DEMO - Classroom7: Please, make sure your phones are switched on!

Abstract

Nowadays, mobile phones are becoming ubiquitous computing devices. They are widely used by people with different ages and in virtually all places on Earth, even in developing countries. However, there are still some concerns about performing heavy computations on mobile devices due to their limited resources. The emerging growth of cloud computing and wireless communication offers a chance for creating a new generation of mobile applications that benefit from both mobile phones and cloud computing. In this demo, we present Classroom7 as an example of cloud-empowered feature-rich mobile applications that can be used to ameliorate the education process. Classroom7 attempts to increase the interaction between students and their teacher and to allow them to create and access educational contents in a new attractive way. We utilize the sensors, e.g. cameras and microphones embedded in the phone, as a method for data input, where the required heavy computations, e.g. optical character recognition, speech-to-text and other processing algorithms, are offloaded to the cloud. Moreover, we show how mobile phones can help a teacher to easily track and assess the skills of each individual student with minimal effort. We foresee that instead of considering mobile phones a source of distraction in classrooms, it will be considered an important tool in the education process in the near future. Teachers would ask their students to make sure that their mobile phones are switched on during a lecture. © 2012 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.