Although augmented reality (AR) has gained much research attention in recent years, the term AR was given different meanings by varying researchers. In this article, we first provide an overview of definitions, taxonomies, and technologies of AR. We argue that viewing AR as a concept rather than a type of technology would be more productive for educators, researchers, and designers. Then we identify certain features and affordances of AR systems and applications. Yet, these compelling features may not be unique to AR applications and can be found in other technological systems or learning environments (e.g., ubiquitous and mobile learning environments). The instructional approach adopted by an AR system and the alignment among technology design, instructional approach, and learning experiences may be more important. Thus, we classify three categories of instructional approaches that emphasize the ''roles,'' ''tasks,'' and ''locations,'' and discuss what and how different categories of AR approaches may help students learn. While AR offers new learning opportunities, it also creates new challenges for educators. We outline technological, pedagogical, learning issues related to the implementation of AR in education. For example, students in AR environments may be cognitively overloaded by the large amount of information they encounter, the multiple technological devices they are required to use, and the complex tasks they have to complete. This article provides possible solutions for some of the challenges and suggests topics and issues for future research.

Current status, opportunities and challenges of augmented reality in education

Digital processing of speech signals

A communication infrastructure is an essential part to the success of the emerging smart grid. A scalable and pervasive communication infrastructure is crucial in both construction and operation of a smart grid. In this paper, we present the background and motivation of communication infrastructures in smart grid systems. We also summarize major requirements that smart grid communications must meet. From the experience of several industrial trials on smart grid with communication infrastructures, we expect that the traditional carbon fuel based power plants can cooperate with emerging distributed renewable energy such as wind, solar, etc, to reduce the carbon fuel consumption and consequent green house gas such as carbon dioxide emission. The consumers can minimize their expense on energy by adjusting their intelligent home appliance operations to avoid the peak hours and utilize the renewable energy instead. We further explore the challenges for a communication infrastructure as the part of a complex smart grid system. Since a smart grid system might have over millions of consumers and devices, the demand of its reliability and security is extremely critical. Through a communication infrastructure, a smart grid can improve power reliability and quality to eliminate electricity blackout. Security is a challenging issue since the on-going smart grid systems facing increasing vulnerabilities as more and more automation, remote monitoring/controlling and supervision entities are interconnected.

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1315&context=electricalengineeringfacpub

A Survey on Smart Grid CommunicationInfrastructures: Motivations, Requirements andChallenges

Advantages and challenges associated with augmented reality for education: A systematic review of the literature

Two previous literature review-based studies have provided important insights into mobile learning, but the issue still needs to be examined from other directions such as the distribution of research purposes. This study takes a meta-analysis approach to systematically reviewing the literature, thus providing a more comprehensive analysis and synthesis of 164 studies from 2003 to 2010. Major findings include that most studies of mobile learning focus on effectiveness, followed by mobile learning system design, and surveys and experiments were used as the primary research methods. Also, mobile phones and PDAs are currently the most widely used devices for mobile learning but these may be displaced by emerging technologies. In addition, the most highly-cited articles are found to focus on mobile learning system design, followed by system effectiveness. These findings may provide insights for researchers and educators into research trends in mobile learning.

Review of trends from mobile learning studies: A meta-analysis

Remote Laboratories have traditionally been focused on specific solutions for specific problems. We can find a wide range of Remote Laboratories in the literature, assisting different types of subjects but commonly bound to a restricted set of requirements. Due to this, little attention has been paid on working on a maintainable, scalable, secure architecture that addresses the requirements of a wider set of experiments, and that could be open enough to support or adopt new experiments, developed using different technologies in both client and server side. In this paper, we describe several aspects that might be taken into account when designing Remote Laboratories, describing the XWL Architecture and comparing it with other existing architectures.

Towards an extensible weblab architecture

Nowadays, a large number of online laboratories are available and deployed throughout the world. Most of them are sponsored by universities and often only used by their home institution, because they tend to be dedicated to the needs of their creators. However, in many cases these labs provide successful experiences and other teachers would wish to incorporate them into their classroom activities and to embrace Learning-by-Experience methodologies. Currently, they cannot do that effectively without first tailoring the lab experience to their own teaching style and the educational background of their students. This can be a complicated affair, due the closed nature of many online labs and the steep learning curve of the few tools that allow customization. This paper describes the work on an application builder, named App Composer, which aims to make it easy for school teachers to create their own customized applications from existing ones. Different customization levels are provided, each one powered by a different type of composer. For instance, teachers will be able to easily translate an application into a new language, or to start with a template and create a customized version of an application. The App Composer makes use of Graasp and Open Social - a widely-used, interoperable and open technology.

OpenSocial Application Builder and Customizer for School Teachers

Development of mobile learning projects involves addressing many challenges, from pedagogies (e.g., what must students learn? and how?) to technical issues (e.g., use of context-awareness, use of communication or collaboration methods, mash-up of information). This paper introduces a framework intended to provide different educational tools and information to mobile learning programmers and designers in order to simplify and reduce the project development. The paper offers an overview of the state of the art of mobile learning applications, focusing on some of its problems: lack of interoperability and difficulty of using advanced technologies, such as location-based systems. It also addresses why most of the m-Learning applications do not make use of the existing services and knowledge of the Learning Management Systems, which are in fact the real pillars of the e-learning methodology. The framework design is guided by a new paradigm for development of e-learning tools and platforms: Learning as a Service (LaaS). The main contribution of this framework is to provide contextual information from different sources and sensors (e.g., geographical, motion); and integration of many existing services from e-learning platforms.

/pdf/enabling-innovations-in-mobile-learning-a-context-aware-and-yd3yk0l79d.pdf

Enabling Innovations in Mobile-Learning: A Context-aware and Service-based Middleware

This article provides an update on the status of the implementation of new Learning Technologies in the Engineering Education inside the new European Higher Education Area that is evolving to allow a new framework of University education inside Europe. The article analyzes how the original distance institutions have evolved into on-line learning, and how concepts such as classroom and mail-based learning have developed into blended learning and ubiquitous learning that are challenging our Learning Space with a new set of services that are improving learning capabilities. This evolution emphasizes personalization and user closeness, and is based on learning by services. The new learning concept (s-learning) continues with the philosophy of re-usable educative objects to create encapsulated and re-usable educational services to be easily integrated in Learning Management Systems. In broad terms, this new elearning philosophy is described through several examples of advanced services that can be integrated into a Learning Management System.

S Learning: New Web Services In E Learning Platforms

High quality content is not easy to find. Search engines are not suited for this task because they only follow hyperlinks. This technique is often ineffective at finding e-learning resources. Learning objects are the answer to sharing, reusing and locating educational materials. Additional descriptions represented in form of metadata are required to achieve this goal, among other requirements. The information stored there is very important not only for institutions but for individual instructors or students as well. However, it takes time and experience for authors to create valuable metadata. Users -teachers and studentsdo not need to know learning specifications when they use standard compliant software (knowledge of the collection of TCP/IP protocols is not essential for a simple user), but it is essential for developers. Instructors cannot become expert metadata editors. Thus, a solution with the lesser intervention of the former is necessary. Here is explained a short automatic metadata generation process for different courses about Electronics engineering. The results are collections of circuit simulations and tutorials directly available from a learning repository.

Elio Sancristobal

Papers

Towards an extensible weblab architecture

OpenSocial Application Builder and Customizer for School Teachers

Enabling Innovations in Mobile-Learning: A Context-aware and Service-based Middleware

S Learning: New Web Services In E Learning Platforms

An Experience On Learning Objects Reutilization Based On Educational Resources Developed