http://www.celekt.info News from the Center of LEarning and Knowledge Technologies in Växjö University celekt@celekt.info http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/87 Together with AV-Media Kronoberg and the Gapminder foundation, CeLeKT has been granted a new project by The Swedish Internet Infrastructure Foundation. We want to provide teachers and students with web interactive tools and approaches to enhance the understanding of difficult social and economics phenomena using web visualizations related to very large statistical data. <i>Interactive Web Visualizations for Better Understanding </i> is the name of our project. We expect to develop several learning modules in order to explore new ways to use resources on the web. These modules will be implemented in close collaboration with stakeholders active in the educational sector in the Kronoberg region. The project will start in September 2010 and will end in 2011. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/86 During a period of 3 weeks in April, 54 students from Kronoberg skolan in Vaxjo have been actively involved in the LETS GO trials investigating different aspects of water quality. Activities consisted of mobile open inquiry-based tasks including; problem solving, exploration, field data collection, visualization and discussion in the classroom. The video clip below gives a good description of some of these activities and the tools the students used during these pilots. <br> <object width="400" height="225"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11739878&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" /><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11739878&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="225"></embed></object><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/11739878">Let's Go Water Quality trial</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1854399">CeLeKT</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> </br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/85 Bahtijar Vogel, PhD student at CeLeKT, has presented a long paper at the 6th IEEE International Conference WMUTE 2010 that took place on April 12th-16th in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Bato´s contribution (see reference below) has won the best PhD student paper award. Congratulations to Bato for this excellent achievement! Vogel, B., Spikol, D., Kurti, A, & Milrad, M. (2010). Integrating Mobile, Web and Sensory Technologies to Support Inquiry-Based Science Learning. Proceedings of the <i>6th IEEE International Conference on Wireless, Mobile and Ubiquitous Technologies in Education </i> WMUTE 2010 held in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, April 12-16th, 2010. <br> !http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4046/4525728797_1a895453e5_m.jpg! </br> We at CeLeKT are very proud for getting for the 3rd time in less than one year the "best paper award" at an international conference. In July last year, PhD student Martin Svensson got the best paper award at the 9th IEEE ICALT 2009 Conference and Anna Wingkvist received the best PhD student paper award at mLearn 2009 that took place in Orlando, USA in October last year. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/84 Gil, Pettersson, Svensson, Vogel, and Spikol are presenting five papers at the 6th IEEE International Conference on Wireless, Mobile and Ubiquitous Technologies in Education (WMUTE) in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The team has two long papers and three short papers in the conference. The conference gives the chance for the team to share the research results from the Lets Go! and GeM project on an international level. Additionally, we are meeting up with colleagues from Lets GO! and discussing new research opportunities on a global scale. Keynote presentations from Sherry Tsi, Pierre Dillenborg, Gwo-Jen Hwang, and other renowned researchers. Additionally, the participation at WMUTE 2010 gives the team good insights about different research efforts happening around the globe. <br> !http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2698/4517562483_46d301b249_m.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/83 Professor Milrad is now visiting the University of Tokuhsima (Tok-U) in Japan as part of a fellowship award he recieved from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) to conduct research in Japan. Professor Milrad is working together with Professors Yoneo Yano and Hiroaki Ogata at the Dept. of Information Science and Intelligent Systems, Faculty of Engineering at Tok-U. One of the purposes of this visit is to strength the existing relations between CeLeKT and Professor Ogata´s research group, as well as to explore new venues of research collaboration between these two groups in the field of Technology-Enhanced Learning. <br> !http://w3.msi.vxu.se/~mmilrad/Lecture.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/82 On March 10 together with Medioteket, Stockholm, Lennart Axelsson, Katrin Lindwall, and Daniel Spikol together with Åke Sjöberg from AVMedia Kronoberg organized a day long seminar about the future of mobile learning and games for school. Spikol provided an overview of CeLeKT's recent research effortsand hands on demos of mLearn2go and the Lets Go project. Fifty people from the different national organizations that provide educational material and AV equipment to the schools systems participated. In addition Karl-Petter Åkesson from SICS / Interactive Institute presented the Creator project from Mobile-Life. Plus special guests from TeliaSonera and KK-Foundation joined in for the day. !http://www.23hq.com/4937337/5434457_a402317079d52ef8e08feeb8364d705a_large.