SUNDAY, 13TH MAY 2007
TORONTO MARRIOTT DOWNTOWN EATON CENTRE
TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA
Hokyoung Ryu Massey
University (New Zealand)
Marcelo
Milrad Vaxjo University (Sweden)
Hiroaki Ogata, Tokushima University
(Japan)
ISBN 978-0-473-12125-9
All the position papers available here are copyrighted to each author(s). Please be in contact with each author(s) for the reprint permission.
We believe that one of the key human activities is learning, an activity that has begun to make its way out of the traditional classroom and, over recent years, find a home on the computer in the form of e-learning. Now, with the background of an evolving mobile infrastructure, learning is increasingly becoming more pervasive. Our workshop proposed here is intended to discuss the latest learning environments beyond the desktop learning environment, an area of research that is increasingly seeing new developments and techniques in this ¡®Pervasive' conference.
For instance, the rapidly increasing use of mobile devices for activities that go far beyond simply making phone calls is beginning to dramatically affect people's learning experiences. This underlying perpetual connectivity not only allows more flexibility in delivery of learning contents, but also extends the potential of lifetime learning environment. Desktop computers have many of these attributes but their complexity and expense create a digital divide that can prevent them from meeting the needs of people. Arguably, by comparison, mobile technologies, particularly mobile phones and the imminent smart phone, combine ubiquity, pervasiveness and utility making them a strong candidate for bringing computing support to anyone, any place, any time. Combined with the technological developments and continually increasing the pervasiveness and power of their networks, more and more parts of our life can be tightly threaded to learning activities.
As such, this workshop aims to identify the challenges and requirements enacting the new learning environment, which will be the most critical basis of the future learning application development.
This workshop will explore various aspects of pervasive learning development, where we need to systematically take into account learner's interactions, learning activities and the completely renewed social and cultural environments that the new technological environment can integrate with and that technologies are now capable of delivering.
In order to provide some structure and narrative thread to this workshop, the workshop should be structured into two sessions. Session I focuses on diverse perspectives on pervasive learning design challenges. And, in the following Session II, we will be on the design requirements and implementation of new learning environments. We also address how to further extend this valuable research network in Session III. The tentative programme is as follows:
9:00am - 9:10am Welcome and introduction (Workshop organisers)
9:10am - 10:00am Keynote speech: Agnes Kukulska-Hulme: "Hooked into learning: Designing for the unexpected"
We have entered a period of unprecedented growth in opportunities to take part in spontaneous, connected, pervasive learning. Open educational content, user-generated content, and new technologies for opportunistic social interaction, are putting learners in control of what and how they choose to learn. But no-one can yet predict the outcomes of these new ways of learning, and there have been few serious attempts to take account of what learners themselves value as outcomes. Intriguingly, a NIACE enquiry into non-accredited learning (Turner & Watters, 2001) reported that some of those who participated were ¡°unexpectedly and irrevocably ¡®hooked' into becoming committed learners¡±. Can mobile, ubiquitous, pervasive technologies have this effect on their users?
Profound changes in everyday computer usage have called into question the idea that it is up to educators to be in charge of designing learning, and recent research on learning design (Conole & Fill, 2005; Sims, 2006; Beetham & Sharpe, 2007) is engaging further with this issue . Learners have always deviated from what their instructors expected them to do, but now we must fully acknowledge the likelihood that this will happen. Pervasive computing may soon be capable of supporting learning across a range of contexts and in relation to rapidly changing needs. The challenge is to design learning in such a way that it remains open to unexpected opportunity, motivation and interest, without withdrawing vital support and structure.
The talk will draw on recent research, including work at The Open University: a project with Masters students (Kukulska-Hulme & Pettit, 2006; Pettit & Kukulska-Hulme, 2007) has included a focus on unexpected uses of mobile devices, and a professional development project is currently exploring the extent to which participants engage in self-initiated mobile learning activity, as individuals and as members of a group.
Session 1: Pervasive learning: Design Challenges
10:00am - 10:30am Lampe et al.
"Integrating Interactive Learning Experiences into Augmented Toy Environments" (Full paper)
The Augmented Knight¡¯s Castle is a pervasive computing playset which enriches the children¡¯s pretend play by using background music, sound effects and verbal commentary of toys that react to the childrens¡¯s play. We argue that such an augmented playset offers ideal possibilities of seamlessly integrating interactive learning experiences: toy figures such as the king, a knight or a farmer teach children about the life in the Middle Ages from their perspective and depending on the context of play. In addition to these interactive stories, a variety of other learning scenarios can be integrated (e.g., children learn songs or poems from the troubadour by simply pointing at the figure with a magic wand). Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is used to automatically and unobtrusively identify the toys in the playset. Mobile devices equipped with RFID readers are introduced into the playset to provoke further interaction and to enhance the play.
