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/113 Web and mobile solutions developed by CeLeKT for mobile data collection and visualizations integrates with a geographic information system, GIS, from the National Geographic Society (NGS). The GIS system form NGS has been designed to support geographic investigations and encourage collaboration between young citizens and researchers. During the last weekend of September 2012, nine researchers and teachers from Linnaeus University and schools in the region as well as a dozen people from Stanford University and the NGS met in Washington, DC. Together they adapted and tested the system for mobile data collection that has been developed by the members of CeLeKT. The group conducted a field study at the Potomac River, where the sensors, mobile phones and the mobile application that have been developed were used to measure, analyse and assess water quality. For four years we have worked with several schools in the region and in California, as well as industrial partners such as Intel, Pasco Scientific and NGS, with very successful results. A short video about this activity can be found below: <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/52062167" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/52062167">Let's Go: Water Quality Trial with National Geographic Society</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/melnu">Medieteknik Lnu</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/112 One of the aims of the project People's Voices is to increase citizen participation in local and political issues. Mobile phones have brought a revolution to many African countries. Even traditional tribes like the Maasai have embraced the new technology. At the same time, the differences are huge compared to Sweden, which leads to great challenges in collaborative projects, like the one in Uganda that Media Technology is part of. In Uganda there is slightly more than one mobile phone subscription for every three inhabitants, but the distribution is uneven and the phones are not exactly smart ones. – In places like the capital Kampala, almost every person has a mobile. In the three districts of northern Uganda covered by the project, they have what we Swedes would call ”ancient” phones, which cost around USD 20 and are used only for calls and texting, says Marcelo Milrad, Professor of Media Technology at Linnaeus University. So how can you get people to use mobiles to increase democratization and involvement in the community, and not just to keep in touch with family and friends? That's what the project People's Voices is all about – to explore how to develop mobile services that can increase citizen involvement in local and political issues, and to enable the citizens to manage, control and report how public services work. More detailed information about the project can be found at: <br> <a href="http://peoplesvoices.org/" target="_blank">http://peoplesvoices.org/</a> <br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/110 Research results from the work carried out by CeLeKT´s members have attracted considerable attention recently. These efforts have resulted in four international, scientific publications published in the recent months in two books and two international journals. The details of these publications are given below: Chapters in books: Milrad, M., & Hoppe, U. (2012). Learning with Collaborative Mobile Technologies. <i>Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning</i>, Seel, Norbert M. (Ed.), Springer-Verlag, Berlin. Pea, R., Milrad, M., Maldonado, H., Vogel, B., Kurti, A., & Spikol, D. (2012). <i>Learning and Technological Designs for Mobile Science Inquiry Collaboratories. </i>From the book Littleton, K., Scanlon, E., & Sharples. M., (Eds.), Orchestrating Inquiry Learning. London UK: Routledge. Articles in journals: Sollervall, H., & Milrad, M. (2012). Theoretical and methodological perspectives on the design of innovative mathematical learning activities with mobile technologies. International. <i>Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation</i>, Volume 6, No. 2, pp 172-187. Wu, P., Hwang, G., Milrad, M., Ke, H., & Huang, Y. (2012). An Innovative Concept Map Approach for Improving Students' Learning Performance with an Instant Feedback Mechanism. <i>British Journal of Educational Technology</i>, Volume 43, Issue 2, pp 217–232. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/109 The latest issue of the journal <i>The Internet and Higher Education </i> (Volume 15, Issue 4) is a special one entitled <i>Designing teaching and learning in technology enhanced learning environments – Nordic interdisciplinary perspectives</i>. Professor Marcelo Milrad, is one of the guest editors of this special issue, along with two colleagues from Stockholm University and the University of Oulu in Finland. The special issue contains selected articles from the Norditel 2010 symposium hosted at Linnaeus University in Växjö in August 2010. More information about it can be found at: <br> <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10967516/15/4" target="_blank">http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10967516/15/4</a> <br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/108 On Friday, 2nd of March we will hold a research workshop in order to evaluate the mobile client for the project portal "osrportal.eu", a repository