Hsue Yie Wang

Wireless and mobile technologies to enhance teaching and learning

This research aims to build a Wireless Technology Enhanced Classroom (WiTEC) that supports everyday activities unobtrusively and seamlessly in classroom contexts. This paper describes the integration of wireless LAN, wireless mobile learning devices, an electronic whiteboard, an interactive classroom server, and a resource and class management server to build the WiTEC. This contains a number of features that can support class members in various types of teaching and learning activities. Project-based learning is taken as a scenario to elaborate how teachers and students can engage in teaching and learning via WiTEC. Finally, a number of suggestions are discussed for further study.

A Framework of Three Learning Activity Levels for Enhancing the Usability and Feasibility of Wireless Learning Environments.

The most recent advances in information technology have brought wireless communication and mobile devices to education. The wireless technology enhanced classroom (WiTEC) integrates a wireless local area network, mobile learning devices, and client-server architecture to support instruction and learning activities. This article introduces a framework that involves three learning activity levels—learning functions, learning episodes, and learning flows—as a basis for designing an integrated system that supports various types of learning activities in WiTEC. A teacher can use this system to generate new learning flows before class and to implement them during class. A two-stage evaluation was conducted in three 6th grade classes to investigate the usability and feasibility of the proposed system. The participating teachers indicated that the use of the three learning activity levels eased the burden of preparing, implementing and reviewing instruction and learning activities.

A contest event in the connected classroom using wireless handheld devices

In this study, an English contest event with across-classroom mode was held in the connected classroom equipped with wireless remote controller (EduClick). The learning scenario of contest event embedded into event-driven learning model is designed by integrating activity-centered design and learner-centered design to conduct students to learn individually before event and collaboratively participate with classmates during the event stage. The contest event is held by the activity-centered design. A Web site with Web-based content and online testing system is built by learner-centered design. We desire the students to learn for participating in the event. Connected classroom is an environment constructed by connecting classrooms located in the same or different schools, or schools of different countries. More various learning activities could be held in the environment. Here, we built a prototype of connected classroom using the simplest wireless and mobile technologies and held contest event.

Implementation and evaluation of three learning activity levels in wireless learning environment

With the emergence of information technology, wireless communication and mobile devices are the newest applications in education. The wireless technology enhanced classroom (WiTEC) integrates wireless local area network, mobile learning devices, and client-server architecture to support instruction and learning activities in classroom. This paper introduces the framework of three learning activity levels, namely learning function, learning episode, and learning flow, as the basis to design and develop an integrated system to support various kinds of learning activities in WiTEC. A teacher can use the system to form new learning flows before class and to implement them in class. A two-stage evaluation was conducted in three elementary classes to investigate the usability and feasibility of the proposed system. The participated teachers indicated that the integrity mechanism of three learning activity levels eases the burden of preparing, implementing, and reviewing instruction and learning.

Distributed weather net: wireless sensor network supported inquiry-based learning

In 2004, a city-wide weather wireless sensor network, Taipei Weather Inquiry-Based Learning Network, composed of sixty school-based weather sensor nodes and a centralized weather archive server was established to facilitate students having weather science inquiry-based learning. The network covers the whole Taipei City, collects the citys weather status, and opens the weather data to the general public. A series of annual weather inquiry-based learning tournaments was held since 2006 to engage the students to use the networks resource. Until now, there have been 171 registered teams which include 447 grade 4-9 students and 220 teachers involved in it. The study of the tournaments data indicated that the usability of the network was satisfied.