Bucket-server: A system for including teacher-controlled flexibility in the management of learning artifacts in across-spaces learning situations

Abstract

Recent technological advances in mobile devices enable the connec-tion of classrooms with other virtual and physical spaces. Some approaches aim at helping teachers carry out learning situations across such spaces. However, these proposals tend to be isolated from other activities in teachers’ current common practices, and do not allow teacher-controlled flexibility of what stu-dents do during the enactment. Aiming to overcome such limitations, the Buck-et-Server is a system that enables teachers to include learning buckets in their learning situations: containers of learning artifacts generated and/or consumed across-spaces by students during the enactment. Teachers create learning buck-ets at design time, configuring them with constraints to regulate the degree of freedom offered to the students. These learning buckets can be integrated into multiple existing technologies used in different educational spaces (e.g., web, physical and 3D virtual world spaces), thus helping embed buckets in the teach-ers’ current common practices.