Department of Computer Science University of North Carolina at Wilmington 601 South College Road Wilmington, North Carolina 28403 Phone: (910) 962-7192 Fax: (910) 962-7457 Email: vetterr@uncw.edu URL: http://people.uncw.edu/vetterr/
Ron Vetter is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW). His research interests include mobile and wireless networking, component-based computing, multimedia systems, and distance education. His activities have been supported by the USWEST Foundation, NSF, USDA, NASA, and others.
Vetter received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from North Dakota State University in 1984 and 1986, respectively, and his PhD in computer science from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis in 1992. He has published more than 70 journal, conference, and technical papers. He currently serves on the editorial advisory boards of Communications of the ACM and IEEE Computer Magazine. In addition, he has served as the guest editor for number of publications on computer networking, security, and e-commerce related topics. Dr. Vetter is a member of the ACM and ACM's Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM), and a senior member of the IEEE (both the Computer and the Communication Societies).
Vetter was selected as the 2001-2002 ACM Outstanding Lecturer of the Year.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed several open recommendations, extending existing Internet standards, to enable wireless devices full access to the web and its information base. With the rapid introduction of new kinds of web browsers - now available on television set-top boxes, game consoles, automobiles, and pocket computers - the kinds interactions and applications available over the network are changing rapidly. Users of the Internet need to understand these recent advances in order to be able to take full advantage of the new functionality they provide. Students attending this lecture will be exposed (at an introductory level) to a few of the most important emerging web technologies and standards.
This talk will focus on an innovative project underway at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Several faculty members at UNCW have initiated "Project Numina: Innovative Integration of Media into Science and Mathematics Curricula." The aim of this project to improve meaningful learning of abstract science and mathematics concepts by integrating media, interactive exercises, and hypertext materials into the classroom using one seamless format. By using pocket computers equipped with the appropriate software and connected by a wireless network to the Internet, they are exposing students to a rich variety of resources with which to learn the abstract concepts of chemistry, mathematics, and computer science while at the same time increasing student-instructor and student-student interactions. This project has the potential to revolutionalize the way in which technology is used to help students learn more effectively.
In this talk, I provide an overview of the iLumina Digital Library and discuss how it is attempting to foster an online community-sharing model of course-material creation and reuse. The first part of the talk describes the structure of the digital library followed by an outline of the challenges confronting iLumina. This work is building on several related projects, such as the National Engineering Education Delivery System (NEEDS) and the Connected Curriculum Project (CCP), that have already begun to explore this area. iLumina complements these projects by its emphasis on the use of rich metadata to underpin an array of digital library services. Most of the talk will focus on an overview of the roles that such metadata can play in meeting the challenges faced by iLumina. For more information on this project, see http://www.ilumina-dlib.org.