PROBLEM, IDEA AND RESEARCH METHOD
- Necessity: Experimental activities are very crucial for STEM/Science education
- Critical Problems: Many schools could not provide experimental activities to their science students because of insufficient resources and technical support, lack of curriculum hours and lack of space etc.
- Innovative method makes use of
- the open-source platform called Arduino plus the necessary sensors for control of experimental processes and data collection,
- an IP camera for long-time capturing of photos and instantaneous monitoring and
- a Linux server with various open-source software for delivering and managing the online experimental activities, storing and processing data as transmitted from the Arduino board via the Intranet.
KEY INNOVATIVE FEATURES AND CHARACTERISTICS
Teachers and students can easily access the online experiments with
- a light-weight web browser in any hardware (PC, notebook, tablet or smart phone) and
- any operating system (Windows, Linux, Android, or iOS etc)
- without installing any additional software or apps.
- Advantages: very low cost (~USD100), short time (within a week) and limited efforts for developing new online experiments to promote students’ self-regulated learning.
Schematic diagram of the innovative framewor to develop online experiments
Concise outline
Complete framework
- An Apache web server is required to function as a secure agent for the internal experimental set up and IP camera and to relieve workload and memory/storage requirement for the Arduino board.
- The server is also engaged to deliver all the learning activities as managed by another thousand lines of HTML and php codes which are also specifically written by the project leader for each courseware.
- The Prof. YEUNG Yau Yuen Intranet is involved to ensure maximal security and data transfer speed.
- A learner with a PC or mobile device can use an ordinary web browser to access and control the Arduino system via the abovementioned server for observing and analysing data from this online experiment at anytime and anywhere.
Copyright (2015-). YEUNG Yau Yuen. Welcome to send feedback or comments by email to yeungy@acm.org
