BI-DIRECTIONAL EDUCATION SYSTEM

BASED ON POSITION PATTERN TECHNOLOGY

Sanghoon Kim, Joonkyo Kim, Jaehyun Park and Seung-Gol Lee

School of Information and Communication, Inha University, Incheon, Republic of Korea

Keywords:

Interactive Education, Bi-directional Education, Computer-supported Collaborative Learning(CSCL), Posi-

tion Pattern, Interactive Whiteboard, Digital Pen.

Abstract:

A bidirectional interactive education becomes one of the important issues in computer-supported education

area. The current computer-supported education system is often composed of an interactive whiteboard (IWB)

for a teacher and personal computers or tablets such as iPad and Android tablets for students. Even though

a tablet is good for providing various multimedia materials to the students, however, it cannot support the

sufﬁcient functionality to capture their feedbacks, especially handwriting inputs. This paper introduces a bi-

directional interactive education system based on a position pattern technology. The proposed system consists

of an IWB for a teacher, and digital pens and smart papers for students. In the proposed system, a teacher can

communicate interactively with his/her students via an IWB and smart papers. Therefore, it is believed to be

very useful framework for the computer-supported collaborative learning either in a classroom locally or in

distance learning over the Internet.

1 INTRODUCTION

In past, most of the educational materials in a class-

room were textbooks or printed reference materials.

However, in a modern classroom, teachers want to

use various form of teaching materials such as au-

dio, image, video, and even web-pages in the Inter-

net space. To provide these multi-media materials in

a classroom, multiple information technology(IT) de-

vices have been widely used and we call it as a com-

puter supported education. The most widely used IT

devices in a computer-supported education environ-

ment are a computer, an interactive whiteboard(IWB),

an electronic lecture desk, and a smartpad(iPad and

Android Tablet)(Eriti et al., 2011; Xin-Xing and Zhi-

Qin, 2011). Recently, several researches have been

performed to investigate the effectiveness and the de-

veloping strategy of the computer-supported educa-

tion(Tatarolu and Erduran, 2010; Trel, 2011; Sahin

et al., 2010; Tsonos et al., 2008). Though this new

style education can meet a certain level of educational

demands from teachers as well as students, higher

level interactivity is still required for more efﬁcient

education.

The key IT device of a computer-supported edu-

cation in a classroom is an IWB or a computerized

blackboard(or whiteboard), that can replace the tradi-

Figure 1: Interactive whiteboard and smart-paper.

tional blackboard in a classroom(Duan, 2010). The

basic concept of IWB is that teacher’s writing on a

whiteboard surface is captured by a sensor, transmit-

ted to the computer as mouse or tablet actions, and

then the computer screen is projected on the white-

board as shown in Figure 1. In most IWBs, ﬁlm-

type touch sensors, ultra-sonic sensors, infra-red sen-

sors, and camera sensors are used to sense the writ-

ing action. Even though an IWB provides ranges

of applications in a classroom, its educational ef-

fect looks limited because the education using an

IWB is uni-directional rather than bi-directional edu-

cation(Trel, 2011; Serow and Callingham, 2011; Slay

et al., 2008). A vital element in education, however,

212

Kim S., Kim J., Park J. and Lee S..

BI-DIRECTIONAL EDUCATION SYSTEM BASED ON POSITION PATTERN TECHNOLOGY.

DOI: 10.5220/0003923302120216

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2012), pages 212-216

ISBN: 978-989-8565-06-8

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

Figure 2: Note taking on smartpad.

is a bi-directional communication between a teacher

and students through the students’ feedback, and the

hand-writing is the most effective method of students’

feedback.

A smartpad that is a special form of tablet PC with

a hand-touch screen and communication capability

such as iPad and Android tablets recently becomes to

be used for the bi-directional education(Alvarez et al.,

2011; Mutter, 2011). With a smartpad, students can

not only read multi-media reference materials but also

put hand-touch inputs as shown in Figure 2. However,

with the current IT devices used in a classroom such

as smartpads, it is very hard to capture students’ hand-

written scripts even though they are very useful to

show multi-media materials to the students. Accord-

ing to the survey on the educational effect of Smart-

pad, a lot of students felt the lack of free note taking

on their contents displayed on Smartpad. As a result,

there is a mismatch between multi-media-based edu-

cation and students’ feedback. To overcome this dis-

crepancy, more emotional and reactive IT device is

necessary.