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/81 Wednesday 24 February 2010, 11:00am - 12:30pm Spikol presents: A Design Toolkit for Emerging Learning Landscapes Supported by Ubiquitous Computing in Large Seminar Room at the London Knowledge Lab. Sign up if you are nearby London and for more info "see":http://bit.ly/aUmo0m http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/80 <i>Three perspectives on technology support in inquiry learning: Personal inquiry, mobile collaboratories and emerging learning objects </i> is the name of the workshop proposal accepted for The International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2010 that will take place in Chicago later this summer. The objective of the workshop is to discuss which kind of designs can be implemented to support inquiry learning using modeling tools, mobile devices and inquiry management tools that have been developed by the workshop organizers. The organizing team of this workshop brings together expertise related to the topics above from; Stanford University in the USA, the University of Nottingham in England, the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, the University of Twente in Holland and Linnaeus University in Sweden. More detailed information about the workshop can be found at the URL below: <br> <br> <a href="http://www.isls.org/icls2010/conf_preconf.html#workshop2" target="_blank">http://www.isls.org/icls2010/conf_preconf.html#workshop2</a> </br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/79 Science Centers (SC) offer challenging exhibits that enable their visitors to experience hands-on science by actively manipulating the experiments, thus delivering natural ways of active playful learning. Advanced visualization technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) are often used to enrich the experience by displaying computer generated objects that can help to illustrate hidden phenomena. The Science Center to GO (SCeTGo) project brings together experts in science education, computer science and pedagogical evaluators in order to explore novel ways to use mobile AR to support science education. The consortium consists of partners from Germany, Finland, Greece, United Kingdom, Sweden and Romania. This two years project (with start in January 2010) is supported by the EU Life Long Learning program. The overall objectives of the SCeTGo are: a) develop a series of portable exhibits that will illustrate various physical phenomena enabling learners to visualize the invisible through mobile AR technology b) develop a pedagogical framework that attempts to blend informal and formal learning and to situate learning in real- world contexts c) develop advanced pedagogical scenarios that are shaped around a mission guided by a general scientific question d) to pilot, validate and demonstrate the SCeTGo approach in formal & informal educational environments e) facilitate lifelong learning and to improve quality of learning The SCeTGo approach aims at bringing comprehensive and meaningful learning experiences out of the SC into a school’s classroom and/or everyone’s home by. Its portable exhibits - by “fitting into a pocket” and operating with ordinary hardware – will enable learners to experiment whenever and wherever they please. By doing so, the consortium will make full use of the powerful capabilities offered by tailor-made exhibits combined with mobile AR. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/78 As a part of our ongoing efforts in facilitating teaching and learning in mathematics, another activity has been conducted under the name of Mulle. This new initiative is carried out in collaboration with research colleagues from <a href="http://dsv.su.se/forskning/k2/">K2 Stockholm University </a> who also where the hosts of this joint effort. The students participating in this project came from “Rösjöskolan”, a local middle-school in Stockholm. <br /> The activity shared some common features and the technological platform used in previous efforts in the Geometry Mobile (GeM) project. However, there are some modifications that allow students to perform new measurements and calculations in the field. The students were encouraged to utilize both real world tools and digital mobile tools like GPS and a set of applications developed by CeLeKT to solve the different problems presented to them. The flow of the activity was also constructed to further involve all the participating students in the activity by further delegating responsibilities and sharing tasks between the members of the groups working in the field. The image below illustrates some of the activities carried out by children. <img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2792/4136438153_3008d8ae1f_o.jpg"> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/77 Daniel Spikol has a new publication that has been published in a book called "Researching Mobile Learning Frameworks: Tools and Research Designs". Spikol´s book chapter "Exploring Novel Learning Practices through Co-Designing Mobile Games" describes methodological and design aspects of mobile games to support learning in informal and formal settings. The book has been edited by scholars from the UK and published by the Peter Lang Publishing group. More information about the book can be found at the URL below: <br> <a href="http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?vID=11832&vLang=E&vHR=1&vUR=2&vUUR=1" target="_blank">http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?vID=11832&vLang=E&vHR=1&vUR=2&vUUR=1</a> </br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/76 Anna Wingkvist presented a long paper at mLearn 2009 that took place in the last week of October. Anna´s contribution (see reference below) has won the best PhD student paper award. Wingkvist, A., & Ericsson, M. (2009). Current Research Practices in Mobile Learning: A Survey. <i>Proceedings of the 8th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning (mLearn 2009)</i> held on October 26-30, 2009 in Orlando, USA. Moreover, this paper has been invited for publication at the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning (JCAL). Congratulations to Anna for this excellent achievement. !http://w3.msi.vxu.se/~mmilrad/CeLeKT/Anna_09.