Mikihiko Mori

Development of a Multiple User Quiz System on a Shared Display

Collaborative Learning attracts attention as a new teaching method for its effectiveness of acquiring various skills. Recognizing the limit of current design of personal computer (PC) for collaborative learning in face-to-face environment, the authors have proposed a computer system called Socialized Computer (SC) that allows multiple users access to the computer with multiple mice and keyboards, and share information on a single large display. The authors take quiz as learning material, and are developing multiple user quiz system named MultiMouseQuiz (MMQ) for collaborative learning along the concept of SC. This paper reports a prototype system of MMQ and preliminary experiment carried out at Kyoto University Museum using the prototype. Design issues of MMQ is addressed based on the findings obtained in the experiment.

Business Model of Mobile Service for Ensuring Students’ Safety Both in Disaster and Non-disaster Situations During School Trips

We are developing a mobile service for ensuring students’ safety during the school trips that provides the current position and a history of movement during their trips for non-disaster situations and helps to escape in the event of a disaster. Since the Great East Japan Earthquake, teachers are now required to ensure the security of students during school trips. We developed the mobile service to solve this increasing social needs. During the development, we found some issues to be solved beside the technical problems. Namely, (1) monetization of the business, (2) limited sales channel, (3) anxiety about the treatment of personal information and (4) teachers’ negative tendency to new technical tools. In this paper, from the viewpoint of the business, our approach to realize the service is described.

Evacuation support and safety confirmation sharing in disaster situations for school trips by mobile information system

The recent earthquake in Japan showed that tourists cannot access evacuation information and the families of tourists experienced problems when accessing safety information related to tourists. Given these problems, we consider two issues related to information provision in disaster situations. The first issue is the lack of evacuation information for tourists. The second issue is the difficulty of confirming the safety of tourists and sharing their safety information with relevant people, including the tourist’s family. The present study focuses on developing a tourism information system to solve these issues. We refer to this system as an Educational Trip Support System (ETSS). The research subject is a school trip, which is a representative type of group tour that occurs in Japan. The objectives of the ETSS are to help students to escape to an evacuation area rapidly by providing evacuation information and to share safety confirmations with relevant people during disaster situations. We assessed the effectiveness based on a field test in a disaster-simulated situation and quantitative surveys. The major contributions of this study include (1) a description of a mobile application system for confirming safety during school trips and sharing information with relevant people, (2) a method to facilitate the rapid evacuation of students that saves time and reduces their concerns about the situation, (3) detailed evaluations of the performance obtained using ETSS.

Socialized Computers and Collaborative Learning

Collaborative Learning, a teaching method of asking groups of learners to do tasks collaboratively attracts attention for its effectiveness of acquiring various skills. Recognizing the limit of current design of personal computer (PC) for collaborative use in face-to-face environment, this paper proposes a computer system called Socialized Computer (SC) as an extension of or alternative to PC. The SC allows multiple users access to the computer with multiple mice and keyboards, and share information on a single large display. In this paper, the authors introduce the concepts of the SC, give overview of the related works, discusses implementation issues. Further, three application developed along the concept of the SC and results of experiments using them are also shown.

Development of an Information Organizing Tool with a Shared Display for Face-to-Face Collaboration

Usage of current computers is limited in collaborative work in face-to-face meeting because architecture of the most computers is designed considering their personal use. This paper discusses collaborative work of organizing information represented on cards as one of the commonly seen activities in both business and school education. The authors developed a prototype system to computerize such task so as to enhance reuse of products of the collaborative work. The developed system is implemented as an application of Single Display Groupware (SDG) to allow manipulation by multiple users sharing information on a display.

