Development of smart phone apps as active learning tools for U-learning and its learning process for middle school students

Abstract

Due to the advent of fancy smart technology, various kinds of Apps based on smart phones have been developed recently. Many universities and research centers started to organize their own App Centers a few years ago to construct their own software and content. Among Apps, the Apps for ubiquitous learning are also popular. In this paper, we design and develop new Apps that can help the interaction between instructors and students in classrooms and out of classrooms for active learning. Our Apps are developed based on MIT's App Inventor and Google App Engine. With the database stored in Google App Engine, instructors can give their students multiple-choice questions and closed-answer questions. Also, the students can ask questions to their teachers during class and after school. By doing these, the teachers can examine both performance assessments and students' attendances at the same time. Our Apps can also be used as a questionnaire tool for courses. In this paper, we also describe the learning process for middle school students who have no programming experience on smart phone Apps with KWLN charts. In this paper, we also describe how we used KWLN charts for our students' programming skills as an instruction method. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media.