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/75 The Learning Ecosystems and Activities of the Future (LEAF) application has been granted 3 years funding from Nordforsk, as part of their Researcher Networks 2009 program. LEAF is a research initiative that brings together eight research groups from four Nordic countries(Sweden Finland, Norway and Denmark). These different groups encompass an area of scientific research related to the interdisciplinary field of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) with special emphasis on two disciplines, namely Learning Sciences and Human Computer Interaction. <br>The overall aims of the LEAF initiative are to establish a solid scientific ground in order to consolidate research and training efforts in the field of TEL through the creation of a Nordic research network of senior scientists, young researchers and PhD students. The objective of LEAF is thus to develop and implement a common Nordic strategy for supporting new initiatives that can promote synergy in research, research training and development in the field of TEL across the Nordic countries. The LEAF initiative also aims at reinforcing Nordic research in the field of TEL in relation to the research objectives expressed by the European community in this specific domain area. NordForsk is a Nordic research board with responsibility for cooperation on research and researcher training in the Nordic region.</br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/74 Professor Milrad has been awarded a fellowship under the "FY2009 JSPS Invitation Fellowship Program for Research in Japan" to conduct research in Japan during the spring 2010 with Professors Yoneo Yano and Hiroaki Ogata from the University of Tokushima. Marcelo Milrad was earlier in the Spring nominated by Vinnova (The Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems) as one of the Swedish candidates for receiving this fellowship. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/73 On July 22 together with "Mapping Växjö":http://www.mappingvaxjo.se we created a mobile orienteering skattjakt with a qualification round in the forest and the final competition in the center of Eksjö. Over 75 youth participated in 23 teams and 8 teams made it to the final. Together with the Mapping people and VXU we exhibited at the conference hall and received strong interest in the "mLearn2go":http://blog.mlearn2go.com platform. !http://www.celekt.nu/galleries/news/oringen2009sm.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/72 In mid July, Martin Svensson and Daniel Spikol presented three articles in the 2009 edition of the International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT). We are very happy to announce that one of these articles (see below) received the best full paper award, pointing out that we are in the right direction when it comes to innovative and relevant research in the field of technology enhanced learning. Svensson, M., Pettersson, O., Persson. M. (2009). Pinetree: A Learning Content Repository based on Semantic Web Technologies. Proceedings of the 9th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2009) held on July 15-17, 2009 in Riga, Latvia. !http://www.celekt.nu/galleries/news/svensson_bpaper_collage.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/71 On June 12th, doctoral candidate Arianit Kurti (left) successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis "Exploring the multiple dimensions of context: Implications for the design and development of innovative technology-enhanced learning environments". The opponent was Mikael Wiberg, Associate Professor of Informatics at Umeå University. The evaluation committee consisted of Professors Robert Ramberg (right) from Stockholm University, Jari Multislta, from Tampere University of Technology, Finland and Andreas Kerren from Växjö University. The positive decision from the evaluation committee was unanimous. Dr Kurti will continue his research with CeLeKT as a senior lecturer starting on July1st. !http://www.celekt.nu/galleries/news/kurti_phd.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/70 In the LET´s GO project, Stanford and Vaxjo university faculty in learning sciences and computer science are developing and implementing a new paradigm for fostering high school student learning in teams for environmental science. We are integrating geo-location sensing, multimedia communication, information visualization and Web 2.0 mashup technologies, to create science learning collaboratories using interdisciplinary co-design methodologies with teachers, learners, teachers-to-be, technology developers, domain experts, and learning scientists. Last week, two classes from two local schools in the Vaxjo region have been actively involved in the first pilots. Activities consisted of mobile open inquiry-based tasks including; problem solving, exploration, field data collection, visualization and discussion in the classroom. The video clip below, shown at the Swedish National Teleivision (SVT) last week, gives a good description of some of these activities and the tools the students used in these pilots. <br> <object width="416" height="258"><param name="movie" value="http://svt.se/embededflash/1575906/play.swf"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://svt.se/embededflash/1575906/play.