Menu on

ExternalInforma

tion

Information Presentation Area

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Web Page Structure – Students

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Web Page Layout – Students

User Menu

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Web Page Structure – Admin

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Web Page Layout – Admin

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News Filtering

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News Voting & Comments on News

• The most popular news article has the greatest amount of positive votes.

• Only for registered users (students).

• Each user can give one positive vote for each article.

• Visitors can read comments on an article but they cannot write.

• Registered users can do both.

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Creating an Article

Each newly written article takes AUTOMATICALLY ONE POSITIVE VOTE from its creator

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System Management Issues

HideNews

categories

News channels

News articles

Comments

Users (disable)

EditNews

articles

Comments

News channels

News categorie

sSchools,

Countries,

Languages

Users

AddNews

channels

News categorie

sSchools,

Countries,

Languages

Users

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See Application

http://www.intelligence.tuc.gr/potrain/

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Conclusions

The development of innovative ICT-based content, services, pedagogies and practice has become an integral part of today’s educational procedure.

ICT-based applications in education must be well designed but also manageable and acceptable by their users.

PoTrain is a Web-based application for training students to search and collaborate with other students or their teachers in order to distinguish and highlight positive news articles.

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Future Work

active involvement of the ‘teacher role’ (as a special user type) assisting students in developing useful skills and positive way of thinking and,

search automatically on the Internet for spotting, suggesting and filtering positive news articles.

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Thank you

Spyros Argyropoulos [email protected] G.M. Petrakis [email protected] Milios [email protected]