Polyphonic Construction of Smart Learning Ecosystems


Book Description

The book brings together the contributions of the 7th International Conference on Smart Learning Ecosystems and Regional Development (SLERD 2022), which aims at promoting reflection and discussion concerning R&D work, policies, case studies, and entrepreneur experiences with a special focus on understanding the relevance of smart learning ecosystems (e.g., schools, campus, working places, informal learning contexts, etc.) for regional development and social innovation and how the effectiveness of the relation of citizens and smart ecosystems can be boosted. This forum has a special interest in understanding how technology mediated instruments can foster the citizen’s engagement with learning ecosystems and territories, namely by understanding innovative human-centric design and development models/techniques, education/training practices, informal social learning, innovative citizen-driven policies, technology mediated experiences, and their impact. This set of concerns will contribute to foster the social innovation sectors and ICT and economic development and deployment strategies alongside new policies for smarter proactive citizens.




Achieving Sustainable Transformation in Tourism and Hospitality Sectors


Book Description

In the sector of global tourism, a critical challenge has taken center stage — the imperative for sustainable transformation. The World Tourism Organization has declared the theme for World Tourism Day 2025 as "Tourism and Sustainable Transformation," shedding light on the urgency to address multifaceted challenges that transcend conventional paradigms. The discourse has evolved beyond the traditional bounds of environmental sustainability, extending its reach to encompass social equality, cultural preservation, and economic viability. The tourism sector's pivotal role in achieving the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 underscores the intricate interplay between tourism and pressing global issues such as poverty, gender inequality, and environmental degradation. Against this backdrop of urgency and complexity, the book titled Achieving Sustainable Transformation in Tourism and Hospitality Sectors offers a comprehensive exploration into viable practices necessary for inclusive, equitable, and responsible tourism. This book serves as a vital contribution to the ongoing dialogue surrounding sustainable tourism. With a focus on inclusivity, equity, and responsibility, it delves into the intricate relationship between tourism and sustainable transformation. It goes beyond mere rhetoric, providing a nuanced understanding of the challenges and opportunities that lie at the intersection of tourism and global sustainability goals. As the global community grapples with disparities, this book becomes a timely and indispensable resource. Policymakers, academicians, researchers, and industry practitioners are invited to contribute to this collective effort, laying the groundwork for a more sustainable and responsible future within the realms of tourism and hospitality. With a diverse array of recommended topics spanning community-based tourism, ecotourism, inclusive development, sustainable employment, and aviation, this book positions itself as an essential guide for those committed to addressing the challenges of our time. By presenting case studies, policy research, and insights into responsible tourism practices, it equips readers with the knowledge needed to navigate the complexities of sustainable transformation. As the global community strives for a more equitable future, this book offers a roadmap for shaping responsible and inclusive growth within the tourism and hospitality sectors.




The Routledge Companion to Smart Design Thinking in Architecture & Urbanism for a Sustainable, Living Planet


Book Description

This comprehensive companion surveys intelligent design thinking in architecture and urbanism, investigates multiple facets of "smart" approaches to design thinking that augment the potentials of user experiences as well as his/her physical and mental interactions with the built environment. Split into six paradigms, this volume looks at the theoretical and historical background of smart design, smart design methodologies and typologies, smart materials, smart design for extreme weather and climatic regions, as well as climate change issues and side effects, smart mobility, and the role of digital technologies and simulations in architectural and urban design. Often at odds with each other, this volume places emphasis on smart design for various typologies and user groups, emphasizing on advancements in form-making and implementation of technology for healthy and sustainable living environments. Written by emerging and established architects, planners, designers, scientists, and engineers from around the globe, this will be an essential reference volume for architecture and urban design students and scholars as well as those in related fields interested in the implications, various facets and futures of smart design.




Ludic, Co-design and Tools Supporting Smart Learning Ecosystems and Smart Education


Book Description

This book brings together the contributions of the 6th International Conference on Smart Learning Ecosystems and Regional Development, which aims at promoting reflection and discussion concerning R&D work, policies, case studies, entrepreneur experiences with a special focus on understanding the relevance of smart learning ecosystems (e.g., schools, campus, working places, informal learning contexts, etc.) for regional development and social innovation and how the effectiveness of the relation of citizens and smart ecosystems can be boosted. This forum has a special interest in understanding how technology-mediated instruments can foster the citizen’s engagement with learning ecosystems and territories, namely by understanding innovative human-centric design and development models/techniques, education/training practices, informal social learning, innovative citizen-driven policies, technology-mediated experiences and their impact. This set of concerns will contribute to foster the social innovation sectors and ICT and economic development and deployment strategies alongside new policies for smarter proactive citizens. Chapter “Robots as My Future Colleagues: Changing Attitudes Toward Collaborative Robots by Means of Experience-Based Workshops” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.




The Interplay of Data, Technology, Place and People for Smart Learning


Book Description

This book gathers contributions to the 3rd International Conference on Smart Learning Ecosystems and Regional Developments (SLERD 2018), held at Aalborg University, Denmark on 23–25 May 2018. What characterizes smart learning ecosystems? What is their role in city and regional development and innovation? How can we promote citizen engagement in smart learning ecosystems? These are some of the questions addressed at SLERD 2018 and documented in these proceedings, which include a diverse range of papers intended to help understand, conceive, and promote innovative human-centric design and development methods, education/training practices, informal social learning, and citizen-driven policies. The papers elaborate on the notion of smart learning ecosystems, assess the relation of smart learning ecosystems with their physical surroundings, and identify new resources for smart learning. SLERD 2018 contributes to foster the social innovation sectors, ICT and economic development and deployment strategies, as well as new policies for smarter, more proactive citizens. As such, these proceedings are relevant for researchers and policymakers alike.