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="416" height="258"></embed></object> </br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/69 Learning geometry presents interesting opportunities for integrating traditional manipulatives and new ones that bring together mobile, web, and 3D tools. In the GeM project, we want to promote and enhance collaboration by enabling learners to engage in mathematical activities across diverse settings. Our goal is to design and implement meaningful learning tasks supported by mobile and ubiquitous technologies that allow students collaborative explore, learn and visualize math. The learning objectives include the exploration of concepts such as height, perimeter, area, and volume in order to design a new building for the university. <br> Last week, young students (ages 11-14) from two local schools participated in the first GeM trials. Students used mobile devices to measure and calculate different parameters utilizing GPS. Rich mobile content was used to support learners in addition to utilizing the camera in the phone to take photographs that are used in the indoor activity. Once the students have determined the volume of the planned building in the outdoors setting, they returned to the classroom and their data is imported into a 3D design tool. The students then designed a building using this 3D tool and used the photographs they took as textures. Using additional software, they can visualize their building on a map using an augmented reality tool, a webcam, the computer screen and special 2D barcodes. New trials with more classes will be conducted later in the fall. The video below illustrates the fundamental concepts and ideas behind this project: </br> <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2mrXyU48-no&hl=sv&fs=1"> </param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2mrXyU48-no&hl=sv&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/68 Following the long Swedish academic tradition, Arianit Kurti nailed his PhD thesis today up at the university library after a short speech given by the dean of our school, Dr Hans Frisk. The title of Kurti´s dissertation is “Exploring the multiple dimensions of context: Implications for the design and development of innovative technology-enhanced learning environments”. He will defend his thesis on June 12th at 13.15 hours in lecture hall Weber, located at Vaxjo University campus. !http://www.celekt.nu/images/ak_hammer.jpg!s http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/67 CeLeKT is part of a new research project called "OpenScienceResources (OSR): Towards the development of a Shared Digital Repository for Formal and Informal Science Education". The European Commission has granted 3 years financial support for this effort as part of the eContentplus program. The OSR project will start on June 1st and will last 3 years. A brief summary of the project can be found below: In an era in which science education inadequacy in formal and informal contexts is becoming a challenging issue, harvesting the potential of digital science education repositories appears to be an attractive option. However, an impressive abundance of high quality digital content already available in European repositories remains largely unexploited due to a number of barriers such as: lack of interoperability between repositories, inefficiency of current content organization and metadata structures as well as multi-lingual issues. The OpenScienceResources project suggests a coordinated solution at European level in order to overcome the aforementioned barriers. In order to implement this vision, OSR brings together a balanced mix of high quality science museums and centres,pedagogues, learning technologists, metadata experts, user groups & standardization bodies. The envisaged approach consists of the following steps: a) study the state of the art in metadata ontological approaches coupling them with modern social tagging and folksonomies, b)design a set of experiments in order to try out the different theoretical approaches that will be developed and implement them in the OSR Portal, c) extensively validate the proposed approaches in real-life usage contexts employing the user groups represented in the consortium, d) document the whole process, spread the results, cluster with similar initiatives & stakeholders and, through the significant networking capacity of the OSR consortium, work towards the establishment of a pan-European digital educational content reference. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/66 Professor Jari Multisilta from Tampere University of Technology in Finland and Professor Marcelo Milrad from CeLeKT are the organizers of the international workshop on <i>Sharing Experiences with Social Mobile Media </i> that will take place in Bonn, Germany in conjunction with the 11th International MobileHCI 09 next September. The aim of the workshop is to offer an interdisciplinary discussion forum for both practitioners and academics interested in conceptualizing, designing and evaluating mobile social media concepts and applications. The workshop, through a series of interactive presentations, will facilitate discussions aiming at identify and summarize main theoretical and interaction design concerns related to the increasing use of mobile social media in a variety of settings. Click on the link below for more information about the Call for Papers for this workshop: <br> <a href="http://www.tut.fi/index.cfm?MainSel=4770&Sel=21194&Show=34332&Siteid=88" target="_blank">http://www.tut.fi/index.cfm?MainSel=4770&Sel=21194&Show=34332&Siteid=88</a> </br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/65 Prof. Dr. Ulrich Hoppe from University of Duisburg-Essen has visited CeLeKT for the first part of this week to discuss future collaborations. He held a research seminar on Wednesday and discussed current COLLIDE projects. The major theme of his presentation is that meaningful learning needs to be supported by mobile and / or ubiquitous technologies. In addition he stressed the need for orchestrating learning activities beyond fragmented technology enhanced experiences that are common in the sub domain of mLearning research and practice. !http://www.23hq.com/23666/3978127_45a3ea9fc0d5d8cc4968e71dbdb4700c_mblog.