Search

The Internet of Things (IoT) offers opportunities for data collection, processing and visualisation driving fruitful mechanisms for the demonstration and execution of STEM activities. Nevertheless its application in a primary school setting is not straightforward. There are issues ranging from the capability to setup an IoT system in the class, sound knowledge of technical terminology, relevancy to curriculum and finally the provision of a positive experience to students. In this paper we discuss our experiences including lessons learnt towards providing an IoT platform for STEM promotion in primary schools, the challenges identified and the solutions formed to tackle them. The outcome, is a set of practices for making IoT practically applicable for STEM activities.

The introduction of VRML has facilitated the production of virtual worlds. Apart from being a format for defining 3D geometries, VRML also provides the foundation for specifying interactive behaviour. However this mechanism is rather primitive, there is no direct modelling for composite events or conditions and no efficient treatment of time. The approach presented in this paper, seeks to address these issues while formalising interactive behaviour in 3D-spatiotemporal worlds. We define the 3D-STECA (3D-SpatioTemporal Event Condition Action) Rules which apply to the user and the objects of a virtual environment. The set of rules comprise a scenario which can be mapped to VRML or Java3D. With this work we document behaviour by using formal expressions and provide the basis for guaranteeing consistency in the interaction.