Mobile Platform for Classrooms

A mobile device, software and curriculum for teaching.

Description

A mobile device based curriculum that will facilitate the teaching process and enrich the classroom environment. 

An example class: Photography

Each student has this mobile device that will be used to take and submit pictures during class, receive the professor’s assignments, comments, and grades as well as share the pictures and comments amongst each other. 

The professor would have the “master” device that is capable of creating the assignments, sending them out, receive the pictures from the students, reply with voice recorded comments, and grade each student. This could potentially be done on a PC/Mac for convenience. 

The devices will communicate via a wireless peer to peer network ideally.

Process:

Students get their assignment on the device.

Students go out and take pictures. 

Each picture is automatically sent back to the teacher’s device. 

The pictures are tagged with ambient sound, music being played on iPod, and GPS location.

The teacher replies to the student with his voice recorded comments. 

Student takes more pictures or goes to the next assignment.

At the end of the class the teacher will give out each student’s grade based on their work.

The students can share the pictures and comments received between them after class.

Possibly develop into a platform with applications that facilitate and enrich the educational process in developing nations or in classrooms with no PCs or multimedia presentation tools.

Keywords

teaching, mobile, application, software, network,

External Project Link

http://lucaslongo.blogspot.com/search/label/thesis

Personal Statement

I have worked for a long time with mobile applications and believe that they still have not been explored to the maximum of its potential as a tool to facilitate new forms of interaction.

Background

Audience

Teachers and students in classrooms with no computers or any multimedia aid. 

Teachers can use it to present multimedia content in class, assign, collect and grade assignments, give tests and quizzes.

Students can do research, homework, exchange notes, plan study groups and have fun with the device.

User Scenario

Example classes:

– photography course

– math course

Implementation

Master/slave Network

– The teacher’s phone controls all of the student’s phone when they are in the classroom.

– Students can also create networks with friends

– Auto sync features.

Homework tool

– create content, due date, distribute to students, auto collect on due date, grade – send grades

Test tool 

– create test, distribute to students, auto-grade

Notes tool

– annotated during class, record audio/video, share notes, wiki

Study tool

– access quizzes, more reading material, class notes by teacher, student notes wiki, plan study groups, take fake tests with friends to see who gets it better. 

Search and download classes

– A repository of classes you can search and download

An open source platform for creating lessons, presentations and apps.

Conclusion

References

How People Learn – Donovan Bransford Pellgrino

Wireless Generation

OLPC – Squeakland.org

Bob Tinker – Concord Consortium

Terc

Exploratorium (C.I.L.T)

Low Residency Programs