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MiLexicon is an innovative handheld system that helps self-directed learners employ personal learning environments in their language learning. We conducted interviews with experienced language learners in order to investigate the resources they use to support their language learning across formal and informal settings. Our analysis of these interviews reveals a process of self-initiated personal and collaborative language inquiry and identifies ways technology can support this kind of learning. Here we describe miLexicon, a software prototype for Android phones, which we have developed to meet these requirements.

E-Science has the potential to transform school science by enabling learners, teachers and research scientists to engage together in authentic scientific enquiry, collaboration and learning. However, if we are to reap the benefits of this potential as part of everyday teaching and learning, we need to explicitly think about and support the work required to set up and run e-Science experiences within any particular educational context. In this paper, we present a framework for identifying and describing the resources, tools and services necessary to move e-Science into the classroom together with examples of these. This framework is derived from previous experiences conducting educational e-Science projects and systematic analysis of the categories of 'hidden work' needed to run these projects. The articulation of resources, tools and services based on these categories provides a starting point for more methodical design and deployment of future educational e-Science projects, reflection on which can also help further develop the framework. It also points to the technological infrastructure from which such tools and services could be built. As such it provides an agenda of work to develop both processes and technologies that would make it practical for teachers to deliver active, and collaborative e-Science learning experiences on a larger scale within and across schools. Routine school e-Science will only be possible if such support is specified, implemented and made available to teachers within their work contexts in an appropriate and usable form.

This paper introduces miLexicon, an innovative mobile tool for self-initiated, resource-based language learning. In essence, miLexicon consists of two interacting and extensible collections. One collection contains the language items a learner chooses to investigate, the other references resources (e.g. people, tools, media) useful to this inquiry. We describe this process of personal and collaborative language inquiry and show how we derive it from interviews with language learners. We then indicate how miLexicon is designed to support this process and prompt learners to reflect on their resource use. In describing the development of miLexicon we also provide an exemplar application of a novel framework for designing technology-rich learning contexts.

This paper illustrates our preliminary studies of new interactive tools that support the generation of sequential art for entertainment, learning and scientific discourse. In the first of two examples, primary school students document a practical science session through the creation of a photostory. In the second, participants in a study on the biological nature of thrill create a souvenir photostory by selecting images from a DVD. The paper is written in a comic-book format to further explore and highlight the communicative capabilities of the medium, one that can be visually attractive and facilitate rapid dissemination to a wide audience.

This paper formulates a conceptual model for designing wireless sensor networks as a development enabling tool in extremely resource-limited environments. The model effectively integrates the conventional communications and networking approach with data processing techniques and usability interfaces. The paper also highlights several novel design mechanisms that have been developed around the proposed model and implemented within the context of a broader ongoing project addressing ICT needs of rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa.

We describe our approach and initial results in the participatory design of technology relevant to local rural livelihoods. Our approach to design and usability proceeds from research in theory and practice of cross-cultural implementations, but the novelty is in beginning not with particular technologies but from community needs, and structuring technology in terms of activities. We describe our project aims and initial data collected, which show that while villagers have no clear mental models for using computers or the Internet, they show a desire to have and use them. We then describe our approach to interaction design, our expectations and next steps as the technology and activities are first introduced to the villages.

This paper presents an innovative application of wireless, mobile and ubiquitous technologies to support informal and collaborative learning in Kenyan rural farming communities. Such an approach is achieved by the development of a knowledge management system (KMS) integrated with existing local community communication channels, together with experimental knowledge management (KM) initiatives employing the VeSeL (Village e-Science for Life) distributed resource kits (DRKs). The initiatives support illiterate and semi-literate farming community groups, in learning new agriculture practices, and also enable the use of advanced digital technology to improve their agricultural practices and literacy levels. Results of a recent field trip to Kenya are presented and an application sketch is developed. The process of applying wireless and Internet technologies for the education of local farming communities, using irrigation and water management as the application, concludes the paper.

The use of computer applications to support learning and assessment is becoming more common, along with a growing body of research focusing on the pedagogical effectiveness of these applications. However, until recently less research attention has been given to the design of learning technology with regard to their usability, actual use, and the way they motivate and engage learners. Learner centered design [7] looks beyond the technological possibilities such as distance learning, virtual reality, and computer assisted assessments by focussing on learners in their learning contexts, and how their interaction with these applications can help and stimulate them to apply deep learning strategies. However, what are the best and most effective ways to accomplish this? Can lessons learned in the field of HCI be directly applied, or do e-learning applications have their own set of design guidelines? The workshop plans to bring together individuals with an interest in the design and use of e-learning systems with the aim of improving and understanding the learning experience. The workshop will be a platform to discuss new ideas and to share experiences, but also to identify new research challenges and potential solutions.