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/64 Several researchers representing seven universities from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden met in Oulu, Finland on February 11th-12th as part of the kick-off meeting of the LEAF initiative. The aim of the “Learning Ecosystems and Activities of the Future” (LEAF) initiative is to develop and implement a common Nordic strategy for supporting new funding possibilities to promote synergy in research and development in the field of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) across the Nordic countries. The expected outcome of these efforts will result in practical initiatives to support a wide range of TEL related activities of high international quality. The LEAF network include research teams from the fields of Learning Sciences and Human Computer Interaction coming from the University of Aarhus in Denmark, Oulu University and Tampere University of Technology in Finland, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and University of Bergen in Norway and Stockholm and Vaxjo Universities in Sweden. The LEAF initiative is partially funded by Nordforsk, the Nordic Research Advisory Board on Nordic Research Policy. <br> !http://w3.msi.vxu.se/~mmilrad/LEAF/LEAFteam.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/63 On Saturday, February 7th 2009, Marcelo Milrad has been formally installed as Full Professor of Media Technology at Vaxjo University. Together with another 9 new appointed professors, Professor Milrad took part of the official celebration ceremony headed by the University´s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Johan Sterte. More than 700 people attended this event that was held at Vaxjo City concert hall. <br> !http://w3.msi.vxu.se/~mmilrad/professor_milrad.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/62 On January 13th Anna Wingkvist defended her licentiate thesis entitled "The Quest for Equilibrium: Towards an Understanding of Scalability and Sustainability for Mobile Learning". The opponent was Lars Svensson, Associate Professor in Informatics at University West, Sweden. For further information about the thesis you can contact Anna at: anna.wingkvist@vxu.se. <br> !http://w3.msi.vxu.se/~mmilrad/Thesis/Wingkvist_defense.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/61 On this weeks Vetenskapslandet program, CeLeKT's Skattjakt a mobile game will be profiled in a segment from a trail we conducted last spring with two local schools. The program explores how a co-designed mobile game with students played by a class can be used as a learning activity. The segment includes game action and interviews with students, teachers, and researchers. This activity is part of a joint project with Mapping Växjö that explores the mix of physical activities and different educational domains (science, math, and history). Vetenskapslandet På TV lör 6 dec & kl. 20:30 & ons 10 dec kl. 23:00 Vetenskapsmagasin Vi tittar på mobilen som ett pedagogiskt verktyg, konservering av kungliga kläder och expeditionen som avslöjar molnens hemlighet. Om forskning vid svenska universitet och högskolor. Check out Ung Kommunikation web site for a link to the program "link":http://www.ungkommunikation.se/nyheter/Skattjakt-med-mobilen.aspx !http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3146/3083861637_216b84eea1.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/60 Daniel Spikol and Katrin Lindwall from CeLeKT were invited speakers at the recent meeting of the Digital Academy network in Stockholm on November 18th. The central topic of this meeting was to discuss how "Learning and Gaming" can be integrated in school settings. More than 250 people attended this presentation in which Daniel and Katrin illustrated how CeLeKT is exploring ways to help teachers and students to enhance everyday learning activities by using novel design methods and mobile game applications. The focus on this guest lecture was on the recent results of our projects in order to demonstrate how our approach actively brings teachers and students into the design process of mobile ollaborative learning. Please check the link below for a streaming video of the lecture: <br> <a href="mms://stream01.edu.stockholm.se/externt/nalen_spel_del2_1200k.wmv" target="_blank">mms://stream01.edu.stockholm.se/externt/nalen_spel_del2_1200k.wmv</a> </br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/59 On the 4th of November, Katrin Lindwall and Martin Svensson held a workshop within the COSMOS project for teachers from the local schools here in Växjö; namely Teleborg centrum, Arabyskolan, Bergundaskolan, Fagrabäckskolan and Norregårdskolan. <br> The purpose of the workshop was to evaluate the tools used in COSMOS for retrieving, creating and authoring learning objects and educational scenarios. The participants used laptops