Integrating Mobile Setting into Modern Classroom: A Multi-user, Platform-independent, Mobile Content Management System

摘要

Following the act of Turkish government for lending students tablet PCs during their elementary school education, emerged the importance and need of development of a mobile supported e-learning software platform. The main motivation of writing this paper is 1) to pinpoint key characteristics of a possible software to be developed to achieve the integration and 2) to discuss the effects of the created environment. Mobile devices, such as tablet PCs and smartphones, when supported with software developed uniquely for e-learning purposes, introduce limitless advantages. An open-source example of such software, which will also be referred throughout the paper, is developed in Sabanci University under the supervision of Cemal Yilmaz, Ph.D., during Spring 2011-2012 and Fall 2012-2013 semesters. The main purpose of the development of this platform is to demonstrate the increased efficiency of integrating mobile environment into educational setting when supported with targeted software. The paper also addresses specific uses of mobile devices for educational purposes that can be mainly divided into two: Distant learning and in-class usage. Distant learning usage features live video streaming of the classroom environment for absent students and homework/grade tracking topics whereas in-class usage represents the migration of quizzes, exams, etc. that are held in a classroom to a mobile integrated environment. In addition, more offerings of mobility, such as push notification feature of smartphones, identification, and communication are topics addressed in context of education throughout the paper.