In this paper, bi-directional computer supported

educational environment using smart-paper and elec-

tric pen along with IWB is proposed.

2 SMART DEVICES USING

PATTERN

2.1 Position Pattern

To provide a bi-directional communication in a com-

puter supported education, a special input mechanism

for a student is necessary. Because the touch screen

of a smartpad is not accurate enough to capture hand-

writing script as shown in Figure 2, it might be inap-

propriate to the required input mechanism. While us-

ing a normal pen and paper is believed to be the most

accurate and natural method, the handwriting on the

paper has to be captured to couple it with IT devices.

A special device such as tablet and ultra-sonic sen-

sor can be used to do this. The other approach is to

use a special paper based on a position-coded micro

pattern technology. If a student writes something on

the special paper with a digital pen, the handwritten

can be automatically sensed and transmitted to a com-

puter. The trajectory of the digital pen is recognized

based on the position-coded micro pattern printed on

the special paper.

The position-coded micro pattern (position pat-

tern) is composed of several micro dots printed on a

paper surface and represents the center position of the

pattern area where it is printed. By varying the spa-

tial distribution of micro dots printed within a pattern

area, the great number of position patterns with dif-

ferent position information can be generated. Several

position patterns have been invented by several com-

panies such as Anoto Inc, Yosida Kenji, IBM, and Mi-

crosoft, and they are distinguished from the method

of encoding position information into the pattern, and

the representation of micro dots.

The position pattern shown in Figure 3(a) was

suggested by Anoto Inc.(Anoto AB, 2011) . It is

generated by shifting each micro dot horizontally or

vertically from a virtual 2-dimensional lattice point,

and does not use the pattern boundary separating each

other from adjacent position patterns. Since the en-

coding mechanism is based on the sequence of a

specially-selected numbers, the decoding process is

very simple. In addition, the position accuracy is very

high due to the concept of ﬂoating pattern. The po-

sition pattern invented by Yosida Kenji is composed

of two kinds of micro dots as shown in in Fig. 3(b).

The ﬁrst one is used for representing position infor-

mation, and the other is for separating the adjacent

position patterns. Accordingly, the size of each po-

sition pattern is relatively larger than that of other

technologies, and thus the position accuracy may be

low(Kenji, 2006). On the other hand, the position

pattern suggested by authors has the different encod-

ing mechanism and the different method of repre-

senting encoded value into the pattern(Lee and Park,

2006). The encoding value is drawn by a kind of short

line which is often described with two closely-spaced

dots. An example of our position pattern is shown

in Fig 3(c). The generation of our position pattern is

based on the stochastic error reduction to escape the

appearance of the same pattern. The position pattern

described can be printed onto any surfaces such pa-

pers, plastic sheets, and glass plates.

BI-DIRECTIONALEDUCATIONSYSTEMBASEDONPOSITIONPATTERNTECHNOLOGY

213

(a) Anoto’s pattern.

(b) Yoshida Kengi’s pattern.

Figure 3: Position-coded patterns.

2.2 Digital Pen

The position information is decoded from the cap-

tured image via the digital image processing algo-

rithm. For doing this, the image of position patterns

observed below the pen tip of the pen is captured by

a CMOS image sensor embedded in the digital pen.

Since the position information is repeatedly extracted

from the captured images 100 times per second, the

Figure 4: Smart paper with position pattern.

Figure 5: Smart paper with hot spots supporting the direct

controllability of a program.

recognized trajectory of the pen is nearly identical to

the shape of the handwriting. Commercially available

digital pens usually use Bluetooth communication be-

tween a digital pen and computer, by which real-time

handwriting can be transimitted to computer.

2.3 Smart Paper

The position pattern described in the previous sec-

tion is a useful technology to recognize a sophisticate

movement of a pen. A smart paper is a normal pa-

per with position pattern printed. Because each dot,

the constituent of the pattern, is very small (approx-

imately 80µm), the position pattern printed is nearly

invisible. Thanks to the invisibility, the natural hand-

writing is possible. Figure 4 shows the concept of

smart paper and its usage.

Besides supporting the mere handwriting capa-

bility, pattern on a smart paper can be used to de-

ﬁne a certain area as a special hotspots with which

menus, page navigation, and hyperlinks are easily im-

plemented as shown in Figure 5.

CSEDU2012-4thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

214

Figure 6: Handwriting with IWB and smartpad.

