Smart Classroom Bringing Pervasive Computing into Distance Learning 智能教室：将普及计算引入远程学习.pdfVIP

Smart Classroom: Bringing Pervasive Computing into Distance Learning Yuanchun Shi, Weijun Qin, Yue Suo, Xin Xiao 1 Introduction In recent years, distance learning has increasingly become one of the most important applications on the internet and is being discussed and studied by various universi- ties, institutes and companies. The Web/Internet provides relatively easy ways to publish hyper-linked multimedia content for more audiences. Yet, we find that most of the courseware are simply shifted from textbook to HTML files. However, in most cases the teacher’s live instruction is very important for catching the attention and interest of the students. That’s why Real-Time Interactive Virtual Classroom (RTIVC) always plays an indispensable role in distance learning, where teachers and students located in different places can take part in the class synchronously through certain multimedia communication systems and obtain real-time and media- rich interactions using Pervasive Computing technologies [1]. The Classroom 2000 project [2] at GIT has been devoted to the automated capturing of the classroom experience. Likewise, the Smart Classroom project [3] at our institute is focused on Tele-education. Most currently deployed real-time Tele-education systems are desktop-based, in which the teacher’s experience is totally different from teach- ing in a real classroom. For example, he/she should remain stationary in front of Yuanchun Shi Key Laboratory of Pervasive Computing, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China, e-mail: shiyc@tsinghua.edu.cn Weijun Qin Key Laboratory of Pervasive Computing, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China, e-mail: qinweijun99@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn Yue Suo Key Laboratory of Pervasive Computing, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China, e-mail: suoy@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn Xin Xiao Key Laboratory of Pervasive Computing, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China, e