Consumer/Home/Recreation
Personalized Learning Software
Students, educators, as well as parents or guardians can find a software
assist from products designed by Analysis and Simulation, Inc. (AnSim)
of Buffalo, New York.
AnSim's IEPLANNER™ and TPLAN™ products are interactive computer-based
systems. They can be run either independently or together as one complete
system. Utilized as an Individual Education Plan tool, a user of IEPLANNER
and TPLAN can define a goals list, while identifying a host of student
demands in motor skills, social skills, life skills, social issues, even
legal and leisure needs in the user's area. This computerized, expert tutor
and advisor allows assessment of the status of the student and the degree
to which his/her needs are being met.
These software tools made use of CLIPS (C Language Integrated Production
System), a NASA-developed expert system shell which originated at Johnson
Space Center. NASA offers a means of reducing automation costs through
a special type of spinoff service operated by the Computer Software Management
and Information Center (COSMIC®). COSMIC supplies to American businesses,
like AnSim, at relatively low cost, government-developed computer programs
that have secondary utility.
As a company goal, AnSim has focused on the formation of software technology
applications for both contractual and commercial products utilizing capabilities
in graphical user interfaces (GUIs), expert systems, and simulation. Paul
Patti, president of AnSim says the company is exploring new ways to achieve
more effective access to the vast and ever increasing amount of information
available electronically. Strides by AnSim in computer software have been
aided by Johnson Space Center Phase II Small Business Innovation Research
(SBIR) funding and NASA work performed in expert systems.
| AnSim President Paul Patti watches as
Jeffrey Meade demonstrates the graphical user interfaces capabilities of
the company's software. AnSim developed the systems using CLIPS, a NASA-developed
expert systems shell. |
Patti notes that wide area networks, such as the Internet, or just on
large local system disks, vast quantities of data can be found. But how
best can a person sort through huge collections of material, then seek
and rank information only of relevance that satisfies a distinctive need?
That task can be likened to locating the proverbial "needle in the
haystack."
NASA SBIR funding has supported AnSim's Human Memory Extension (HMEtech)
technology. HMEtech software uses spreading activation models
of human memory processes applied to context-sensitive information associations
to characterize, rank, retrieve, and recharacterize information. The HMEtech
system automatically and transparently builds and updates a persistent
Memory Extension (ME) database of accessed documents. Document titles and
other context summaries are parsed, meaning that grammatical form and function,
a word or words in a sentence, are maintained by the HMEtech's
global database.
| Social workers like M. Daniela Mariano
use AnSim's IEPLANNER to assess and identify students' needs in order to
develop individualized plans. The company is extending its work through
a NASA Small Business Innovation Research contract on a World Wide Web
3D browser. |
A user of this indexed meta-database can then retrieve ranked lists
of documents via a key word or term. A relevance feedback stage in the
software permits the user to quickly zero in on pertinent documents.
A NASA Phase I SBIR has extended AnSim's work in the area of creating
a World Wide Web 3D browser. This effort will develop a software prototype
of a 3D interactive information visualization system. The software will
integrate the ME technology for doing information ranking with a 3D windows-based
interactive graphic user interface for doing information visualization.
™ IEPLANNER and TPLAN are trademarks of Analysis and Simulation,
Inc.
® COSMIC is a registered trademark of the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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