Introducing Location - Awareness into a Learning Environment Supported by Mobile Devices." Bucharest

This paper describes a location – aware enhancement of a learning environment supported by mobile devices. Such an extension is proposed in order to facilitate the learning process and to provide a solid framework for introducing a more situative approach to learning and teaching into an everyday classroom experience. Introducing location sensing into an existing system creates a framework not only to determine students ' locations in a learning environment but to introduce context – awareness and location- awareness into the learning process as well. What is more, location – awareness is a solid base for numerous services in a modern – mobile device supported learning environment since looking into the summary data on students ' locations gives a better insight into their habits and needs, both individual and within a group. It is our belief that location – awareness presents a significant step towards creating a learning environment even more oriented to students and their needs. The paper presents an implementation of a location – aware extension of an existing system that uses mobile devices to support a learning environment, reporting module which uses acquired location data, discusses technology requirements and limitations and deals with privacy and security issues