to get a hands-on experience with the COSMOS portal, and the process of creating learning objects and educational scenarios was demonstrated. "Read more information about this project":http://www.celekt.info/projects/show/19 !http://w3.msi.vxu.se/~mmilrad/COSMOS/collage.jpg! </br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/58 At 13.15 November 4, Dr. Marcelo Milrad presented his professor speech on <i>Social Mobile Media: Managing Rich Digital Content in the Age of the Mobil Internet</i>. He detailed how current advancements in wireless and sensors technologies combined with the rapid adoption of sophisticated mobile multimedia devices and applications have created new social software tools for people. This allows us to connect and interact changing the ways we communicate and collaborate. Mobile users are now creating and sharing increasing amounts of media content, thus generating large volumes of rich datasets. This latest fact indicates that social mobile media is about to become an integral component of distributed environments and applications of the mobile web. !http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3004/3002025675_abf8fde33c_m.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/57 Over the summer we conducted a large scale market research trial with over 400 participants for an upcoming new rich media mobile service in Sweden. We secured the project from Adobe after an international competition. Winning features of our bid included mobile access to the surveys and experience in evaluation. The research included multiple surveys with qualitative interviews. The project included Salavati, Johansson and was managed by Spikol. For more information about how we can help you organization with research contact us. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/56 On 16th September Daniel Spikol defended his licentiate thesis <i>Playing and Learning Across Locations: Identifying Factors for the Design of Mobile Collaborative Learning</i>. The opponent was Dr Jakob Tholander, Lecturer in Media Technology, in Södertörns högskola.. For further reading of the thesis please see "Playing and Learning Across Locations: Identifying Factors for the Design of Mobile Collaborative Learning":http://www.celekt.info/publications/full_package.pdf <br> !http://w3.msi.vxu.se/~mmilrad/Thesis/Spikol_defense.jpg! <br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/55 This latest exciting project brings together Stanford & Vaxjo University, along with Vaxjo & Redwood City educators & students to develop, implement, research, and sustainably scale a new paradigm for fostering high school student learning in teams for ecological sciences using mobile devices and sensors. The associate partners include Intel who will be donating Classmate PC’s and The National Geographic. Financial support for this project is provided by the <i>Wallenberg Global Learning Network</i>. More information about the project can be found at the URL below: <br> <a href="http://www.wgln.org/projects/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.wgln.org/projects/index.html</a> </br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/54 Marcelo Milrad has been invited to be part of the international advisory board of the International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning (IJMBL). The primary objective of this new journal is to provide comprehensive coverage and understanding of the role of innovative learning theory and practice in an increasingly mobile and pervasive technological environment. Even though many implementations of mobile learning systems have been successful, perhaps the most challenging and innovative research in this field has been in the area of blended learning, where mobility is but one aspect of a richer and more complex learning environment. The mission of IJMBL is to bring together researchers at the forefront of this field, in both technology and pedagogical practice, to assist in the development and dissemination of new approaches to both mobile and blended learning. More information about this journal can be found at the URL below: <br> </br> <br><a href="http://64.225.158.80/journals/details.asp?ID=7884&v=review_board" target="_blank">http://64.225.158.80/journals/details.asp?ID=7884&v=review_board </a> </br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/53 Do you work with young people in the fields of media production or education and do you want to learn the secrets of successful co-participatory work and design? You should then attend the Participatory Academy Workshop to be held in Vaxjo, Sweden on 12-14th of September 2008. A number of CeLeKT`s members will participate as invited speakers and will also lead different activities. More information about this event can be found at: <br> <a href="http://www.pa2008.se/" target="_blank">http://www.pa2008.se/ </a> </br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/52 Daniel Spikol and Marcelo Milrad are invited speakers at Mobile Monday Copenhagen for a special session on Mobile Learning that will take place on May 5th. The Mobile Monday network was founded in Finland in 2000 and has now spread to more than 50 cities worldwide. The concept is that people within the telecom sector, creative firms and researchers meet on the first Monday of the month to discuss new trends, business strategies and results. More information about Mobile Monday can be found at: <br> <a href="http://www.mobilemonday.dk/" target="_blank">http://www.mobilemonday.dk/ </a> </br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/51 Spikol, Milrad, and Metcalf were present for the WMUTE conference in China from March 23-26. This conference was first held in Växjö in 2002. Milrad was part of the program committee and introduced professor Ulrich Hoppe, the first keynote speaker. Metcalf presented the paper __“My Sports Pulse: Increasing student interest in STEM disciplines through sports themes, games and mobile technologies”__. Spikol presented a paper titled __“Combining Physical Activities and Mobile Games for Designing Novel Ways of Learning”__. Spikol and Milrad also spent some days in Shanghai working on a new start up project that deals with TEL in emerging markets. More information about this project will be published soon. