2009 Publications | Publicações de 2009 (IV)

This is the final post in this series, after the previous ones.

It includes a few papers about students' work, including those from SLACTIONS, and the first two papers resulting from my participation in the VITA project.

Pinto, Mércia; Varajão, João; Morgado, Leonel (2009). Business simulator in the Second Life virtual world. In Proceeedings of the CENTERIS 2009 – Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems, 7-9, October 2009, Ofir, Portugal, ISBN 978-972-669-929-3, p. 727, Vila Real, Portugal: UTAD.

Mércia developed a 3D model of a company, identified the roles of various elements (managers, secretaries, etc.), and programmed simple textual interactions with virtual dolls, to "chat" with them. A normal poster.

Gens, Luís; Paredes, Hugo; Martins, Paulo; Fonseca, Benjamim; Mor, Yishay; Morgado, Leonel (2009). MobMaps: Towards a Shared Environment for Collaborative Social Activism. In Carriço, Luís; Baloian, Nelson, & Fonseca, Benjamim (Eds.) Groupware: Design, Implementation, and Use - 15th International Workshop, CRIWG 2009, Peso da Régua, Douro, Portugal, September 13-17, 2009, Proceedings, ISBN 978-3-642-04215-7, ISSN 0302-9743, pp. 295-302. Berlin, Germany: Springer.

Luis and Hugo developed a simple cellphone application for denouncing human rights issues, inspired in the field work of Machsom Watch, "an organisation of peace activist Israeli women against the Israeli Occupation of the territories and the systematic repression of the Palestinian nation." Eventually Luis would travel to the border between Israel and Palestine, testing this for one week and actually making a great field work assessing requirements, and his experiences are detailed in a blog, which is a great read (if you know Portuguese).

Morgado, Leonel; Cruz, Maria Gabriel; Tavares, Ana Teresa; Moura, Christophe; Pinto, Rute Bastardo (2009). Livro de actividades em ToonTalk para o pré-escolar. In Veloso, Ana; Roque, Licínio; Mealha, Óscar (Eds.) "Videojogos 2009, Aveiro, 26 e 27 de Novembro de 2009 - Actas", ISBN 978-972-789-299-0. Braga, Portugal: Sociedade Portuguesa de Ciências dos Videojogos.

Some years ago, I helped a full class of students of the Early Childhood Education programme of studies develop computer activities in ToonTalk. Then finally, in 2008/2009, a couple of students from our Communications & Multimedia programme of studies took up the challenge of turning those activities into a no-text-only-pictures book, for use in preschools and kindergartens. I supervised them, helped refine the activities, and Prof. Maria Cruz created opening texts, with the educational goals of each. The result is a book to be published by Cnotinfor, and this paper details the process of its creation.

Rodrigues, Nuno; Magalhães, Luís; Moura, João Paulo; Chalmers, Alan; Santos, Filipe; Morgado, Leonel (2009). ArchHouseGenerator – A Framework for House Generation. In Morgado, Leonel; Zagalo, Nelson; Boa-Ventura, Ana (Eds.) "Proceedings of the SLACTIONS 2009 International Conference - Life, imagination, and word using metaverse platforms", pp. 11-20, ISBN 978-972-669-924-8. Vila Real, Portugal: Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.

Nuno is the doctoral student of some of my colleagues, who is developing a great system to generate architecturally-correct 3D houses automatically. It's not that often that you have a computer science student reading "Vitruvii De Architectura". I and Filipe helped make the connections between his work and virtual world platforms.

Bernardo, Martine; Rabadão, Carlos; Morgado, Leonel; Gonçalves, Ramiro (2009). A phenomenographic study about the future of the electronic commerce in the Second Life. In Morgado, Leonel; Zagalo, Nelson; Boa-Ventura, Ana (Eds.) "Proceedings of the SLACTIONS 2009 International Conference - Life, imagination, and word using metaverse platforms", pp. 97-101, ISBN 978-972-669-924-8. Vila Real, Portugal: Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.

Martine was a great MSc student who set out to find out how current Second Life residents foresee the development of e-commerce in virtual worlds. She developed a strict phenomenographic approach to inquiry and analysis of the data, and came up with several interesting results - and Second Life residents are more conservative than one might think!

Rodrigues, Clara; Coelho, Dalila; Morgado, Leonel; Varajão, João; Haidimoschi, Aura; Doppler, Gerhard; Koivusalo, Hillevi; Jokinen, Paivi; Velegrakis, George; Sancin, Chiara; Carmenini, Valentina (2009). Virtual Learning for the management of successful SMEs in Europe. In Morgado, Leonel; Zagalo, Nelson; Boa-Ventura, Ana (Eds.) "Proceedings of the SLACTIONS 2009 International Conference - Life, imagination, and word using metaverse platforms", pp. 165-170, ISBN 978-972-669-924-8. Vila Real, Portugal: Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.

Velegrakis, George; Rodrigues, Clara; Coelho, Dalila; Varajão, João; Morgado, Leonel; Dominguez, Caroline; Sancín, Chiara; Doppler, Gerhard; Koivusalo, Hillevi; Lakanen, Erja; Haidimoschi, Aura (2009). Profile of the SME manager - Competences defining the profile of the European entrepreneur. In Proceeedings of the CENTERIS 2009 – Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems, 7-9, October 2009, Ofir, Portugal, ISBN 978-972-669-929-3, pp. 725-726, Vila Real, Portugal: UTAD.

In 2009, I and a few colleagues embarked on a project funded by the Europan Commission, under a proposal of the Higher School of Education of Beja. Called the VITA project, partners from 6 countries are trying to use Second Life to teach management concepts to managers of small and medium enterprises. These two papers are the first outputs. The SLACTIONS paper details the project's rationale, and the CENTERIS paper is the result of an European-wide survey of what academic, professional, and government sources state as competences an SME manager should be skilled in.