Ankit Kumar

In my Bachelor thesis Project, I have explored the ways in which smartphones can help students learn in ways that were not thought before. (in a team of 3) I did this project in collaboration with Xerox Research Center India and Embedded Interaction Lab, IIT Guwahati. Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Design Excellence Awards 2015: Winner Interaction Design Under graduate category for Bachelor Thesis Project "Re-imagining Smartphones in Education".

Children are such a dominant mobile user group today. They want to play games, skype with their friends and access all sorts of information. They simply love technology. And while this ever-evolving mobile technology is quickly changing the landscape of mobile interactions, we still believe that these technologies have not helped EDUCATION much. They still have a lot to offer.

Visiting schools and educational centers was one of the most exciting parts of our study. Edugenie is one such center working to deliver ever lasting joyous learning experience to students by providing hands on learning experience. These visits provided us insights on areas where students face problems and the reasons behind them. We all once found it difficult to learn the human digestive system or say mugging up the periodic table. These visits helped us in pinpointing these problems faced by students in specific topics of not just physics or chemistry but all of the subjects. We prepared an exhaustive list of such topics and based on our analysis of the visits and literature review through the NCERT, shortlisted a bunch of classic ones.

Our app Stethoscan help students know the body systems by showing them what lies beneath the skin. Just like stethoscope!

Our second app Refracto: the idea is to teach the principles of refraction of light using mobile phone as a dynamic visualization media mimicking the famous glass slab experiment. A small magnetic token serves as the source of incident ray which is detected using the magnetometer of the cell phone.

Pendulum: Pendulum app is designed to teach the students about the physical motion of the objects and the concepts associated with them like velocity and acceleration. The mobile in itself acts as a pendulum where the physical motion allows the student to sense the velocity and the visualization on the screen helps him realize the magnitude of acceleration. This opens an opportunity of how motion based concepts can be effectively taught under this category of interactions since these occur due to natural force of gravity

Oxy-Burn: this app mimics a NCERT textbook activity to teach small kids about the concept that burning cannot occur in absence of oxygen. The famous jar and candle experiment. Oops!! Well as we see, it is not safe to perform the activity in reality so we decided to bring it to the mobile phone so that children can actually perform it with safety and ease. On placing the jar on the cell phone, the lamp on screen starts to dim and eventually goes off. This also shows the possibility of how photo sensor can be smartly used to teach basic light dependent concepts of science.

Elemento: this app uses the photosensor to teach students about the properties of the elements of the periodic table. The mobile phone reacts to the presence of sunlight and shows the process of melting and vaporization of different elements as they are exposed to heat/sunlight . Apart from photoenergy, the photosensor can also be used as an indicator of temperature in ideal cases. This helps the students compare the chemical properties of various elements in a fun and interactive way

Circuito is an example of Collaborative Multi Mobile Interactions. It is a circuit making application. This interaction category focusses more on learning through collaborative activities. Here the students are randomly assigned components and the aim is to complete a circuit by placing the mobile phones close to each other by arranging in a particular order. This focuses on the possibility of using multiple devices to teach step based concepts in a collaborative way to increase engagement and learning

Locato helps to reduce student’s mental overload by providing information in chunks and hints. It has two or more devices communicating and knowing the whereabouts of each other. e.g. the water cycle which has mainly four stages of water circulation. Through Locato, a child can first learn the water cycle stages from the diagrams. And then he can then hover his connected mobile over the first display showing the water cycle chart to know more about each processes. A teacher could also plant questions on one display and provide hints through this interaction.

Showcasing our apps in the Exhibition