Exploitable results Evaluation of the importance of the content semantics during the design of multimedia educational applications Certainly, good content is necessary for a successful tele-education application (the main indicator of such influence is the correlation between the users' interest in some given content and their interest in an application based on such content). But what it is really new is the influence of the semantics of the employed content during the design of the application. When content and design are integrated as a single unit the application becomes much more intuitive and useful. For example, it provides semantic navigation systems that help users to easily remember the information, force them to take an active attitude towards the application (i.e. guessing why a particular photograph is associated with a particular text) and offer them an intuitive navigation (i.e. the topics would help to find a particular item lost somewhere in the application). Though such a theory needs some further R+D and tuning to later integrate it into a wider pedagogical framework, it can already be applied in the production of educational material. Evaluation of the impact of the migration from an IP/FR public service to an IP/ATM public service on the subscribers There was a IMMP trial especially designed to study how the introduction of ATM into an IP public service might affect the subscribers. More concretely, it studied the effects of the migration from Infovia (the public IP service of Telefónica, the main Spanish Telecommunication operator) to Infovia+ (Telefónica's public IP/ATM service) on the UOC's service. The trials proved that the QoS offered to the final end users is much better in Infovia+ than in Infovia: it offers a lower delay time (a decrease of the 10%) and a higher effective mean throughput (an increase of the 5-6%). When referring to the subscriber's server backbone capacity, it was proved that Infovia+ handles bigger traffic levels and supports a major number of concurrent users. However, the overhead introduced by Infovia+ is quite higher than Infovia's due to the additional overheads added by the ATM protocol and the ATM adaptation layer protocol. These results have already been put into production with the tunning of the UOC's tele-education service provision. Additionally, the information has been disseminated to the involved operator. IMMP: integrated multimedia project The Integrated Multimedia Project (IMMP) primarily studies the integration of interactive multimedia services and system architectures addressing both residential and business users and focusing on the overlaps and synergy between the two. The main focus is on investigating and using intelligent peripherals/asynchronous transmission mode (IP/ATM) connections and using applications relevant to the business sector. The evolution towards new multimedia applications will take place in a step by step fashion with successful services developed only after extensive end-user evaluations. This process will be followed in the project emphasizing end-user trials and the feedback from them. It is necessary for IMMP to conduct focused trials with selected services to understand the key issues (technical, human and commercial) which will affect the successful deployment and end user acceptance of such services. Of particular relevance will be common new services that can be utilized in both business and residential areas. Trials have started in the UK and Finland. In the UK educational applications are addressed involving several schools. In Finland high speed Internet access for residential users using the existing community antenna television (CATV) infrastructure is being offered. These trials are using cable modems in the access network (set-top boxes will be used in the future).Based on the concepts described in the deliverables, platforms will be developed which, in the long term, will enable third party application developers to easily apply their creative skills to provide new multimedia services to end users. Evaluation of the capability of ISDN for accessing multimedia education services before the migration to high speed solutions There was an IMMP trial especially designed to study the capabilities of ISDN as a temporary solution for offering streaming multimedia services prior to any definitive migration to high-speed access networks. Certainly migration to high-speed access networks will be needed as soon as it becomes critical for the evolution of the tele-education sector to provide more demanding multimedia services, based on high motion videos of good quality. But in the meanwhile, ISDN is a good access solution as far as it involves current simple multimedia tele-education systems based on audio and slow-motion video (i.e. audio and video conferencing, and educational materials containing audio and slow videos such as evolutive schemes, succession of joint images, etc). ISDN is also acceptable for medium and high motion videos in which the movement is not so important, because clear images and sound provide enough information to understand the content (i.e. guided virtual arts tours, synchronization of quick successions of joint images and audio/music). These results have already been put into production. Additionally, the viability of certain advanced educational services has been forecast. Searching for OpenAIRE data... There was an error trying to search data from OpenAIRE No results available