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/50 The paper titled <i>Making Use of User-generated Content and Contextual Metadata Collected during Ubiquitous Learning Activities </i>was accepted as a full paper for the IEEE ICALT 2008 conference that will be held in Santander, Spain in the beginning of July. The camera ready version has now been submitted to IEEE Computer Press and all that is left to do is to attend what seems to be a very interesting conference. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/49 On March 3rd, Daniel Spikol gave a small talk for the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Professor Michele Jackson provided the opportunity to meet 3 fellow PhD students and discuss common themes of research across mobile devices and educational practices. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/48 On February 10th, more than 3000 people came to the open house day at Växjö University. CeLeKT was actively involved in this event. Marcelo Milrad hold an open lecture describing some of the on-going activities underway at CeLeKT aiming at bridging informal and formal learning activities using mobile technologies. Daniel Spikol gave visitors the chance to test the mobile game "Skattjakt". Teacher students from Växjö University helped to guide those visitors (see picture below) that participated in the game. <br> !http://w3.msi.vxu.se/~mmilrad/AMULETS/OP_08.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/47 Marcelo Milrad and Daniel Spikol have recently published a new article describing the results from the MUSIS project. The paper is included in the latest issue of the <i>Journal of Education Society and Technology</i>. Marcelo Milrad has been the guest editor of this special issue focusing on "Current Approaches to Network-Based Learning in Scandinavia". The content of this special issue can be found at: <br> <a href="http://www.ifets.info/issues.php?show=current" target="_blank">http://www.ifets.info/issues.php?show=current </a> </br> Moreover, Spikol and Milrad have also a full paper that will be presented at the IEEE WMUTE 2008 Conference <a href="http://www.wmute2008.org"target="_blank"> </a> to be held in Beijing, China next month. Their paper entitled <i>"Combining Physical Activities and Mobile Games for Designing Novel Ways of Learning"</i> describes the results of the latest efforts from the Treasure Hunt project. </br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/46 Skattjakt was the cover article in the Sweden’s National Orienteering Magazine, ??Skogssport?? that has over 100,000 members. The article details the research project as a technique to get the entire school on their feet with mobile maps. The article talks about how Skattjakt is bringing new technology to the sport while helping to interest young people in the sport and physical activity by having them participate in the design of novel mobile activities. You can download the article "here":http://www.celekt.info/publications/skogssport2008_nr1.pdf http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/45 Skattjakt is a mobile phone game that has been conceived and implemented to promote physical activity and collaborative problem solving. The game is inspired by the ideas behind treasure hunt activities and the sport of orienteering. The activities in the game explore informal skills such as learning about the environmental factors and navigation. The game requires different degrees of collaboration between team members to solve the mystery. Up to six teams can simultaneously compete using mobile phones, as they progress through the playing field with detours for wrong answers. The playing field is spread out over the downtown Växjö with seven locations. A strong narrative drives the players to solve a mystery about space aliens, the environment and how to reduce greenhouse gases in everyday life. <br>The game has been co-developed with students (ages 13-15) from Norregaardskolan in joint collaboration between the Center for Learning and Knowledge Technologies at Växjö University and Mapping Växjö. The game will be played this Thursday, January 17th, by almost 20 children, ranging from ages 13-15 from Kronobergskola, a local school from the city of Växjö.