PL-D.Mikulowski - Presentation

A universal knowledge exchange portal can also be a solution supporting activities related to work and entertainment of the blind and the visually impaired (BVI). In order to implement this functionality, a special channel was created on the PIKS - Personal Knowledge Exchange System. It contains information that may be useful to such people. There are information such as data on organizations supporting the BVI, interesting resources from the Internet on facilitating the work and daily life of these people. All these data were obtained due to use the multi-search mechanism implemented in the WPAD software. 

After creating this channel, information about it  has been provided to online forums designed for the blind and visually impaired in Poland.
The system was also used as a tool supporting the work of an academic teacher who is blind person. To enable this, WPAD has been adapted by adding a special simplified menu to it. Another features have also been added to WPAD. They allow to operate with the software without mouse - using only a screen reader and keyboard. Using these possibilities, within the framework of the previously implemented V4 project, Educational Packages (EduPacks) were created using the wpad program
They were intended for students of computer science in the frame of course of creating web applications and technologies related to this domain.

The method of creating these packages was based on the development of lecture presentations and tasks for students in LaTex by the teacher and then generating PDF files from them. These files were then collected, organized, and placed in the appropriate folder in WPAD software structure. Finally, to make these materials more attractive, using the WPAD software, educational packages were generated from them in the form of elegant-looking web pages. This package was then made available to students through the teacher's website

Another way to use the system was to create and use a special PIKS knowledge exchange channel for foreign students. The channel was intended for Erasmus students at the Institute of Computer Science of the University of Natural Sciences and Humanities in Siedlce, which is one of the partner of the project. This channel contains educational materials needed for these students to complete tasks related to implementing web applications in HTML5, Javascript and the JQUery library. Students had access to these materials through a specially created channel of the PIKS system. They could download it and put their own information e.g. questions for tasks or information about the completion of a task, which the teacher could then read.
In this way, the exchange of information and knowledge between the students and the teacher took place.
As a continuation and extension of these works, further activities related to the use of the WPAD software and the PIKS knowledge exchange system are also planned.
Currently, the WPAD software and the specially created PIKS channel are used by teachers in one of the secondary schools in Siedlce (Poland). Using these tools, the several materials helpfull to teach mathematics and music are now created.
They will be created with the WPAD software and will be shared with students during the lesson. In the next stage, Using the WPAD program, students will also create their own educational packages containing, for example, information about their favorite singer or author of books. They will create them as tables in the WPAD program and then transform them into html pages, which they will then be able to share with each other. Using the WPAD program, students can also learn the basic issues related to databases.
Since the basic unit of information storage in WPAD is the table, they will be able to learn about such issues as entering data, sorting, searching and transforming, as well as the concept of relationships between tables and simple database queries.