Mobile lessons: concept and applications for 'on-the-field'

We have coined the term 'Mobile Lesson' to express the concept of lessons carried directly on-the-field. Mobile is the keyword to be emphasised because all actors (teachers, students, tutors) of a Mobile Lesson are free to move in sites of educational relevance and, by means of mobile devices (TabletPC, PDA, smart-phone, equipped with GPS) and geo-referenced applications, are able to perform educational activities directly on the spot. Suitable disciplines for Mobile Lessons are history and biology and ideal scenarios are archaeological sites and natural parks. Each relevant point for the lesson is expressed in latitude-longitude coordinates and is called hotspot. The Mobile Lessons technical infrastructure consists of a Web browser augmented with GPS capabilities and a Web Service able to generate dynamic content according to the actual position of the end user. We have chosen a Web-based architecture because Web browsers are commonly available for a large number of platforms such as PCs, PDAs, and smart-phones. The browser has been extended with a custom add-on able to read the current position from GPS hardware and adds a Úser-Location' header to each HTTP request. The Web applications can return on-the-fly created Web pages tailored for the end user position.

@TechReport{PCPPS04a,
  author       = {Pintus, A. and Carboni, D. and Paddeu, G. and Piras, A. and Sanna, S.},
  title        = {Mobile lessons: concept and applications for 'on-the-field'},
  institution  = {CRS4, Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia},
  number       = {04/62},
  month        = {november},
  year         = {2004},
  address      = {Cagliari, Italy},
  type         = {techreport},
  keywords     = {Mobile Lesson, GPS, Web},
  url          = {https://publications.crs4.it/pubdocs/2004/PCPPS04a},
}