t-learning

So, you sit in front of the television, switch it on and… what happens? Are you automatically learning? If it is so, what are you learning??

And, if you are interested in a specific topic, what should you watch?

Also thinking about the technical side, how could you relate TV programs with related more “formal” educative content and make a link between them?

It is clear that something is needed in order to solve all these problems. And it seems that the best approach is the use of ontologies.

Why? First of all, using an ontology improves the creation of a relationship between related contents, since syntactic analysis is not so efficient as a semantic one. Second, hierarchycal ontologies may provide more related information like the supersubject, a case application or subsubject, or sibling topics that might be of interest, too.

When designing a t-learning course, then, the first step should be defining an ontology. It could be then compared with metadata attached to TV programs, and in this way:

• create a set of programs of interest for the learner, and
• deliver highly related interactive or support content with them.

A plus for the use of ontologies would be the possibility to interconnect them. The learner could then find other courses that may be somehow connected to the current one, letting him or her explore new fields and learn new things, just by following the thread!