Technology Enhanced Textbook Provoking active ways of Learning

With this contribution we want to present and explain the demonstrators of the »Technology Enhanced Textbook« (TET) that we developed during the last two years and discuss with the active PLE-community whether TET could be a useful component of a personal learning environment. Instead of using the term PLE to refer to the tool itself we prefer to use it to refer to the whole physical and virtual environment which can be influenced and designed by the learner

Tablet use in schools: A critical review of the evidence for learning outcomes

The increased popularity of tablets in general has led to uptake in education. We critically review the literature reporting use of tablets by primary and secondary school children across the curriculum, with a particular emphasis on learning outcomes. The Systematic Review methodology was used and our literature search resulted in 33 relevant studies meeting the inclusion criteria. A total of 23 met the minimum quality criteria and were examined in detail (16 reporting positive learning outcomes, 5 no difference and 2 negative learning outcomes). Explanations underlying these observations were analysed, and factors contributing to successful uses of tablets are discussed. While we hypothesise how tablets can viably support children in completing a variety of learning tasks (across a range of contexts and academic subjects), the fragmented nature of the current knowledge base, and the scarcity of rigorous studies, make it difficult to draw firm conclusions. The generalisability of evidence is limited and detailed explanations as to how, or why, using tablets within certain activities can improve learning remain elusive. We recommend that future research moves beyond exploration towards systematic and in-depth investigations building on the existing findings documented here.We gratefully acknowledge a donation from ARM Holdings Ltd. that partially supported this literature review.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jcal.1212

M-health review: joining up healthcare in a wireless world

In recent years, there has been a huge increase in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to deliver health and social care. This trend is bound to continue as providers (whether public or private) strive to deliver better care to more people under conditions of severe budgetary constraint

Data-driven design of intelligent wireless networks: an overview and tutorial

Data science or "data-driven research" is a research approach that uses real-life data to gain insight about the behavior of systems. It enables the analysis of small, simple as well as large and more complex systems in order to assess whether they function according to the intended design and as seen in simulation. Data science approaches have been successfully applied to analyze networked interactions in several research areas such as large-scale social networks, advanced business and healthcare processes. Wireless networks can exhibit unpredictable interactions between algorithms from multiple protocol layers, interactions between multiple devices, and hardware specific influences. These interactions can lead to a difference between real-world functioning and design time functioning. Data science methods can help to detect the actual behavior and possibly help to correct it. Data science is increasingly used in wireless research. To support data-driven research in wireless networks, this paper illustrates the step-by-step methodology that has to be applied to extract knowledge from raw data traces. To this end, the paper (i) clarifies when, why and how to use data science in wireless network research; (ii) provides a generic framework for applying data science in wireless networks; (iii) gives an overview of existing research papers that utilized data science approaches in wireless networks; (iv) illustrates the overall knowledge discovery process through an extensive example in which device types are identified based on their traffic patterns; (v) provides the reader the necessary datasets and scripts to go through the tutorial steps themselves

Context Aware Family Dynamics based Internet of Things Access Control Towards Better Child Safety

Today, children are increasingly connected to the Internet and consume content and services through various means. It has been a challenge for less tech-savvy parents to protect children from harmful content and services. Internet of Things (IoT) has made the situation much worse as IoT devices allow children to connect to the Internet in novel ways (e.g., connected refrigerators, TVs, and so on). In this paper, we propose mySafeHome, an approach which utilises family dynamics to provide a more natural, and intuitive access control mechanism to protect children from harmful content and services in the context of IoT. In mySafeHome, access control dynamically adapts based on the physical distance between family members. For example, a particular type of content can only be consumed, through TV, by children if the parents are in the same room (or hearing distance). mySafeHome allows parents to assess a given content by themselves. Our approach also aims to create granular levels of access control (e.g., block / limit certain content, features, services, on certain devices when the parents are not in the vicinity). We developed a prototype using OpenHAB and several smart home devices to demonstrate the proposed approach. We believe that our approach also facilitates the creation of better relationships between family members. A demo can be viewed here: http://safehome.technology/demo

