Abstract
Smart education is now a typical feature in education emerging from information communications technologies (ICT) and the constant introduction of new technologies into institutional learning. The smart classroom aims users to develop skills, adapt, and use technologies in a learning context that produces elevated learning outcomes which leads to big data. The internet of things (IoT) is a new technology in which objects equipped with sensors, actuators, and processors communicate with each other to serve a meaningful purpose. The technologies are rapidly changing, and designing for these situations can be complex. Designing the IoT applications is a challenging issue. The existing standardization activities are often redundant IoT development. The reference architecture provides a solution to smart education for redundant design activities. The purpose of this chapter is to look at the requirements and architectures required for smart education. It is proposed to design a scalable and flexible IoT architecture tor smart education (IoTASE).
TopIntroduction
Technology has recently changed the educational landscape. The increase in human knowledge and steady technology advances higher educational institutions (HEI) make the best use of the resources available and keep learning up-to-date. In an age determined to generate new paths to quality education, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) brings forward countless benefits. ICT makes many ordinary tasks uncomplicated and facilitates communications from virtually any part of the globe. ICT in education has been linked with an upward shift in the quality of people’s lives by improving teaching and learning.
The use of ICT techniques in learning/teaching has a very positive influence on a student’s learning capabilities as well. It is established that students reflect in a very positive manner towards work and education when they are using computers to complete tasks given to them, encouraging and motivating them to soak in the knowledge. Students who used technology to learn in educational institutions have increased self-esteem and self-confidence. This is why a number of educational institutions are increasingly integrating ICT in their education system. With the advent of technologies, HEIs can now keep track of resources, create smarter lesson plans, design safer campuses and improve access to information. From the use of mobiles and tablets in the classroom, education looks very different today.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Learning Environment: A virtual learning environment (VLE) in educational technology is a Web-based platform for the digital aspects of courses of study, usually within educational institutions. They present resources, activities and interactions within a course structure and provide for the different stages of assessment.
Device: A sensor, actuator, or tag. Usually the device is part of a thing. The thing processes the devices’ context information and communicates selected information to other things. Furthermore, the thing can pass actions to actuators.
Mobile Learning: Mobile learning ( m-learning ) is education via the Internet or network using personal mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones to obtain learning materials through mobile apps, social interactions and online educational hubs. It is flexible, allowing students access to education anywhere, anytime.
MOOCs: MOOCs (massive open online courses) are free online courses available for anyone to enroll. MOOCs provide an affordable and flexible way to learn new skills, advance your career and deliver quality educational experiences at scale.
SMART Classroom: Smart classroom is technology-enhanced classrooms that foster opportunities for teaching and learning by integrating learning technology, such as computers, specialized software, audience response technology, assistive listening devices, networking, and audio/visual capabilities.
IoT Architecture: IoT architecture is the system of numerous elements: sensors, protocols, actuators, cloud services, and layers.
Learning Platform: Learning platform is an integrated set of interactive online services that provides the teachers, learners, parents and others involved in education with information, tools and resources to support and enhance educational delivery and management.
RFID: RFID (radio frequency identification) is a form of wireless communication that incorporates the use of electromagnetic or electrostatic coupling in the radio frequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to uniquely identify an object, animal, or person.
E-Book: An electronic book (also known as an e-book or eBook), is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices.
Reference Model: A reference model is a model representing a class of domains (e.g., a reference model for production planning and control systems). It is a conceptual framework or blueprint for system's development.
Thing: An object of our everyday life placed in our everyday environment. A thing can be a car, fridge, but can also be abstracted to a complete house or city depending on the use case.
Smart Learning: Smart learning environments are IoT-based learning solutions, which are seamlessly integrated into our working and learning environment. Smart learning environments are therefore physical environments enriched with context-aware digital devices to improve and accelerate learning.
Personalized Learning: Personalized learning is an educational approach that aims to customize learning for each student's strengths, needs, skills and interests. Each student gets a learning plan that is based on what he knows and how he learns best.
IoT Reference Architecture: IoT reference architectures are of great help for standardization, as they define guidelines that can be used when planning the implementation of an IoT system.
Smart Teaching: Smart teaching largely involves the organization of teaching and learning activities with the help of software tools. In broader terms, smart teaching is a way of professionalizing the teaching and learning experience.
Functional View: The functional view of a system defines the architectural elements that deliver the system's functionality. The view documents the system's functional structure-including the key functional elements, their responsibilities, the interfaces they expose, and the interactions between them.
Bluetooth: Bluetooth is a telecommunications industry specification that describes how mobile devices, computers, and other devices can easily communicate with each other using a short-range wireless connection.
Smart Education: Smart education is a term used to describe learning in the digital age, has gained the attention of many researchers. The goal of smart education is to foster smart learners to meet the needs of the work and life in the 21st century.
Function Model: A function model or functional model in systems engineering and software engineering is a structured representation of the functions (activities, actions, processes, operations) within the modeled system or subject area.
Reference Architecture: A reference architecture in the field of software architecture or enterprise architecture provides a template solution for an architecture for a particular domain. It also provides a common vocabulary with which to discuss implementations, often with the aim to stress commonality.
Near Field Communication: Near Field Communication (NFC) is a short-range wireless connectivity standard (Ecma-340, ISO/IEC 18092) that uses magnetic field induction to enable communication between devices when they are touched together, or brought within a few centimeters of each other.
Software Architecture: Software architecture refers to the high-level structures of a software system and the discipline of creating such structures and systems. Each structure comprises software elements, relations among them, and properties of both elements and relations.