RTST Trend Report: lead theme Contextualisation

Specht, M., Börner, D., Tabuenca, B., Ternier, S., De Vries, F., Kalz, M., Drachsler, H., & Schmitz, B. (2012). RTST Trend Report: lead theme Contextualisation. Deliverable 1.7 of STELLAR network of excellence. Heerlen, The Netherlands.In summary this trend-scouting report highlights different design dimensions of contextualizing learning. On the one hand designing educational context: the components and constituents of the educational setting, which also have to be orchestrated in an instructional design or the process of orchestration (Luckin, 2010, Specht, 2009) on the other hand bridging and linking learning contexts for seamless learning support: Wong et al. define design dimensions of seamless learning experiences and which gaps they identify and what challenges must be tackled to create seamless learning experiences (Wong, 2011).STELLAR Network of Excellence, Grant 23191

The Mundane Computer: Non-Technical Design Challenges Facing Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence

Interdisciplinary collaboration, to include those who are not natural scientists, engineers and computer scientists, is inherent in the idea of ubiquitous computing, as formulated by Mark Weiser in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, ubiquitous computing has remained largely a computer science and engineering concept, and its non-technical side remains relatively underdeveloped. The aim of the article is, first, to clarify the kind of interdisciplinary collaboration envisaged by Weiser. Second, the difficulties of understanding the everyday and weaving ubiquitous technologies into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it, as conceived by Weiser, are explored. The contributions of Anne Galloway, Paul Dourish and Philip Agre to creating an understanding of everyday life relevant to the development of ubiquitous computing are discussed, focusing on the notions of performative practice, embodied interaction and contextualisation. Third, it is argued that with the shift to the notion of ambient intelligence, the larger scale socio-economic and socio-political dimensions of context become more explicit, in contrast to the focus on the smaller scale anthropological study of social (mainly workplace) practices inherent in the concept of ubiquitous computing. This can be seen in the adoption of the concept of ambient intelligence within the European Union and in the focus on rebalancing (personal) privacy protection and (state) security in the wake of 11 September 2001. Fourth, the importance of adopting a futures-oriented approach to discussing the issues arising from the notions of ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence is stressed, while the difficulty of trying to achieve societal foresight is acknowledged

A connectivist approach to smart city learning : Valletta city case-study

A connectivist approach will be adopted to design and evaluate learning in technology-enhanced open spaces in Valletta city. Learning is considered as a process of creating connections between learner’s inner cognitive and affective systems with the external physical and social worlds. These interactions are organised within a model comprising dimensions and levels of interactions. The experience for a learner in a technology-enhanced historical place will be designed considering interactions with the content domain (history, botany, art), the technological dimension (interaction between handheld devices and the available signals such as 3/4G, Wifi or GNSS) and the social dimension comprising interactions with fellow learners /citizens and domain experts. The levels of interactions are related to learner’s experience within the subject domain, with technology and one’s status or role in learning community or community of practice. Thus learning experiences have to be designed considering acquisition level for novice learners, participatory learning for more experience learners and contributory learning for highly competent learners. This connectivist model will be applied to identified places of historical or educational interest in Valletta city to design different modes of learning mediated through interactive technologies. The concept of Personal Learning Environments in Smart cities [1] will be used to provide technology-enhanced experiences in Playful learning, Seamless learning, Geo-learning, Citizen enquiry and Crowd learning. A number of these technology-enhanced learning experiences, developed in collaboration with CYBERPARKS ACTION’s WG1, will be contextualized in Valletta city. University of Malta will provide the domain content and resources, together with the pedagogical strategy for each learning experience. Researchers from WG1 will design and develop the technological model and infrastructure, mainly the Android-based Way-Cyberparks App that will integrate GNSS-based learning, Augmented Reality, Navigation tracing and other functionalities used for specific tasks and type of data collection. An interactions-based methodology will be used to evaluate learning along the identified dimensions.Funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union.peer-reviewe

Ability as an additional support need: Scotland’s inclusive approach to gifted education

No abstract available

The genesis and development of mobile learning in Europe

In the past two decades, European researchers have conducted many significant mobile learning projects. The chapter explores how these projects have arisen and what each one has contributed, so as to show the driving forces and outcomes of European innovation in mobile learning. The authors identify context as a central construct in European researchers’ conceptualizations of mobile learning and examine theories of learning for the mobile world, based on physical, technological, conceptual, social and temporal mobility. The authors also examine the impacts of mobile learning research on educational practices and the implications for policy. Finally, they suggest future challenges for researchers, developers and policy makers in shaping the future of mobile learning

Seamful interweaving: heterogeneity in the theory and design of interactive systems

Design experience and theoretical discussion suggest that a narrow design focus on one tool or medium as primary may clash with the way that everyday activity involves the interweaving and combination of many heterogeneous media. Interaction may become seamless and unproblematic, even if the differences, boundaries and 'seams' in media are objectively perceivable. People accommodate and take advantage of seams and heterogeneity, in and through the process of interaction. We use an experiment with a mixed reality system to ground and detail our discussion of seamful design, which takes account of this process, and theory that reflects and informs such design. We critique the 'disappearance' mentioned by Weiser as a goal for ubicomp, and Dourish's 'embodied interaction' approach to HCI, suggesting that these design ideals may be unachievable or incomplete because they underemphasise the interdependence of 'invisible' non-rationalising interaction and focused rationalising interaction within ongoing activity

Innovating Pedagogy 2015: Open University Innovation Report 4

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This fourth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. We proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories, and practices. We then pared these down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice, particularly in post-school education. Lastly, we drew on published and unpublished writings to compile the ten sketches of new pedagogies that might transform education. These are summarised below in an approximate order of immediacy and timescale to widespread implementation

Mobilizing learning: mobile Web 2.0 scenarios in tertiary education

Based upon three years of mobile learning (mlearning) projects, a major implementation project has been developed for integrating the use of mobile web 2.0 tools across a variety of departments and courses in a tertiary education environment. A participatory action research methodology guides and informs the project. The project is based upon an explicit social constuctivist pedagogy, focusing on student collaboration, and the sharing and critique of student-generated content using freely available web 2.0 services. These include blogs, social networks, location aware (geotagged) image and video sharing, instant messaging, microblogging etc… Students and lecturers are provided with either an appropriate smartphone and/or a 3G capable netbook to use as their own for the duration of the project. Keys to the projects success are the level of pedagogical and technical support, and the level of integration of the tools into the courses – including assessment and lecturer modelling of the use of the tools. The projects are supported by an intentional community of practice model, with the researcher taking on the role of the “technology steward”. The paper outlines three different scenarios illustrating how this course integration is being achieved, establishing a transferable model of mobile web 2.0 integration and implementation. The goal is to facilitate a student-centred, collaborative, flexible, context-bridging learning environment that empowers students as content producers and learning context generators, guided by lecturers who effectively model th

ECO D2.6 Web 2.0 requirements analysis

ECO sMOOCs are social and seamless and the pedagogical design puts the learner central, taking an active role and learning through interactions and connections with others. The platforms have to provide the features not only support social interaction but promote and enhance these. This deliverable puts forward what features can scaffold interactions, taking into account lessons learned from popular social media.Part of the work carried out has been funded with support from the European Commission, under the ICT Policy Support Programme, as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) in the ECO project under grant agreement n° 21127