Increasing physical activity for individuals with intellectual disability through indoor bike cycling and exergaming

Studies reveal that individuals with intellectual disabilities have more sedentary lifestyles than the general population. Regular physical activity is of both medical and social importance, reducing risks of cardiovascular diseases and obesity. Health organizations recommend that everyone should at least engage in 150 minutes of physical activity each week because of the beneficial health effects. There exist several technical solutions that aim to encourage physical activity. Among these solutions are exergames, where the users must move their body to control game-objects. The idea behind exergames is that a user needs to engage in physical activity in order to play the video game. The point is that it should motivate the user to perform physical activity. Exergames comes in several forms and types on the market today. However, most of them are not user-friendly for individuals with intellectual disabilities. The video-game designs do not adapt to the many challenges that are present for this group. In this project we developed hardware and software modules to record the amount of physical activity on an indoor stationary bicycle and an ergometer bike. An app receives the recorded activity data and uses it to display entertainment for the user, which makes the app an exergame. The design and development process uses knowledge about individuals with intellectual disabilities to customize the system for this group. Information about individuals with intellectual disability has been gathered through literature searches, conferring with experts, talking with parents of children with intellectual disability, and staff working at institutions providing services for individuals with intellectual disabilities. The system is tested at an institution where several individuals with an intellectual disability could try it out. Feedback from testing indicates that the users with an intellectual disability enjoyed using the system, and it was a useful tool for the staff to promote physical activity for the users at the institution. Testing also gave valuable information on what should be included in the further development of the system to improve it. This project has shown that with close user interaction during the development, it is possible to create promising technical solutions for individuals with intellectual disability. The results of this project provide valuable information on beneficial technological interventions for individuals with intellectual disabilities to promote regular physical activity

Towards Measuring Learning Effectiveness considering Presence, Engagement and Immersion in a Mixed and Augmented Reality Learning Environment

The current era of advanced display technologies, such as a head mounted displays, smart glasses and handheld devices, have supported the usage of mixed-reality and augmented reality concepts in smart educational classrooms. These advanced technologies have enabled enhanced collaboration and an interactive communication between distance learners and local learners. Being present' is a key factor in both worlds (real and virtual) as it plays an important role in increasing the students' collaborative engagement during the learning activity. However, few studies have considered how much using such immersive interfaces with various learning scenarios may ultimately affect learning outcomes, and whether students feel fully engaged or not in such environments. This work-in-progress paper will demonstrate a MiRTLE+ prototype of how remote students can collaborate within mixed-reality environments by using an augmented reality approach. Secondly, it will explore the learning effectiveness based on the following factors: students' presence, engagement, and immersion in smart environments. With regard to the learning task, we will consider a card game task to measure the learners' progress as they progress from novice to expert player. To evaluate these factors, we utilise several existing frameworks which have been applied to our mixed-reality worlds that help us to examine the learning outcomes from using these environments

Using trust to detect denial of service attacks in the internet of things over MANETs

The rapid growth of employing devices as tools in daily life and the technological revolution have led to the invention of a novel paradigm; the Internet of Things (IoT). It includes a group of ubiquitous devices that communicate and share data with each other. These devices use the Internet Protocol (IP) to manage network nodes through mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). IoT is beneficial to MANET as the nodes are self-organising and the information reach can be expanded according to the network range. Due to the nature of MANET, such as dynamic topology, a number of challenges are inherent, such as Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. DoS attacks prohibit legitimate users from accessing their authorised services. In addition, because of the high mobility of MANET, the network can merge with other networks. In this situation, two or more networks of untrusted nodes may join one another leaving each of the networks open to attack. This paper proposes a novel method to detect DoS attacks immediately prior to the merger of two MANETs. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach, a Grayhole attack is used in this study to evaluate the performance of the proposed method in detecting attacks