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Ubiquitous and mobile computing for educational communities: enriching and enlarging community spaces Amsterdam, 19 September 2003 in conjunction with Communities and Technologies Objectives and MotivationsThis workshop aims at studying the possibility of supporting educational communities by enlarging and enriching their spaces with mobile and ubiquitous computing. In this perspective, we intend to focus on intersections and relationships between the research in the educational field and the one in the field of ubiquitous and mobile computing. Contributions from both fields are equally welcome. Most of the tools for supporting learning in schools and universities have largely neglected the notion of community. In many systems the focus is on the individual learner or on the classroom as main social structure. Each class is seen as a monad, often neglecting relations with other classes or with the cultural communities where the students are rooted. Many systems have lately shifted their focus from supporting individual learners or the relations between teacher and students to group work. This does not solve all the problems when it comes to supporting the creation of a community of learners, where each learner can contribute and build on other people’s experience, combining different perspectives across classes, directions of studies, and cultures. Most of the existing systems fail to acknowledge that knowledge is not an asset of the individuals or the groups, but rather of the community as a whole. This workshop is based on the assumption that we need to design systems that are addressing directly the needs of educational communities, which are fluid and emergent, which evolve possibly over long periods of time, which allow multiple membership with a continuous exchange of experiences and perspectives. We believe that mobile and ubiquitous computing can play a key role in supporting educational communities by enlarging and enriching community spaces. Ubiquitous computing can be used, for example, to enrich the spaces in which the educational community lives with traces of other community members, of the community past and envisioned future. Mobile technology can support new forms of distributed participation, including contemporary participation to different communities and consequently cross-fertilization among communities. However, till now little work has been done to take into account the learners’ needs of mobile and of ubiquitous access to other learners. This workshop intend to work to bridge this gap since, we believe, to allow a continuous exchange of experiences and to stimulate an active participation of learners in their community, the anywhere anytime paradigm of ubiquitous and mobile computing become a necessary prerequisite of the envisioned supporting tools. The above presented challenges have become more urgent now because of various factors, including more need for life long education, the high dynamicity and interdisciplinary nature of a growing number of fields, the increased mobility of people both on the short and long term. This workshop aims at bringing together people interested in investigating the above issues, from the analysis of the needs of different communities (K-12 schools, life long education …) up to actual experiences with the adoption of these technologies. The workshop would also like to foster the encounter between ubicomp/mobile technicians and researchers, e-learning experts, educational professionals and researchers. In this perspective, we welcome any experience in relevant areas that can positively contribute to the general discussion. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:
OrganizationThe workshop is intended to bring together, for a whole day, a maximum of 15 participants. The participants will be selected on the basis of a submitted position paper of maximum 3-4 pages. The selection will be done so to assure the presence of different perspectives and to foster discussion. The position papers should discuss the relevance of the authors’ background to the workshop and motivate their interest in participating. SubmissionPosition papers should be sent to email address: umocec and then add idi.ntnu.no
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