Personal Learning Environments in Smart Cities: Current Approaches and Future Scenarios Articles uri icon

authors

  • BUCHEM, ILLONA
  • PEREZ SANAGUSTIN, MARIA DEL MAR

publication date

  • November 2013

start page

  • 1

end page

  • 14

issue

  • 35

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 1887-1542

abstract

  • Version of "Personal Learning Environments in Smart Cities" in PLE Conference 2013: Learning and Diversity in the Cities on the Future. 4th International Conference on Personal Learning Environments. -------- Abstract: With the increasing number of the global population living in densely populated and technologically advanced urban spaces, the notion of smart cities is gaining importance, especially in view of citizen engagement, learning and participation. We propose to consider smart cities as learning spaces and call for innovative pedagogical approaches for using technologies embedded in physical environments to support connected and ubiquitous learning in smart cities. In this paper, we discuss smart cities as spaces for constructing Personal Learning Environments. Our special focus is on mobile and locative media, which open new possibilities of interaction with the surrounding environment. In technology-rich infrastructures such as smart cities, physical objects, including buildings, works of art or points of interest, can become part of the learning environment. When mediated through technologies, e.g. by means of mobile and locative media, the surrounding physical environment and the digital environment can be dynamically merged into augmented, ad-hoc Personal Learning Environments. In this paper we give a short introduction to smart cities, smart citizens and smart city learning, and go on to outline some innovative applications of mobile and locative media in urban spaces, including open badges, smart glasses and mobile tagging, and discuss their potential for learning. Following these examples, we discuss educaching as an approach to smart city learning and provide some practical examples based on the example of etiquetAR, a mobile, locative application that allows creating interactive tags to support augmented learning experiences.

keywords

  • smart city learning; urban computing; educaching; glocality; personal learning environments