1. A Positive Thinking Training Application Spyros Argyropoulos, Euripides G.M. Petrakis, Panos Milios The 1 st International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality 14 -15 November 2013 Salamanca, Spain Authors:

2. Motivation To encourage the collection and dissemination of positive (good) news by students across the EU using the Web. To integrate non-formal training methods, services and pedagogical approaches, based on ICT practical applications, in order to train the target user groups. 2

3. EU Life-Long Learning Project PoTrain: Positive Thinking Training EU Life-Long Learning, Comenius, Project No. 509925 Partners: The Bucharest School Inspectorate, Romania Secondary schools from Bulgaria, Slovakia, Romania and Greece DIAN Publishing – Consulting – Education, Greece TUC, Greece 3

4. Overview Introduction News Collection & Categorization Types of Users Presentation Issues: Web Page Structure, News Filtering Functionality Issues: News Voting, News Comments, News Article Creation System Management Issues: Administration 4

5. Introduction Basic concepts: Collecting the most popular positive news articles The role of the students Students news articles & News channels articles News creation, news voting, comments on news System Administration 5

6. News Collection PoTrain Articles News Channels Articles Students Articles Insert Article Student Vote Write Vote News Sources PoTrain Database Users 6

7. News Categorization All ArticlesArt News article 1 news channel article News article 2 student article Environment News article 1 student article News article 2 news channel article News article 3 student article Humanity News article 1 news channel article … 7

8. Types of Users Visitors view articles Registered Users vote, write, comment articles Administrators manage system information 8

9. Web Page Structure - Visitors 9

10. Web Page Layout - Visitors 10

11. Web Page Structure – Students 11

12. Web Page Layout – Students 12

13. Web Page Structure – Admin 13

14. Web Page Layout – Admin 14

15. News Filtering 15

16. News Voting & Comments on News The most popular news article has the greatest amount of positive votes. Only for registered users (students). Each user can give one positive vote for each article. Visitors can read comments on an article but they cannot write. Registered users can do both. 16

17. Creating an Article 17

18. System Management Issues Hide News categories News channels News articles Comments Users (disable) Edit News articles Comments News channels News categories Schools, Countries, Languages Users Add News channels News categories Schools, Countries, Languages Users 18

19. Implementation Issues PHP scripting language, for the implementation of the system logic and data preparation. Javascript language for the active components on the Web pages, such as the on-line help, CSS technology for the Web pages layout, and MySQL Relational Database Management System for the organization of information of PoTrain. 19

20. See Application http://www.intelligence.tuc.gr/potrain/ 20

21. Conclusions The development of innovative ICT-based content, services, pedagogies and practice has become an integral part of todays educational procedure. ICT-based applications in education must be well designed but also manageable and acceptable by their users. PoTrain is a Web-based application for training students to search and collaborate with other students or their teachers in order to distinguish and highlight positive news articles. 21

22. Future Work active involvement of the teacher role (as a special user type) assisting students in developing useful skills and positive way of thinking and, search automatically on the Internet for spotting, suggesting and filtering positive news articles. 22

23. Thank you Spyros Argyropoulos spyros@intelligence.tuc.gr Euripides G.M. Petrakis petrakis@intelligence.tuc.gr Panos Milios pmdian@otenet.gr 23