Networked Smart Educational Devices for Online Laboratories

The advantages of online labs, which also include remote laboratories for educational institutions and research and industry, are well known. Their use leads us to propose, either in addition or instead, the concept of home laboratories or labs at home. In terms of infrastructure and equipment, the miniaturization of measuring instruments and the new standards make it possible to easily network with speed and provide a high quality of service while making their acquisition costs no longer prohibitive. On the online learning environment side, the new situation is that Cloud computing enable educational institutions to use open source, or the social web or software to create a network of learners employing their equipment available at their homes. It also makes the network accessible to other classmates and instructors from anywhere. In this article we present the concept of laboratories at home as we see it in the light of Cloud computing era, the existing norms and standards to take into account as well as to develop to achieve educational goals required for electrical engineering laboratories with what we can be referred to as Networked Smart Educational Devices