Designing effective teaching interventions with semantic annotation

Abstract

Semantic web technology promises a number of benefits for a future in many different fields and especially within education. There is, however, a considerable gap in Semantic Web research between the contributions in the educational field and the research carried out in the special educational needs area. Semantic web techniques have been applied in education to retrieve the relevant material, and add semantic annotation to documents. However, special needs schools still rely heavily on manual methods. This paper presents a design of SEN teaching platform based on a semantic web annotation tool (Amaya) coordinated with a web application. This design evaluated by conducting pilot study in schools caring for special needs students SEN. Building on a pilot study at two schools and interviewing nine participants (Teachers, Teaching Assistant) in UK, the findings indicate that Semantic Web technology can benefit the education of special needs by utilizing semantic web annotation tools.