Abstract:

The progress of digitization in these days makes it clear that teaching and learning on a large scale and a future-safe way cannot be accomplished without multimodal interactive environments. During the last decade, various digital educational platforms have been created and put into place and operation. Besides communication platforms, mainly user and content management systems have been created and used with some success. They have often been called Learning Management Systems (LMS) to emphasize on the processes of teaching and learning. At about the same time Immersive Virtual Learning Environments (Immersive VLE) have been build and used to bring teachers and learners into virtual digital contexts of artificial worlds and avatars.
The contribution will discuss why these and similar approaches are first of all technology-centered, creating a basically wrong understanding of learning in a world of highly interactive technologies. To liberate from such approaches we will start with the vision of Mark Weiser about “ubiquitous computing”, adding Donald Norman’s characteristics of “disappearing computers”, and merge these ideas with basic learning theories like collaborative self-directed learning and post-constructivism into system architecture for Ambient Learning Environments (ALE) connecting to real-world learning contexts (“Lebenswelt”).
With the Ambient Learning Spaces (ALS) we developed a prototype of an ALE that meanwhile has been used and studied in schools and museums for more than 10 years. Initial ideas, intermediate steps, and experiences from case studies will be discussed to illustrate the concepts. Finally a future abstract system architecture based on the experiences will be proposed.

Keywords:

Digital Technologies for Learning, Learning Management Systems, Virtual Learning Environments, Ambient Learning Spaces, Ambient Learning Environments.