Abstract:

With the Ambient Learning Spaces (ALS) environment we developed an infrastructure as an integrated environment for self-directed and distributed learning inside and outside school. The environment combines and interlinks mobile and stationary learning applications for a large variety of interaction devices. This contribution emphasizes on the role of cloud-based digital media as facilitators and moderators between different teaching and learning contexts and digital platforms inside and outside school. The paper will describe an integrated system architecture, discuss its applications and emphasize on some of the observed main challenges to motivate, design, implement, introduce and manage such integrated media platform for schools and museums.

Today, we can find teaching and learning applications for any type and size of interactive devices. Some of them can be attached more or less easily to network systems and data clouds. In many cases Learning Management Systems or plain file systems with inconsistent and cumbersome upload and download activities between devices serve as the clue between these applications. These low-level solutions of current media applications for pedagogical use show that pervasive integrated systems for these purposes are still missing.

A solution can be a learning environment for pervasive interaction based on semantic media that fits to different contexts of teaching space, time and formats like classrooms, foyers, team spaces, school gardens, school theatres or digital domes and as well to out of school contexts like urban spaces, museums, biotopes, and industrial environments.

The ALS environment provides such a didactic infrastructure for a variety of modular learning applications provided for different interaction devices. These include smartphones, tablets, head-mounted displays, PCs, smart boards, multitouch tables and immersive theatres and domes. In ALS these devices are coupled through the backend cloud-based repository Network Environment for Multimedia Objects (NEMO) storing media with semantic markups and delivering requested media automatically converted into the appropriate media resolutions and media types for the learning applications.

ALS installations have been in experimental application and constant refinement in more than 25 educational institutions, mainly schools and museums. The contribution will focus on requirements, challenges and obstacles to design, build and apply a generic integrated rich media platform for a broad spectrum of interaction devices used in schools and museums in daily real life contexts. Lessions learned during more than 10 years of application and refinement of the large infrastructure will be discussed.

Acknowledgement:
ALS has been funded and supported in three consecutive projects from 2008 until 2021 by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and other public and private institutions.

Keywords:

Ambient Learning Spaces, Teaching and Learning Contexts, Digital Technologies for Learning, Interactive Learning Devices, Educational Media Platforms.