2.4 Interactive Whiteboard

Normal IWB requires a sensor to capture handwriting

on it. Sensors for IWB includes touchscreen panel,

ultra-sonic, infra-red light beam, or camera sensors.

Since the accuracy of these sensors is very limited,

however, details of handwriting are very hard to cap-

ture.

The position pattern can be used for IWB as well.

If the whole area of IWB is printed with huge number

of these position patterns, the writing trajectory of the

handwriting on the surface of IWB can be accurately

recognized and projected on the whiteboard surface

via beam projector. This IWB based on a position pat-

tern provides a high precision of position recognition

and prompt speed compared to other IWB sensors.

3 INTERACTIVE EDUCATION

In the previous sections, three devices such as digi-

tal pen, smart paper, and IWB using a position pat-

tern, are introduced. By combining these three, an

interactive education is possible. In Figure 1, smart

paper and IWB are used altogether. Teacher uses an

IWB and a textbook based on a smart paper(called

smart book) and students use smart book or smart

notepad for handwriting. The handwriting on either

IWB or smart paper by a teacher and students can

be shown simultaneously on IWB and shared by all

participants. This means the bi-directional interactive

education between a teacher and students is possible

using position pattern technology, which is almost im-

possible using a normal IWB and smartpads. Using

multiple pens enables computer supported collabora-

tive learning(CSCL) in a classroom as well.

The smart paper can also be used with smartpad.

The shortcoming of smartpad such as iPad is that

handwriting is almost impossible. However, since the

handwriting on a smart paper can be also shown in

smartpad as well as IWB, more natural handwriting

script by a student can be shared as shown in Figure 6.

A special test paper for taking an exam during class

can be easily prepared with just printing the content

image including some test questions on the special

paper via a normal printer. If one student solves the

test question printed on the special test paper with his

digital pen directly, the process of solving the ques-

tion will be recognized in real time and the recognized

result will be displayed to IWB and/or the screen of

his smartpad as shown in Figure 6. After solving the

question, teacher can correct the mistake of the stu-

dent and also evaluate the solving result. In particu-

lar, this interactivity would be very useful for teaching

mathematics.

Beyond a simple handwriting pad, a smart paper

can be used as more interactive and reactive tool. Fig-

ure 5 shows the reactive usage of a smart paper on

which any hyperlink, menu hotkeys, and papge navi-

gation are printed. Students using this reactive smart

paper as well as a teacher using an IWB can par-

ticipate a more interactive and bi-directional enduca-

tional environment. Futhermore, a multimodal doc-

ument generation framework enables a sophisticated

multi-accessable envrionment in a classroom(Tsonos

and Kouroupetroglou, 2008).

This concept of interactive education can be ex-

panded to cyber space over the Internet. Figure 7

shows a concept of interactive education for a dis-

tance learning over the Internet. Teacher’s writing on

an IWB and students’ writing on a smart paper can be

shown on a IWB simultaneously and shared by others.

Specially, a smart mobile devices with a high speed

network capability get rid of the geographical limita-

tion nowadays. Even current distance learning sys-

tem supports on-line chatting and video sharing fea-

ture, natural handwriting is not supported but it is very

important factor in many educational ﬁelds including

mathematics, science, architect, design, and etc. The

higher level of the computer supported collaborative

learning(CSCL) and work(CSCW) are also possible

using a smart paper and IWB.

4 CONCLUSIONS

This paper introduces a bi-directional interactive ed-

ucation system that can be used either in a classroom

or cyber-space over the Internet. The proposed ed-

ucational system consists of an IWB, digital pens,

and smart-papers that are based on the position pat-

tern with which capturing the details of handwriting

is possible. Within the proposed system, teachers and

students can communicate interactively using an IWB

BI-DIRECTIONALEDUCATIONSYSTEMBASEDONPOSITIONPATTERNTECHNOLOGY

215

Figure 7: Online interactive education.

and smart papers, respectively. This interactive edu-

cation concept can apply to the computer supported

collaborative learning (CSCL) for a distance-learning

over the Internet and will be very useful for helping

the convenient education of the disabled students in

particular.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper is partially suppported by the research

grant of Inha Unversity, Korea. Authors also thank

to Pen Laboratory Inc. (http://www.penlab.co.kr) and

Easy Systems Inc. (http://www.easy.co.kr) for their

support to review their electric pen, Interactive White-

board(IWB), smart paper, and HandiPDF software.

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