The Lab of Tomorrow: wearable computers in science education

Contacts:
Dr Chris Baber & Dr Theodoros Arvanitis
Department of Electronic, Electrical & Computer Engineering (EECE)
School of Engineering
The University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham
B15 2TT, United Kingdom

Email: informatics-crn-enquiries[at]cs.bham.ac.uk
Websites: http://wear-it.net/ and http://www.laboftomorrow.org/

The Lab of Tomorrow EU funded project develops a pedagogical framework for successful application of emerging technology on teaching science through every day activities. The aim of the project is to develop a wearable technology for genuinely useful educational use. The proposed technology will allow high school students to use their every day life as the field where they will conduct sophisticated experiments and thus will deepen their understanding of the science concepts involved in the activities.

Wearable technology is used to introduce to this learning scheme a series of artefacts, called axions (consisting of sensors, measuring specific physical quantities and communication units) which allow students to develop investigations drawn from their everyday activities and which, in many cases, involve data collection over extended periods of time. The axions embedded in every day objects or in cloths is used in order to collect data during students' activities. Important factors of their design are ergonomics and economy. The data collected by the axions is presented with the use of advanced programming tools compatible with graphing and analysis software components so that students can easily investigate trends and patterns and correlate them with the theory taught at school.

The University of Birmingham team has been working on a sensor shirt (SensVest) which records leg, arm, and body acceleration, heart rate, body temperature and ECG information.