PERVASIVE COMPUTING APPLICATIONS FOR SCIENCE
EDUCATION: RECENT RESEARCH ADVANCES
Dr Theodoros N Arvanitis
Senior Lecturer, Head of Biomedical Informatics, Signals & Systems Research
Laboratory, Department of Electronic, Electrical & Computer Engineering
Director, Centre for Learning, Innovation & Collaboration
University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
Pervasive Computing in Education:
Realising Our Imagination
"Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the
woods. Every time you do so, you will be certain to
find something that you have never seen before.
Follow it up, explore all around it, and before you
know it, you will have something worth thinking
about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries
are the result of thought."
Alexander Graham Bell: "electrical
speech machine" of 1876
Advanced Technologies in Education, Athens 26-27 January 2007
What is Pervasive Computing?
 Mainframe: many people share one computer
 Personal Computer: one person with one computer
 Pervasive & Ubiquitous computing: many computers
serve each person
 Pervasive & Ubiquitous Computing can be thought of as the idea
of invisible computers everywhere.
 computers are embedded in the environment,
 each computer performs its tasks without requiring human
awareness or a large amount of human intervention.
Advanced Technologies in Education, Athens 26-27 January 2007
Major Trends in Computing
Advanced Technologies in Education, Athens 26-27 January 2007
Philosophy and Goals of Pervasive &
Ubiquitous Computing
 Computing paradigm in contrast to the desktop
model
 Integrate computers into our everyday activities
 Computer embodiments in infrastructure have
varying size and shapes
 Early Steps: Construct, deploy, and evaluate
tabs, pads, and boards
Advanced Technologies in Education, Athens 26-27 January 2007
The Early Steps of Pervasive &Ubiquitous Computing
 The initial incarnation of ubiquitous computing was in
the form of "tabs", "pads", and "boards" built at Xerox
PARC, 1988-1994.
 Mobile Computing Research
 explore the capabilities and impact of mobile computers in an
office setting
 Palm-sized mobile computers that can communicate wirelessly
through infrared tranceivers to workstation-based applications.
Advanced Technologies in Education, Athens 26-27 January 2007
Types of Ubiquitous Computing Devices
 Tabs
 small, handheld devices, like Post-it notes, or the spine of a book
 must carefully balance display size, bandwidth, processing, memory,
power consumption
 Pads
 paper-sized tablets
 a number are commercially available, but they are not well-suited for the
generalized requirements of a research environment, which includes high
customizability
 PARC's MPad used FPGAs, so they can even reprogram their hardware!
 Boards
 intelligent whiteboards, allowing for collaborations, storage, etc.
 Wearables
Advanced Technologies in Education, Athens 26-27 January 2007
Applications of Pervasive & Ubiquitous Computing
 Locating people
 Collaboration tools
 Environment control
 Virtual communities
 Indirect Management
Advanced Technologies in Education, Athens 26-27 January 2007
Wearable Computing in Science Education:
The Challenge

Bridging the gap between pedagogy and front-end technology

Introducing innovation in learning and computational tools


Introducing the concept of wearable computational and on-body sensing
devices


IST-2000-25076

The Lab of Tomorrow project is a European project primarily concerned with
capturing sensor data from the local environment, for transmission to some
control computer or computers. This is then be used for analysis during
science school classes (e.g. high-school physics)
Combining the use of “toys” for activity-based learning
An elaborate system of distributed computation, embedded-sensing devices,
positioning calculation, and data analysis.
www.laboftomorrow.org
Advanced Technologies in Education, Athens 26-27 January 2007
Lab of Tomorrow: The Vision
To contribute towards the connection of science
with everyday life activities
Advanced Technologies in Education, Athens 26-27 January 2007
Wearable Computing: Our Perspective
 A new form of an embedded-
computing:

Computing paradigm in contrast to the
desktop model
 Integrating computers into our
everyday activities
 Wearable (a definition):


Portable while operational
On-body, embedded in clothes, handsfree
 Sensing the environment
 Supporting activity in a ubiquitous
manner
 Always-on (…depending on energy
capacity) 
11
14 Nov 2004
Advanced Technologies in Education, Athens 26-27 January 2007
Wearable Computing:
Distributed Embedded Systems
Baber, et al., IBM Systems Journal, Vol 38, No 4, 1999
Advanced Technologies in Education, Athens 26-27 January 2007
LoT Wearables
Advanced Technologies in Education, Athens 26-27 January 2007
CONNECT
Advanced Technologies in Education, Athens 26-27 January 2007
Technological “Societies”: blessing or burden ?
 Computer Systems are getting more complex
over time
 Distributed systems present an inherent complexity in
architectural design and in the way information is
structured
 Overload of information: vast, dynamic or even
unstructured information
 “Vagueness” of human knowledge
 More everyday tasks involve computers
 More users without the necessary skills
Advanced Technologies in Education, Athens 26-27 January 2007
“Calm Technology”: Pervasive computing
 To cope with the “vagueness of human knowledge”, the
complexity of systems and the needs created by the new
information “pool” it is required that we leave computers
in a proximal periphery and focus on “calm technology”
 In other words, build technology that gets our attention
when we need to use it, but that relegates itself to the
background, and stays aside, actively waiting to assist us.
Advanced Technologies in Education, Athens 26-27 January 2007
Mobilearn Architecture
Content
Server
Content
XML
Content
metadata
Environment
Content
recommendations
Sensors
XML
XML
Context
Awareness
Subsystem
XML
XML
User profile
User input
MOBIlearn project presentation –
IST-2001-37187
Thank You
“The world we have
created today has
problems which cannot
be solved by thinking the
way we thought when
we created them”
Albert Einstein