InkBlog: A Pen-Based Blog Tool for e-Learning Environments

Abstract

Weblogs are communication and collaborative tools disposed in Web that aims to publish texts and sharing opinions, typically displaying the post in reverse chronological order, and allowing visitors to leave comments. Since devices equipped with pen are becoming common, such as tablets, and have enough computational power to render Web pages, users can access blog tools through pen-based devices, writing new posts and read and comment published posts. But tablets have a different input style and the user need to type the post instead of handwriting it, decreasing the usability and make boring the writing task in these devices. Pen-based computing refers to a computer user-interface using a pen, rather than devices such as a keyboard or a mouse, and is a promise research area to enhance Education, but it is need to properly consider the pen. We purpose the InkBlog, a blog tool that receive input data from pen so that the user can handwriting her posts. In this work we present the InkBlog architecture and the main component, the InkEditor for Web pages. Using InkBlog the user can write equations or sketches faster than using a mouse or a keyboard, getting the best of the pen-based devices.