Classroom 3.0: The Real World Meets the Virtuality through Ambient Sensing in Education

Nowadays, Web 2.0 applications -- such as wikis, blogs, online forums and content repositories -- have been widely adopted to support learning in higher education. Nevertheless, such tools still remain an add-on for traditional education and we are quite far from having a computer revolution in the educational field, i.e. something that can definitively alter the way of teaching in schools. Virtual and mixed reality brings learning to a further step, but the interactions with the real world are strictly limited to a few perceptions (location awareness, chats and callings between virtual and/or on-site actors). New Information and Communication technologies such as Radio Frequency IDentification and Wireless Sensors Network, along with popular commercial devices such as smartphone, tablet and video game consoles can enhance the engagement of pupils and lead to a set of education benefits. My research aims to build a Classroom 3.0, in which not only humans but also computer agents can interact with the environment.