Achievements by the escapist

Posted on April 20, 2011 by marcuspecht

Games and Learning from escapist

Posted on April 20, 2011 by marcuspecht

PhD Voice Interactive Classroom

Posted on February 22, 2011 by marcuspecht

Victor Manuel Alvarez Garcia (http://www.di.uniovi.es/~victoralvarez/) had his successful PhD defence for his thesis on “Voice Interactive Classroom, a service-oriented architecture to enable cross-platform multiple-channel access to Internet-based learning” and I am his co-supervisor so therefore I have been in Oviedo/Asturias.

Victor worked on audio and voice-enabled interfaces for learning management systems and web-services. In his thesis he combined his very interesting background from systems engineering, audio-based interaction, adaptive educational systems, service oriented architectures and other fields. In his thesis he gives an overview of the developments in Learning Management Systems towards Learning Service frameworks including such developments as IMS Abstract Framework, Open Knowledge Initiative, and the ELF or e-learning framework. he furthermore analyses and evaluates several technologies for voice-enabled applications as SALT and VoiceXML.

BTW did you know that the Russian Scientist Christian Kratzenstein succeeded in 1773 in producing vowel sounds using resonance tubes connected to organ pipes. 😉

In his case studies Victor has produced voice-enabled feed readers for personal learning or a phone-voice interface to Moodle for example being used to request your latest grades or feedback. He concludes his thesis with the introduction of the voice interactive classroom supporting a voice and visual interface to OKI enabled platforms as Moodle, Sakai, or Segue. Beside this the work holds a lots of practical experiences, tips, and insights about the usefulness, appropriateness, and pitfalls when using these technologies for building voice-enabled web-systems.

So congratulations Dr. Victor Manuel Alvarez Garcia !

Reference for downloading the thesis papers:

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1837761

Source Code on Sourceforge:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/victhesis/

Mobile Learning Day 2010 in Hagen

Posted on November 4, 2010 by marcuspecht

Today I am talking at the mobile learning day 2010 in Hagen. Still I think this is one of the most interesting events for mobile learning in Germany. Very interesting presentation of Dr. Matthias Kose of mobilinga about some stats and strategies how to make an app sucessful and what can be different app store strategies. My presentation that I did in in the morning with prezi.com is embedded below. BTW search prezi.com for mobile learning presentation there are really nice presentations.

Making Moodle ready for the Real world

Posted on November 1, 2010 by marcuspecht

Last week Christian Glahn presented a paper about the guts of a Moodle toolkit for connecting the VLE to multi device spaces at the MLearn conference in Malta. The paper has the title ’embedding moodle into ubiquitous computing environments’ and is available on dspace.

The paper describes the underlying concepts and the architecture that has been used for the first prototype in the CELSTEC laboratory. Below you can flip through the slides of the presentation.

Embedding Moodle into Ubiquitous Computing Environments

View more presentations from Christian Glahn.

CELSTEC co-organizer of Mobile Learning Day 2010

Posted on October 27, 2010 by marcuspecht

CELSTEC is co-organizer of the Mobile Learning Day 2010 at FernuniversitÃ¤t Hagen (http://mlearning.fernuni-hagen.de/mld-programm/).

I will give there an opening keynote and an overview of mobile learning research projects and application fields for mobile learning. The program will highlight research and business projects in the area of Mobile Learning and feature Workshops on Educational Aspects, Implementation of Mobile Apps on iPhone and iPad, as also Android applications. Registration is free and still open at http://mlearning.fernuni-hagen.de/mld-anmeldung/ .

Best educational iPhone app

Posted on October 14, 2010 by marcuspecht

This is the most promising app for education that I have seen so far in the app store: WikiServer. The interface is crap and not well-suited for a tiny screen, but the idea is great.

WikiServer does what it says on the tin, it installs a wiki server – on your iPhone. Other people on the same WiFi network can easily connect to the same wiki and co-edit pages. This is really cool, and I can imagine lots of different (campus-based) group work activities, that would instantly enhance teaching and learning. Imagine, for example, students in a lab working on some project (at different tables), sharing their findings via such a wiki. You can also connect from a normal PC browser, so it’s also platform independent. How wonderful is that!

Shame that the interface is not geared up for a small mobile screen and big fingers, so the in-line editor is really unusable, and when the keyboard is up, you can see even less of it. These are things that should be fixed, but I guess on an iPad it already works much better.

Dagstuhl Session on Emerging Learning Landscapes

Posted on September 28, 2010 by marcuspecht

Begin of September I have organized a Dagstuhl Session on Emerging Learning Landscapes together with Marcelo Milrad and Ulrich Hoppe. We have been really lucky to have an outstanding list of international researchers from the fields of HCI, Learning Sciences, Technology Enhanced Learning, CSCL and others.

I have learned a lot from the discussions in this week and really enjoyed the intense discussions and atmosphere in Dagstuhl. Topics discussed have been new HCI approaches in learning support, mobile and ubiquitous learning support in a variety of facets, strategic issues on acceptance, establishment, innovation management, as also technical aspects of ubiquitous systems integration for learning support.

We will work towards a Manifesto in this research area out of this initial group that has met in Dagstuhl, so more news to come.

Thanks again for sharing all your experiences and expertise !