How to Design a Mathematical Learning App Suitable for Children

This paper examines the main considerations that influenced the development and implementation of an educational application created for elementary school children, with the aim of helping them to practice long divisions. In addition to discussing design principles for technologies that are suitable for children, the authors take a closer look at the framework for designing and using digital applications in the classroom. The most important aspects in this regard include the institutional setting of the Austrian school system and the myth of digital natives, as well as the Mobile Seamless Learning and Adaptive Learning approaches. The lack of basic digital infrastructure in Austrian elementary schools, the fact that not every child younger than ten years owns or has access to mobile devices and the resulting problematic implementation of Mobile Seamless Learning settings and BYOD strategies in schools ask for more flexible learning applications. The divisiontrainer designed by Geier (2015) is presented as a good practice example that takes the identified challenges into account.

Brave New Digital Tools for Action Research in Education

Due to the rapid development of digital media, the work of researchers in all scientific disciplines has dramatically changed. The objective of this chapter is to give a brief overview of digital tools that can be used for action or practice research in the context of seamless learning. It is the intention of the authors to, on the one hand, provide some initial orientation and deeper insight into the complex subject matter of digital science. On the other hand, researchers shall be equipped with a user guide that encourages them to try out various digital tools for searching, collecting, annotating, analyzing, visualizing, interpreting as well as publishing information. Owing to the dynamic nature of the issue under review this chapter will undoubtedly only offer a snapshot.

Social Media in Higher Education

This chapter discusses the current use of social media for professional growth, focusing on a case study that uses social media to increase instructional design graduate students' awareness and participation in professional growth opportunities. Social media metrics were analyzed from three social networking tools (Facebook Page, Twitter account, and/or Google+ community) that are used to communicate with the students in the program. Additional data was collected using an electronic questionnaire with open and closed-ended questions. The results show that graduate students' participation in the social media initiatives for professional growth provided awareness of self-directed, voluntary, and informal learning opportunities; engaged students in conversations with their peers and the instructors; and allowed the learners to expand their learning experience outside the traditional classroom format.

Linking Virtual and Real-life Environments

Emerging digital technologies offer various opportunities for ubiquitous and flexible learning, independent from time and location. Especially the proliferation of portable devices such as smartphones or tablets has increased the potential for ubiquitous learning environments in recent years. As a consequence, ubiquitous learning has become a buzzword in the literature on educational technology. However, the ways in which features are interrelated are not always clear. The purpose of this paper is to provide a more profound insight into this matter. The present chapter describes ubiquitous learning as a form of self-regulated learning and differentiates it from other popular forms of technology-based education such as mobile learning. Additionally, opportunities for meaningful ubiquitous learning environments are characterized. Based on a review of recent research, recommendations for the educational use of ubiquitous technologies are provided.

Education, “Pointsification,” Empowerment?

Gamification as a tool or procedure to add entertaining and motivating elements to usually non-entertaining environments such as schools or workplaces is becoming more and more popular. E-learning platforms like Moodle provide tools and sets of functions to add elements of gamification. An important factor especially in education is technology: individual achievements and progress can be recorded, measured, tracked and visualized and therefore identified and rewarded through bonus points, awards or rankings. This is where gamification can add some challenge and excitement to the learning. But can entertainment and education be combined by technical means at all? What are the possibilities and limits? What implications have to be expected regarding the relationship between teachers, students and a technological – gamified – environment?

Designing Seamless Learning Using Role-Playing Experiences

This chapter examines seamless learning in the context of three case studies that incorporate role-play as a pedagogical approach to integrate contextually aware learning from the formal classroom to informal spaces both face-to face and online. The research question explored is whether role-playing design in seamless mobile learning can cultivate the learners' intrinsic motivation to engage with the course and collaborate with others. In all three case studies, a variety of technologies, such as web 2.0 and mobile devices, were employed to offer learners a seamless learning experience. The studies revealed that majority of the learners were more invested and engaged in the course experience by participating in technology-mediated role-playing activities. We conclude that role-playing should be part of the seamless learning approach, since role-playing can mediate learners' access to different knowledge areas through various perspectives, just as technology can serve as mediators in the seamless learning paradigm.

The Adoption of Mobile Devices as Digital Tools for Seamless Learning

This study examines the views of undergraduate students in Education Faculty related to mobile learning and reveals their mobile usage behaviors. Mobile usage behaviors include students' view about effectiveness of mobile learning, their mobile design preferences, use of mobile device for purpose of learning, the activity types conducted with mobile devices and their mobile usage frequency. It comes out that university students have very positive attitudes towards mobile learning and they think that m-learning is a really effective learning method. However, mobile devices are used mostly for two purposes: socialization and entertainment. University students agree that mobile learning removes constraints like time and space dependency. They view simplicity and fluency as the prerequisites for a mobile application. Their behaviors are infrequent when it comes to the use of mobile devices for accessing library, reading article, doing homework and note-taking. Their readiness for m-learning is considerably high and they have necessary skills for this learning form.

A Math Training Platform to Foster Individual Learning

The use of mobile technologies such as Smartphone, Tablet are becoming more pervasive in our daily lives. Obviously, it should also be used and integrated to support learning seamlessly. But not all learning environments can be used with all these devices. In some cases, special libraries are needed (e.g. flash not available on iPad, Mac OS X) or a permanent internet connection to a learning-platform is necessary. This publication proposes a new way in math education using the standard format PDF with completely auto-generated tasks for seamless learning and presents new learning scenarios for collaborations. On the one hand a new information system will be described and on the other hand use cases are carried out to establish individual learning. It can be concluded that individual math training is an important step to foster future education.

Virtual Learning

This chapter explores the seamless learning opportunities that video games and virtual reality offer for learners and instructors. Interacting with content, with each other, and with learning processes in virtual environments, learning becomes a process combined with discovery and fun. The authors analyze emerging trends and learning understandings (epistemologies) built by video game users and learners represented in the forms of avatars. Digital environments are in fact transforming the way learners and instructors (faculty) interact with each other in and across contexts. Using data from two parallel research projects, the chapter examines students' self identity construction, problem solving, and learning in virtual environments. The authors suggest that learning epistemologies that take place in virtual reality should be brought back to the classroom or to the online environment (by the instructional designer or the game developer) and impact the way learning takes place in this ‘real'/physical environments.

Motivational and Ethical Issues in Seamless Learning

This chapter aims to explain seamless learning with regard to motivational issues and ethical usage of technology in the context of a mobile and ubiquitous Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL). The examined TEL environment consisted of a popular technology integration project in Turkey called FATIH (in English, The Movement to Enhance Opportunities and Improve Technology). The FATIH project aims to provide students with opportunities for self-regulated, mobile, and ubiquitous learning via tablet computers, technology-rich classroom environments, and online digital sources. This chapter investigates and presents findings on the effects of technology-enhanced learning environments in terms of students' motivation and ethical issues during their interaction with the learning environment and community.