Contains fulltext : 50008.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) A computer-based decision support system to assist radiologists in diagnosing and grading brain tumours has been developed by the multi-centre INTERPRET project. Spectra from a database of 1H single-voxel spectra of different types of brain tumours, acquired in vivo from 334 patients at four different centres, are clustered according to their pathology, using automated pattern recognition techniques and the results are presented as a two-dimensional scatterplot using an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI). Formal quality control procedures were performed to standardize the performance of the instruments and check each spectrum, and teams of expert neuroradiologists, neurosurgeons, neurologists and neuropathologists clinically validated each case. The prototype decision support system (DSS) successfully classified 89% of the cases in an independent test set of 91 cases of the most frequent tumour types (meningiomas, low-grade gliomas and high-grade malignant tumours--glioblastomas and metastases). It also helps to resolve diagnostic difficulty in borderline cases. When the prototype was tested by radiologists and other clinicians it was favourably received. Results of the preliminary clinical analysis of the added value of using the DSS for brain tumour diagnosis with MRS showed a small but significant improvement over MRI used alone. In the comparison of individual pathologies, PNETs were significantly better diagnosed with the DSS than with MRI alone.

This paper discusses the importance of learning context with a particular focus upon the educational application of mobile technologies. We suggest that one way to understand a learning context is to perceive it as a Learner Centric Ecology of Resources. These resources can be deployed variously but with a concern to promote and support different kinds of mediations, including those of the teacher and learner. Our approach is informed by sociocultural theory and is used to construct a framework for the evaluation of learning experiences that encompass various combinations of technologies, people, spaces and knowledge. The usefulness of the framework is tested through two case studies that evaluate a range of learning contexts in which mobile technologies are used to support learning. We identify the benefits and challenges that arise when introducing technology across multiple locations. An analytical technique mapped from the Ecology of Resources framework is presented and used to identify the ways in which different technologies can require learners to adopt particular roles and means of communication. We illustrate how we involve participants in the analysis of their context and highlight the extent to which apparently similar contexts vary in ways that are significant for learners. The use of the Ecology of Resources framework to evaluate a range of learning contexts has demonstrated that technology can be used to provide continuity across locations: the appropriate contextualization of activities across school and home contexts, for example. It has also provided evidence to support the use of technology to identify ways in which resources can be adapted to meet the needs of a learner. Editors: Ann Jones, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme and Daisy Mwanza. Reviewers: Karen Swan (Kent), Richard Joiner (Bath), Daisy Mwanza (Open).

Most encrypted data formats leak metadata via their plaintext headers, such as format version, encryption schemes used, number of recipients who can decrypt the data, and even the recipients' identities. This leakage can pose security and privacy risks to users, e.g., by revealing the full membership of a group of collaborators from a single encrypted e-mail, or by enabling an eavesdropper to fingerprint the precise encryption software version and configuration the sender used. We propose that future encrypted data formats improve security and privacy hygiene by producing $\textit{Padded Uniform Random Blobs}$ or PURBs: ciphertexts indistinguishable from random bit strings to anyone without a decryption key. A PURB's content leaks $\textit{nothing at all}$, even the application that created it, and is padded such that even its length leaks as little as possible. Encoding and decoding ciphertexts with $\textit{no}$ cleartext markers presents efficiency challenges, however. We present cryptographically agile encodings enabling legitimate recipients to decrypt a PURB efficiently, even when encrypted for any number of recipients' public keys and/or passwords, and when these public keys are from different cryptographic suites. PURBs employ Padm\'e, a~novel padding scheme that limits information leakage via ciphertexts of maximum length $M$ to a practical optimum of $O(\log \log M)$ bits, comparable to padding to a power of two, but with lower overhead of at most $12\%$ and decreasing with larger payloads., Comment: 30 pages

Through iterative participatory design-based research I aim to explore the application of the Ecology of Resources (EoR) Framework (Luckin, 2008) to the design of technology enhanced contexts that scaffold learning and collaboration. Technology enhanced learning (TEL) contexts engage learners and the ecology of resources available to them as they move through time and space, in coordinated and distributed activity towards learning. Such ecologies may include technology, environmental features, humans and any other resources that can support learning. The challenge is to help the learner become aware of, access, and co-ordinate her interactions with these resources. I will formatively evaluate the EoR through participatory design of TEL contexts that scaffold language learning using mobile technology. Face-to-face and remote collaboration with teachers, native speakers and other learners will be a central part of this technology-enhanced language-learning context.