Ludic, Co-design and Tools Supporting Smart Learning Ecosystems and Smart Education


Book Description

This book presents papers from the 5th International Conference on Smart Learning Ecosystems and Regional Development, which promotes discussions on R&D work, policies, case studies, entrepreneur experiences, with a particular focus on understanding the relevance of smart learning ecosystems for regional development and social innovation, and how the effectiveness of the relation of citizens and smart ecosystems can be boosted. The book explores how technology-mediated instruments can foster citizens’ engagement with learning ecosystems and territories, providing insights into innovative human-centric design and development models/techniques, education/training practices, informal social learning, innovative citizen-driven policies, and technology-mediated experiences and their impact. As such, it will inspire the social innovation sectors and ICT, as well as economic development and deployment strategies and new policies for smarter proactive citizens.




The Rabbit Hutch


Book Description

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • The standout literary debut that everyone is talking about • "Inventive, heartbreaking and acutely funny."—The Guardian A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, TIME, NPR, Oprah Daily, People Blandine isn't like the other residents of her building. An online obituary writer. A young mother with a dark secret. A woman waging a solo campaign against rodents — neighbors, separated only by the thin walls of a low-cost housing complex in the once bustling industrial center of Vacca Vale, Indiana. Welcome to the Rabbit Hutch. Ethereally beautiful and formidably intelligent, Blandine shares her apartment with three teenage boys she neither likes nor understands, all, like her, now aged out of the state foster care system that has repeatedly failed them, all searching for meaning in their lives. Set over one sweltering week in July and culminating in a bizarre act of violence that finally changes everything, The Rabbit Hutch is a savagely beautiful and bitingly funny snapshot of contemporary America, a gorgeous and provocative tale of loneliness and longing, entrapment and, ultimately, freedom. "Gunty writes with a keen, sensitive eye about all manner of intimacies―the kind we build with other people, and the kind we cultivate around ourselves and our tenuous, private aspirations."—Raven Leilani, author of Luster




The Wide Lens


Book Description

How can great companies do everything right - identify real customer needs, deliver excellent innovations, beat their competitors to market - and still fail? The sad truth is that many companies fail because they focus too intensely on their own innovations, and then neglect the innovation ecosystems on which their success depends. In our increasingly interdependent world, winning requires more than just delivering on your own promises. It means ensuring that a host of partners -some visible, some hidden- deliver on their promises, too. In The Wide Lens, innovation expert Ron Adner draws on over a decade of research and field testing to take you on far ranging journeys from Kenya to California, from transport to telecommunications, to reveal the hidden structure of success in a world of interdependence. A riveting study that offers a new perspective on triumphs like Amazon's e-book strategy and Apple's path to market dominance; monumental failures like Michelin with run-flat tires and Pfizer with inhalable insulin; and still unresolved issues like electric cars and electronic health records, The Wide Lens offers a powerful new set of frameworks and tools that will multiply your odds of innovation success. The Wide Lens will change the way you see, the way you think - and the way you win.




Designing and Developing for Google Glass


Book Description

Creating apps for Google Glass is more involved than simply learning how to navigate its hardware, APIs, and SDK. You also need the right mindset. While this practical book delivers the information and techniques you need to build and deploy Glass applications, it also helps you to think for Glass by showing you how the platform works in, and affects, its environment. In three parts—Discover, Design, and Develop—Glass pioneers guide you through the Glass ecosystem and demonstrate what this wearable computer means for users, developers, and society as a whole. You’ll learn how to create rich functionality for a consumer technology that’s radically different than anything currently available. Learn the Five Noble Truths of great Glassware design Understand the Glass ecosystem and learn why it’s different Sidestep Glass’s societal concerns in your projects Learn how Glass adapts to the user’s world, rather than the other way around Avoid poor design by identifying Glassware antipatterns Build cloud services with the Google Mirror API Use the Glass Development Kit to develop client applications Submit your project for review in the MyGlass directory




Tokyo Ueno Station (National Book Award Winner)


Book Description

WINNER OF THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A surreal, devastating story of a homeless ghost who haunts one of Tokyo's busiest train stations. Kazu is dead. Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Japanese Emperor, his life is tied by a series of coincidences to the Imperial family and has been shaped at every turn by modern Japanese history. But his life story is also marked by bad luck, and now, in death, he is unable to rest, doomed to haunt the park near Ueno Station in Tokyo. Kazu's life in the city began and ended in that park; he arrived there to work as a laborer in the preparations for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and ended his days living in the vast homeless village in the park, traumatized by the destruction of the 2011 tsunami and shattered by the announcement of the 2020 Olympics. Through Kazu's eyes, we see daily life in Tokyo buzz around him and learn the intimate details of his personal story, how loss and society's inequalities and constrictions spiraled towards this ghostly fate, with moments of beauty and grace just out of reach. A powerful masterwork from one of Japan's most brilliant outsider writers, Tokyo Ueno Station is a book for our times and a look into a marginalized existence in a shiny global megapolis.