EXPERIENCES WITH USE OF OPEN, WEB-BASED STUDENT RESPONSE SERVICES FOR SMARTPHONES

Mobile technology is dramatically shaping the nature of teaching, learning and social interaction. Students and teachers may integrate technology and learning both in and out of the classroom, due to portability of mobile devices and their ability to connect to Internet almost anywhere. They are ideal as a store of reference materials, learning experiences, and general-use tools for fieldwork.
The new active collaborative learning approach let students set the in-class terms for discussion in order to get a clearer view of their instant knowledge and perception. The new tool is flexible and intuitive to use, it easily displays complex interrelationships between topics, including most relevant or marginal choices, or what is most difficult to understand. It connects the teacher and student in a new way that it is impossible to do so quickly by using traditional methods. The tools were during 2009 tested and validated in training of staff from higher education and industry in Norway, UK, Sweden, Hungary, Romania, Germany, Portugal, Slovenia and Slovakia. The evaluations show excellent feedback form students and teachers.
The experiences obtained by using new Student Response Services (SRS) for next generation wireless mobile handheld devices with pressure sensitive screens; Smartphones, will be demonstrated. They are constructed for use in vocational education and training, and in higher education courses. This is achieved through easy and flexible integration with interactive touch screen blackboards by utilizing Flash in combination with AIR and FLEX technology. The European Commission cofounds the R&D during 2008-10 as a pilot project under the KA3 ICT program.
The services are based up on XML-based standards and web authoring facilities for the contents available on web pages, by providing XML-based universal notation and interface including visualization of scientific and engineering drawings and graphs. The search facilities retrieve the postulates of the instructor through a service-oriented architecture that integrates semantic web into the system for retrieval of information from the knowledge base system. Closed solutions like the iTunes Store are not used, and the decision process solution system is open, flexible to achieve maximum interoperability.

The teacher lead SRS knowledge cycle includes:
• A question, task or problem to activate the class and assess student achievement through progress monitoring
• Use of SRS to give anonymous feedback from the whole class to the teacher
• A knowledge map with the results are displayed instantaneously at the Smartboard or projector surface
• The teacher must, based up on the results, decide which type of feedback can be provided on the fly to the class.

This paper will points out and discusses recent developments that bring mobile learning to the next level by using open web-based solutions for cheap Smartphones in education, keeping in mind the pedagogical challenges in the new mobile learning environment. Mobile devices can be used almost anywhere, they are perfect platforms for situated and context based learning activities, where real life is used to provide stimuli and activity for learning.