Integrating Handhelds into Environments of Cooperating Smart Everyday Objects

Because of their severe resource-restrictions and limited user interfaces, smart everyday objects must often rely on remote resources to realize their services. This paper shows how smart objects can obtain access to such resources by spontaneously exploiting the capabilities of nearby mobile user devices. In our concept, handhelds join a distributed data structure shared by cooperating smart objects, which makes the location where data are stored transparent for applications. Smart objects then outsource computations to handhelds and thereby gain access to their resources. As a result, this allows smart items to transfer a graphical user interface to a nearby handheld, and facilitates the collaborative processing of sensory data because of the more elaborate storage and processing capabilities of mobile user devices. We present a concrete implementation of our concepts on an embedded sensor node platform, the BTnodes, and illustrate the applicability of our approach with two example applications

A reflective middleware for controlling smart objects from mobile devices

Mobile devices are mainly used for communication, entertainment, and as electronic assistants. However, their increasing computational, storage, communicational and multimedia capabilities make them suitable for previously unexpected scenarios such as Ambient Intelligence (AmI). Thus, mobile devices may be used as intermediaries between us and the smart objects (everyday objects augmented with computational services) in our surroundings. This paper describes the design and implementation of a middleware to transform mobile devices into universal remote controllers of smart objects. 1

Teacher Education and Technology Integration: How Do Preservice Teachers Perceive Their Readiness to Infuse Technology into the Learning Environment?

In the past twenty years, substantial investments have been made in educational technology at the K-12 level. While increased integration of technology in K-12 teaching is more likely to occur when prospective teachers are exposed to a variety of computer uses in the majority of their undergraduate courses prior to their teaching in schools, due to the limited exposure in the use of technology by university teachers as well as the fast paced changes, preservice teachers often are not prepared for integrating and using technology in the classroom. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the perceptions of preservice students in their ability to integrate technology into a learning environment based on university coursework and field experience. Preservice teachers, within an NCATE accredited teacher education program, were surveyed using the 2008 ISTE/NETS*T standards as a framework. Results of the data analysis, across the four academic years based on curriculum, modeling of university professors, and integration of technology within the methods coursework of the Leading Teacher Program, suggested that there was no significant difference among grade levels in their perceived ability to integrate technology. Results of the data analysis of seniors revealed multiple areas of significant differences before and after their field experience: ability to use online content response journals, integrating technology into a learning environment, and total score of the survey. Additional data analysis also revealed that the perceptions of Early Childhood students\u27 ability to integrate technology into a learning environment was significantly lower than that of Elementary and Secondary students within the same program. In addition, students who had well integrated modeling of technology in high school, revealed significantly higher perceptions of their ability to integrate technology into the learning environment. The conclusions drawn from the results of this study provide an insight into technology savvy characteristics of preservice teachers within a teacher education program, which has technology as one of its core themes; technology modeling and program design within a teacher education program can have an impact on preservice teachers to have stronger perceptions about their ability to integrate technology

A study of teacher knowledge as secondary mathematics teachers use a new technology

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on May 25, 2010).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Dissertation advisor: Dr. Kathryn B. Chval.Vita.Ph. D. University of Missouri--Columbia 2010.Professional organizations (e.g., NCTM and NCSM) and educational leaders advocate for increased use of technology in high school mathematics. Educational researchers find that teachers' beliefs and knowledge influence use of technology and student learning (e.g., Hall & Hord, 1987, 1991; Mitchell, Bailey, & Monroe, 2007; Niess, 2005; Zbiek, Heid, Blume, & Dick, 2007; Zbiek & Hollebrands, 2008). Yet, we lack research examining what knowledge teachers need to effectively use specific technologies or how teachers enact this knowledge. Additionally, the conceptualization of teacher knowledge related to using technology in mathematics is at the early stages. Thus, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate and analyze what knowledge secondary teachers draw upon as they enact a new technology (i.e., the TI-nspire[TM] calculator) in mathematics classrooms. Analysis of the data revealed: (1) Teaching with and reflecting on the use of the TI-nspire[TM] helps teachers to develop PCK with the TI-nspire[TM]. (2) Teachers may develop specific components of their pedagogical content knowledge with technology before others, and (3) teachers consider the TI-nspire[TM] a "discovery-based" mathematics learning tool and believe students investigate and learn mathematics on the handhelds when they structure learning environments to support the nature of this type of instruction. The research findings can inform the design and implementation of teacher preparation and professional development programs and ultimately improve the teaching and learning of mathematics.Includes bibliographical references

How to Interact with Augmented Reality Head Mounted Devices in Care Work? A Study Comparing Handheld Touch (Hands-on) and Gesture (Hands-free) Interaction

In this paper, we investigate augmented reality (AR) to support caregivers. We implemented a system called Care Lenses that supported various care tasks on AR head-mounted devices. For its application, one question concerned how caregivers could interact with the system while providing care (i.e., while using one or both hands for care tasks). Therefore, we compared two mechanisms to interact with the Care Lenses (handheld touch similar to touchpads and touchscreens and head gestures). We found that head gestures were difficult to apply in practice, but except for that the head gesture support was as usable and useful as handheld touch interaction, although the study participants were much more familiar with the handheld touch control. We conclude that head gestures can be a good means to enable AR support in care, and we provide design considerations to make them more applicable in practice

Proceedings of the International Workshop “Re-Thinking Technology in Museums: towards a new understanding of people’s experience in museums"

Proceedings of the International Workshop “Re-Thinking Technology in Museums: towards a new understanding of people’s experience in museums

HUC-HISF: A Hybrid Intelligent Security Framework for Human-centric Ubiquitous Computing

制度:新 ; 報告番号:乙2336号 ; 学位の種類:博士(人間科学) ; 授与年月日:2012/1/18 ; 早大学位記番号:新584

Service-Oriented Middleware for the Future Internet: State of the Art and Research Directions

International audienceService-oriented computing is now acknowledged as a central paradigm for Internet computing, supported by tremendous research and technology development over the last ten years. However, the evolution of the Internet, and in particular, the latest Future Internet vision, challenges the paradigm. Indeed, service-oriented computing has to face the ultra large scale and heterogeneity of the Future Internet, which are orders of magnitude higher than those of today's service-oriented systems. This article aims at contributing to this objective by identifying the key research directions to be followed in light of the latest state of the art. This article more specifically focuses on research challenges for service-oriented middleware design, therefore investigating service description, discovery, access and composition in the Future Internet of services