10:30am - 11:00am Coffee/Tea break
11:00am - 11:30am Siobhan
"Pervasive Scale: A model of pervasive, ubiquitous, and ambient learning" (Full paper)
Pervasive - or ubiquitous or ambient - learning relies on the concept of ¡°always on¡± education. While the concept of learning anywhere at anytime offers tremendous possibilities for learning innovation, when faced with the practical task of leveraging this potential it can be difficult to chart a way forward. This paper presents a clear framework that can be used for the design, development and evaluation of pervasive learning scenarios. First, it presents a working model of pervasive learning. Then it outlines 13 principles of effective pervasive learning.
11:30am - 12:00pm Milrad et al.
"Exploring How Pervasive Computing Can Support Situated Learning" (Full paper)
Pervasive computing offers new ranges of possibilities when it comes to supporting learning and collaboration. The design of educational activities in these environments is a challenging task that raises the question of how pervasive computing can be used to support new modes of collaborative learning. In this paper we discuss those aspects related to the design of situated learning activities supported by pervasive computing and the collaboration modes that may emerge as a result of these activities. Additionally, we discuss how activity theory can be used as a framework for designing such educational activities. We present the results of a trial we conducted while introducing pervasive computing in an elementary school activity. In conclusion we open the discussion about the relation between the design of innovative learning activities supported by pervasive computing and new collaboration possibilities that may arise in these environments.
12:00pm - 1:00pm Lunch
Session 2: Pervasive learning: Design Requirements
1:00pm -1:30pm Ryu
"Is Mobile Learning a Necessary Evil?: The goodness-of-fir of mobile learning situations" (Full paper)
Many mobile learning (m-learning) systems have been promising that they would supersede current classroom or computer-based learning activities. This paper takes an exception to that approach, arguing that the formality of future learning experiences that m-learning can present may not ensure this vision as they stand. Instead, we see other goodness-of-fit of mobile learning as complemental learning experiences only in situated and social dimension. This paper thus suggests a practical direction of future m-learning rather than taking an approach of a solely independent learning environment.
1:30pm -2:00pm Ogata et al.
"LORAMS: Capturing sharing and reusing experiences by linking physical objects and videos" (Full paper)
This paper proposes a personal learning assistant called LORAMS (Link of RFID and Movies System), which supports the learners with a system to share and reuse learning experience by linking movies and environmental objects. These movies are not only kind of classes¡¯ experiments but also daily experiences movies. Therefore, you can share these movies with other people. LORAMS can infer some contexts from objects around the learner, and search for shared movies that match with the contexts. We think that these movies are very useful to learn various kinds of subjects. Then we did evaluation experiments. The target of some experimenters is to recode movies and link objects while the target of other experimenters is to learn using LORAMS and to try doing a task. We could get a result that the performance of doing a task using LORAMS is better than doing a task without its assistant.
2:00pm -2:30pm Derycke et al.
"P-learning and e-Retail: A case study and a flexible software architecture" (Full paper)
This paper is focused on a new mode called pervasive learning which relies on the potential of new IT infrastructures able to provide dynamic adaptations of information contents and services according to various contexts. Using our previous experiences in the design and implementation of multi-channel accesses to services (mobile-commerce or e-learning) we have designed a new infrastructure, based on a Multi-Agent Systems, which satisfies our requirements for future p-learning systems. Its potential is illustrated through a dedicated scenario of uses drawn from needs founded in the field of learning on demand, in the framework of a shop. The dedicated system, called a Personal Training Assistant (PTA) is supported, in interaction with a SmartSpace, through our infrastructure. This is achieved by the development of mechanisms for the fission and fusion of information flows, in accordance with the new characteristics of the augmented user device.
2:30pm -3:00pm Celorrio et al.
"Adapted Activity Deployment and Configuration in a Pervasive Learning Framework" (Full paper)
An activity configuration and personalization framework based on a multi-agent system for a pervasive learning environment is presented. The technical infrastructure includes several types of devices where different tools and resources have to be deployed and adapted, using user's activity and community context, not only to particular planned situations but also to spontaneous ones, reacting opportunistically to events warranting attention.
3:00pm - 3:30pm Coffee/Tea break
Session 3: Discussion
3:30pm - 4:30pm Wrap-up and Discussion
Two publicity issues mainly serve this session, in order to extend the workshop outcomes into either a book or a special issue of a journal.
6:30pm Optional dinner
This workshop is open to the public. Prospective participants who wants to join at the workshop have to register for it on the corresponding conference webpage. The worskhop fee is 125CAD (with conference registration) or 165CAD (workshop registration only).
All other enquiries should be made to Dr. Hokyoung Ryu, Dr. Marcelo Milrad, or Dr. Hiroaki Ogata at your convenience
Dr. Hokyoung Ryu
Centre for Mobile Computing
Massey University, Auckland, New
Zealand
Phone: +64 (0)9 4140800 ext. 9140
E-mail: h.ryu@massey.ac.nz
Dr. Marcelo Milrad
Center for Learning and Knowledge Technologies
Vaxjo
University, Vaxjo, Sweden
Phone: +46 (0)733969574
E-mail:
marcelo.milrad@msi.vxu.se
Dr. Hiroaki Ogata
Department of Information Science and Intelligent
Systems
University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan
Phone: +81 88 656
7498
E-mail: ogata@is.tokushima-u.ac.jp