Supporting Mobile and Nomadic Learning
Niels Olof Bouvin Bent Guldbjerg Christensen Kasper Ligaard Nielsen Frank Allan Hansen

Department of Computer Science University of Aarhus Aabogade 34, DK–8200 Aarhus N, Denmark {n.o.bouvin,bentor,fah,ligaard}@daimi.au.dk

Abstract
This paper presents three efforts to support children engaged in mobile and nomadic learning both in and out of the classroom. The HyConExplorer is a mobile, context-aware hypermedia system developed to help pupils access and produce digital content during project work in the field. The eBag is the equivalent of an electronic school bag and provides pupils access to their digital materials through large public displays. Seamless proximity based login to the eBag is handled by a Bluetooth sensory system monitoring the children’s mobile phones. Finally, we present PP2P, a peer-to-peer framework for mobile devices to discover and utilize other (stationary) devices in the user’s surroundings while mediating a feeling of direct and concrete interaction between the communicating appliances.

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Introduction

Mobile computing has over the past 15 years become increasingly widespread, not only in the laboratories where it originated, but outside,

where most people today carry devices supporting (at the very least) multi modal communication and often with computational resources available only in desktop computers a few years back. These devices provide a whole new way of working and thinking about what we can do with computers and how computers can help us in our daily activities. This paper describes the work on mobile computing done within the auspices of the InteractiveSpaces1 research group. Our work has focused on different aspects of mobile work, predominantly with school children as users, as they are both challenging users and eager adopters of new technology. We have with the systems described herein explored some of the aspects of nomadic work. The HyConExplorer [3] allows nomadic