for digital educational resources for science centers and museums. In cooperation with local researchers, teachers and companies we plan to evaluate the current state of the project in a hands-on session with various mobile devices and explore possibilities concerning the future development of the project. For more information on the OSR project, check http://www.osrportal.eu/ http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/107 On January 16th Bahtijar Vogel successfully defended his licentiate thesis in computer science entitled "Architectural Concepts: Implications for the Design and Implementation of Web and Mobile Applications to Support Inquiry Learning" . The opponent was Professor Tommi Mikkonen, Department of Software Systems, Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland. For further information about this thesis you can contact Bahtijar Vogel directly at: bahtijar.vogel@lnu.se <br> !http://w3.msi.vxu.se/users/akumsi/foto/Bato_Lic.JPG! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/105 Dan Kohen, PhD candidate at CeLeKT, has presented a long paper at the 19th International Conference on Computers and Education (ICCE) 2011 that took place between November 28th - December 2nd, 2011 in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Dan´s contribution (see reference below) has won the best technical design paper award. Kohen, D., Ronen, M., Ben Aharon, O., & Milrad, M. (2011). Incorporating Mobile Elements in Collaborative Pedagogical Scripts. <i>Proceedings of the 19th ICCE Conference </i> held in Chiang Mai, Thailand, November 28th-December 2nd, 2011. 187 contributions including long, short and poster papers were presented at ICCE 2011 and published at the conference proceedings. Congratulations to Dan for this excellent achievement! <br> !http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7175/6464966351_b9149be8a5_m.jpg! <br/> We at CeLeKT are very proud for getting for the 4th time in the last two years the "best paper award" at an international conference. In July 2009, Martin Svensson got the best paper award at the 9th IEEE ICALT 2009 Conference in Riga, Latvia; Anna Wingkvist received the best PhD student paper award at mLearn 2009 in Orlando, USA and Bahtijar Vogel received the best PhD student paper award at the IEEE WMUTE 2010 conference in Tainan, Taiwan in April last year. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/104 On Monday Nov 21, an international project on <i>Mobile Digital Storytelling</i> and Mobile Library Services took off at the Växjö City Library, with Marcelo Milrad & Susanna Nordmark, as CeLeKT representatives. The visitors from SouthAfrica will together with their Swedish colleagues collaboratively create, process, publish and share mobile digital stories for inspiration and insights into what mobile technologies can support and signify. The project activities continues throughout the week, ending with story presentations, reflection and evaluation on Friday, Nov 25. A new round of trials will take place in February next year, while the Swedish representatives from Växjö City and CeLeKT will visit South Africa. <br> !http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6110/6382386609_edbd9e2161_m.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/103 CeLeKT and the department of Media Technology are organizing a very interesting program including lectures, seminars and workshops with people coming from academy and industry actively working in the field of social media. Among others, scholars from the USA and representatives from IBM will contribute with their expertise to this event. More detailed information about the program is available at: <br> <a href="http://goo.gl/cuOpe" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/cuOpe</a> <br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/102 Oskar Pettersson successfully defends his Licentiate thesis entitled "Towards a Mobile Learning Software Ecosystem". The opponent was Dr Richard Torkar from Blekinge Institute of Technology. For more information see <a href="http://derived.se/2011/09/towards-a-mobile-learning-software-ecosystem/">the information page</a> or contact Oskar Pettersson directly at oskar.pettersson@lnu.se. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/101 Yesterday as part of the conference CeLeKT as part of the NORDICLEAF network ran the workshop, "Exploring Design Methods for Mobile Learning". Sixteen participants from all over took part in the day long workshop. The major topic of discussion for the day was to better understand the role of design and how it different methods can be used to support all types of learning with mobile devices. See more at "MobileHCI 2011":http://www.mobilehci2011.org/ http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/100 The Linnaeus Academy Research Foundation's prize of 35 000 SEK for the best doctoral thesis in 2011 has been awarded Daniel Spikol, lecturer in Media Technology at the School of Computer Science, Physics and Mathematics. The Foundation states: "For his commitment to promoting new ways to support learning and teaching with the help of mobile technology. Daniel Spikol's thesis in computer science argues that design can facilitate learning. To develop strategies for, create and use a design tool kit may break old habits and provide innovative teaching efforts at all levels." Daniel Spikol's thesis is entitled "A Design Toolkit for Emerging Learning Landscapes Supported by Ubiquitous Computing" and was presented in November last year. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/99 Every second year the Swedish Natural Science and Technology biennial takes place in different cities. This year the event was carried out in Halmstad and more than 300 elementary school teachers attended. The Science Center to Go was presented as a part of an interactive workshop with more than 25 participants. Three of the 5 miniatures AR exhibits were presented, namely those illustrating the mini-wing, the Doppler effect and the Boltzman´s constant experiments. We got a lot of valuable feedback from the participants that will help us to improve our future work. The picture below shows one of the participants interacting with the exhibit: <br> !http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5150/5637331414_fac7169980_m.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/98 On April 19th Osama Mansour successfully defended his licentiate thesis entitled "<i>Share with Social Media: the case of a Wiki </i>. The opponent was Dr Dave Randall, Manchester Metropolitan University, England. For further information about this thesis you can contact Osama Mansour directly at: osama.mansour@lnu.se <br> !https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_zlyNj5ZIahQ/TbW2XOLG5DI/AAAAAAAAACs/8qBjewaFdwQ/s800/Osama_Anita_Dave_lic_April_19_2011.JPG! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/97 Professor Tommi Mikkonen from Tampere University of Technology in Finland will visit the School of Computer Science, Physics and Mathematics at Linnaeus University (LNU) in connection to the International Workshop on Mobile Application Development that will be held between April 4th-5th in Växjö. During his visit to LNU, Professor Mikkonen will give a lecture entitled “Doing software for Nokia platforms”, as well a hands-on workshop on Nokia’s Qt Development Framework. More about professor Mikkonen’s work can be found <a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/~tjm/index-international.html">here</a> Information about the workshop, as well as the detailed program can be found <a href="http://www.Lnu.se/institutioner/institutionen-for-datavetenskap-fysik-och-matematik/konferenser/mobile-application-development">here</a>. For further information regarding the workshop, please contact <a href="http://celekt.info/profiles/index/7">Arianit Kurti</a>, Associate Professor of Media Technology. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/96 The world wide web is developing faster than ever before and its interactive aspects are becoming increasingly important. For companies, as well as the public sector, it is very important to know what to concentrate on, and how. Linnaeus University's new Master Programme in Social Media and Web Technologies has been developed with exactly these concerns in mind – to meet the industrial needs related to the knowledge and skills required for the design, development and deployment of innovative services and web-based platforms. The importance of this effort has been today acknowledged, as the Swedish Knowledge Foundation (KK-stiftelsen) has granted financial support from it’s programme ”Expertise for innovation” to the master programme. The funds provided by the KK-foundations correspond to SEK 1.436 million during one year, with the possibility to apply for an extension for up to six years and SEK 20 million. Thanks to this financial support, the Department of Media Technology will be able to further increase its competence and cooperation with industry. – The aim of this project is to develop a sustainable model that makes it possible to create and develop a flexible programme that combines our experience in research with the genuine business and industrial experience available in industry and in the rest of the society. The Knowledge Foundation states that the area is developing rapidly and is becoming increasingly important for industry and society at large. It cites that companies often have a leading role in the development and also that ”there is a great need to enhance the academic contribution to the development process”. More information For more information about the project and the master programme, please contact <a href="http://celekt.info/profiles/index/7">Arianit Kurti</a>, Associate Professor of Media Technology. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/95 In February, the research project CoCreat will be launched at a start-up meeting in Oulu, Finland. The CoCreat project aims at presenting new solutions for promoting creative collaboration in terms of innovative learning models that rely on the use of social media and mobile technologies. Creative collaboration is a multidisciplinary process where various problems are explored from novel perspectives and the result of collaboration is not defined beforehand. The main idea is to develop and evaluate ‘collaborative spaces’ for learners of different ages in order to promote creative collaboration. The main objectives of the project are to envisage and to predict what the future of learning could look like in ten years and to give people readiness and skills to act in these new learning spaces. Marcelo Milrad and Susanna Nordmark will participate in the Oulu start-up meeting. Read more about CoCreat on the project website: <br> <a href="http://edtech.oulu.fi/fi/tutkimus/projektit/cocreat-enabling-creative-collaboration-through-supportive-technologies" target="_blank">http://edtech.oulu.fi/fi/tutkimus/projektit/cocreat-enabling-creative-collaboration-through-supportive-technologies</a> <br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/94 Professors Marcelo Milrad & Chen-Chung Liu from NCU in Taiwan are guest editors of the latest issue of the journal <i>Educational Technology & Society </i>(2010, Vol. 13, Issue 4). The main focus of this special issue is on One-to-One Learning in the Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing Age. The base of the articles described in this issue features a selection of the best research papers presented at the Conference on Classroom, Ubiquitous, and Mobile Technologies Enhanced Learning (CUMTEL) held in conjunction with the 17th International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE 2009) that took place at the Hong Kong Institute of Education in December 2009. All the articles of this special issue are available at: <br> <a href="http://www.ifets.info/issues.php?show=current" target="_blank">http://www.ifets.info/issues.php?show=current</a> <br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/93 On November 16th, doctoral candidate Daniel Spikol successfully defended his PhD thesis “A Design Toolkit for Emerging Learning Landscapes Supported by Ubiquitous Computing”. The opponent was Professor Yvonne Rogers from the Open University in the UK. The evaluation committee consisted of the following Professors; Sanna Järvela from Oulu University, Ulrich Hoppe from the University of Duisburg-Essen and Guohua Bai from BTH. The positive decision from the evaluation committee was unanimous. Dr. Spikol will continue his research with CeLeKT as a senior lecturer starting in December. You can watch the archive video stream of the defense at the URL below: <br> <a href="http://bambuser.com/channel/spikol" target="_blank">http://bambuser.com/channel/spikol</a> <br> http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/91 The department of Media Technology at Linnaeus University will start a new international Master Program on Social Media and Web Technologies. This master program provides a balanced combination of theoretical perspectives and applied knowledge in the field of social media and web technologies. A special emphasis will be given to the fields of web technologies, design and interaction, social media and IT business. For more information about the content of this program please refer to: <br> <a href="http://lnu.se/education/programmes/namt2?l=en&ec_vt=English" target="_blank">http://lnu.se/education/programmes/namt2?l=en&ec_vt=English</a> <br> Besides a strong academic and research perspective, this program will be characterized by having a close cooperation with the IT industry as well. In relation to the latest, during the next couple of weeks we will organize two seminars inviting prospective industrial partners to discuss about our master program. To read more about the possibilities for cooperation with our master program refer to: <br> <a href="http://lnu.se/subjects/1.33834?l=en" target="_blank">http://lnu.se/subjects/1.33834?l=en</a> <br> This Master Program will start in the Autumn 2011. http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/90 Following a long Swedish academic tradition, Daniel Spikol nailed up his PhD thesis yesterday at the university library after a short speech given by professor Marcelo Milrad. The title of Spikol´s dissertation is “A Design Toolkit for Emerging Learning Landscapes Supported by Ubiquitous Computing”. He will defend his thesis on November 16th at 10.15 hours in lecture hall Weber, located at at Linnaeus University, campus Växjö. The external examiner will be Professor Yvonne Rogers from The Open University, England. <br> !http://w3.msi.vxu.se/~mmilrad/CeLeKT/Spikol_nail.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/89 On August 25th Martin Svensson successfully defended his licentiate thesis entitled "<i>Promoting Semantic Interoperability of Contextual Metadata for Learner Generated Digital Content </i>". The opponent was Professor Niels Pinkwart from Clausthal University of Technology in Germany. For further information about this thesis you can contact Martin Svensson at: martin.svensson@lnu.se <br> !http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4120/4925821629_64ab59829a_m.jpg! http://www.celekt.info/tabloid/show/88 CeLeKT and the department of Media Technology at Linnaeus University are looking for 2-3 senior lectures to work with us in tasks related to teaching in our programs and conducting research. <br> Eligibility to the position requires a completed doctoral degree in media technology, interaction design or computer science/informatics focusing on digital media and interactive systems, or the equivalent scientific competence; a clearly documented experience of teaching in the field; a completed university pedagogical education or the equivalent knowledge. </br> More information about the positions can be found at the URL below: <br> <a href="http://lnu.se/about-lnu/jobs-and-vacancies/2-3-senior-lecturers-in-media-technology?l=en" target="_blank">http://lnu.se/about-lnu/jobs-and-vacancies/2-3-senior-lecturers-in-media-technology?l=en</a> </br> 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!