Transportation Mode Annotation of Tourist GPS Trajectories Under Environmental Constraints

Tourist transportation usage analysis provides basic information for tourism policy making. With the technical advances of tracking devices, GPS-equipped smartphones sense the movement of tourists and generate extensive volumes of movement data detailing tourist trajectories. Many researchers study semantic annotation using machine learning. However, it is necessary for machine learning to label the data for training; this requirement is costly. It would be useful for GPS semantic annotation if labelling the substantial amounts of GPS data could be avoided. In this research, we propose a new, simple GPS semantic annotation method using environmental constraints without machine learning. We call this method Segment Expansion with Environmental Constraints (SEEC) and assume a tourist behaviour model in which tourists move by foot and public transportation in touristic destinations that include numerous locations of interest. SEEC inferred the transportation modes of the GPS trajectory data at a 90.4 % accuracy level in the experiment.

A Tourism Information Service for Safety During School Trips

In this chapter, we propose a tourism information service for student school trips that provides the current position of students and a history of movement during their trips for typical situations and helps students to move quickly to evacuation areas in the event of a disaster. The number of students that go on school trips in Japan is approximately three million per year. This is one of the largest group trip segments in the Japanese travel market. Students typically go on school trips during the third year of junior high school and also during the second year of senior high school. Since the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, teachers and travel agencies are now required to ensure the security of students during school trips. However, the dedicated disaster information system is not useful for this purpose when a disaster occurs. There is a need for a system that is designed both for typical situations and also for disaster situations. An application system for tourists is suitable for a dual-purpose mission like this. We designed and implemented a tourism information system that consists of (1) a smartphone application that captures the students’ current position via GPS, (2) a server application that receives and accumulates the position information and provides the current position and a history of movement to the teachers, and (3) an additional application module that communicates information to the students about the evacuation area and the evacuation route in the event of a disaster and also provides direct verbal communication via IP phone. We have conducted field experiments in the Kyoto area and have received positive feedback from school teachers and travel agencies.

Quiz Making Activities Using the Multi-Mouse Quiz System in an Elementary School

The Multi-Mouse Quiz System is an application used to treat quizzes in a classroom or other learning environment. The system comprises the Multi Mouse Quiz MMQ and MMQEditor. The MMQ is an application of Single Display Groupware SDG, which enables multiple users to answer quizzes by connecting several mice to an ordinary computer. The MMQEditor is a personal computers PCs application designed to edit quizzes for MMQ. In this paper, the authors describe the activities of using MMQ and MMQEditor in an elementary school. Sixth grade children were asked to design quizzes using MMQEditor and then evaluate them mutually using MMQ. The results of the activities showed that the combination of MMQEditor and MMQ helped engage the children in the activities, the children easily operated MMQEditor, and learning was encouraged and deepened through the mutual evaluation of created quizzes.

Using the Multi-Mouse Quiz System for Quiz Making Activities in an Elementary School

Multi-Mouse Quiz System is an application set to treat quizzes in a classroom or other learning opportunities. It consists of Multi-Mouse Quiz (MMQ) and MMQ Editor. The MMQ is an application of Single Display Groupware(SDG) which enables multiple users to answer quizzes by connecting several mice to an ordinary PC. The MMQ Editor is an PC application designed to edit quizzes for MMQ. In this paper, we describ an activity of 6 grade children in an elementary school that asked them to make quizzes with MMQ Editor and then evaluate the quizzes mutually using MMQ. The results of the activity showed that with the combination of using MMQ Editor and MMQ, children were engaged the activities, the operation of MMQ Editor for children was easily-handled, most of the children could learnt the basic operation of the MMQ Editor.

Development of a Fieldwork Support System for Group Work in Project-Based Learning

This paper describes the Fieldwork Support System (FSS) for project-based Learning. The FSS is an essential tool for students who are new to fieldwork activities. They need to take notes on events that occur in the field and reflect on what people did and what they talked about in interviews. In addition, students should collaborate to learn using the data they collected. Therefore, we developed the FSS, which was constructed to use a combination of portable terminals during the students’ time in the field and a Web-based management application upon their return. We also conducted a practical experiment on PBL in which students explored local communities. The results of a posterior questionnaire showed the students enjoyed being able to view their current locations and the locations of data they had collected on the FSS terminal map. However, they had complaints about the user interface.