</br> <br>A press release (only in Swedish) about this event is available from the URL below:</br> <br> <a href="http://www.mappingvaxjo.se/pressmeddelande/pressmeddelande_2008-01.htm" target="_blank"> http://www.mappingvaxjo.se/pressmeddelande/pressmeddelande_2008-01.htm </a> </br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/44 Daniel Spikol participated at the event “Research methods in informal and mobile learning: How to get the data we really want” held at the Centre for workbased Learning and Education (WLE), at the Institute of Education, London, UK on December 14, 2007. His paper, <i> Designing Mobile Games that Explore Novel Learning Practices with Co-Design</i>, was selected for presentation and will published in the conference proceedings later this year. <br> Spikol participated in the tools track where participants explored different concepts for creating more sophisticated tools for analyzing the complex environments that mobile learning operates in. More information about this event can be found at: <br> <a href="http://www.milrm.wle.org.uk/programme.htm" target="_blank"> http://www.milrm.wle.org.uk/programme.htm</a> </br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/43 More than 45 people took part in an interactive demonstration about the AMULETS project in Berlin, Germany. This event was part of Kaleidoscope Symposium held in Berlin on the 27 November. The aim of this activity was to not only to present the results of our activities but also to allow the participants to take an active role by trying and testing some of the tools we have developed including visualization tools, digital maps and GPS services to support learning. More about this event can be found at: <br> <a href="http://www.noe-kaleidoscope.org/group/symposium/programme/index.html#tuesday_1_5_a" target="_blank">Link in Kaleidoscope</a> </br> !http://w3.msi.vxu.se/users/mmilrad/Kaleidoscope/Berlin1.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/42 The Swedish Research Council has decided to provide 3 years financial support for our proposal <i>"Inclusive Gifted Education in Mathematics"</i>. This proposal is a collaboration project with our colleagues from Math Didactics under the lead of Professor Inger Wistedt. The aim of this project is to further our understanding of how mathematical abilities can be developed in novel ways within ordinary classrooms as well as in ICT settings where modern technology can be used to create and foster collaborative math-learning communities among high-ability students. The study adopts a dialogical approach to learning focusing on students’ communicative projects. The total budget for the project during the period 2008-2010 is 4,5 Million Swedish Crowns. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/38 Marcelo Milrad has been invited to give a talk at Internetdagarna 2007, Sweden´s biggest conference about the Internet and its development. Marcelo´s talk,<i> Innovative Mobile Applications to Support Learning and Collaboration,</i> is included in the track discussing Future Mobile Services. Internetdagarna 2007 takes place in Stockholm on November 5-6. More information about Marcelo´s talk can be found at the URL below: <br> <a href="http://oldweb.iis.se/internetdagarna/2007/45-tjanster-2/index.html" target="_blank"> http://oldweb.iis.se/internetdagarna/2007/45-tjanster-2/index.html</a> </br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/37 The steering board of the <i> Young Communication </i> project, a five years effort supported by the Swedish Knowledge foundation, has decided to grant another year funding to our project AMULETS. Our future efforts will focus on how to involve more university teachers and teacher students in the coming activities, so that they can actively participate in the design and implementation of novel educational activities supported by mobile technologies. Moreover, we will also explore how the methods and technologies we developed in the first year of the project can be used in the field of Mathematics Education. In this particular direction, we are planning to conduct a number of trials with 7th and 8th grades classes, teachers and teachers students where we will combine outdoor activities, mobile technologies and games within the specific field of geometry. The AMULETS activities will continue until the fall 2008. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/36 The workshop "Design Challenges for Future Mobile Learning Environments" is a joint effort of the Virtual Doctoral School (VDS), a project of Kaleidoscope, a Network of Excellence which brings together European teams in technology - enhanced learning, and the Kaleidoscope Mobile Learning SIG. This event is organised by the Center for Learning and Knowledge Technologies and it will be held on November 1-2. The purpose of this VDS workshop is to elaborate and explore those aspects related to the design, implementation and evaluation of future learning environments supported by mobile technologies. Seventeen European PhD students who are conducting their research projects within the field of mobile learning will attend this event. The central questions that will be explored at the workshop are: <br> <i>1. What are the important research questions relating to mobile learning? 2. Which learning aspects and processes should be considered while designing challenging mobile learning environments? 3. What new scenarios and applications will emerge, and how they should be implemented? 4. What are appropriate methods to research the design and evaluation of mobile learning environments? 5. Which are the most appropriate ways of assessing learning in these environments? </i> </br> More information about this event can be found at the URL below: <a href="http://mlearning.noe-kaleidoscope.org/news/last-0-read729-display" target="_blank"> http://mlearning.noe-kaleidoscope.org/news/last-0-read729-display</a> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/35 "Datorerna rycker fram" is the title of the essay written by Simon Winter and published on October 7th in the Culture Supplement of Dagens Nyheter (DN). DN is the biggest daily Swedish Newspaper with readers all over the country. Dr Winter´s essay analyzes the implications of the close interplay between computer technology and contemporary culture and how the latest is being shaped in new ways that we have never expected. <a href="http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=1194&a=702025" target="_blank"> Check the essay "Datorer rycker fram" at DN's site </a>