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The apps for drawing are present in our children's life. Nevertheless, little is known about the impact of mobile technology on the freehand drawing educational activity. There are few works which are contextualised within short periods of time, with teachers who are not theirs and, in some cases, outside the children's classroom. In this paper, we are focussed on the use of technology on freehand drawing activity. Thus, we have compared the graphics produced by 4- and 5-year-old children with paper&crayon in comparison with those with tablet-finger. Children made the drawings during a planned free-drawing activity, in their ordinary classrooms, with their teachers and during five sessions. Assessment of drawings has evidenced tablet feasibility for making graphics. Nevertheless, with the passing of time, quality of graphics (tablet-finger vs paper&crayons), are nearly matched, demonstrating the low impact level technology has on this activity. In addition, if drawings are analysed specifically according to ages, results have shown that both groups have to develop adaptation strategies of visual perceptual skills and fine motor skills for the touch screen in order to obtain the same quality in the drawings made on both support types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New possibilities offered by mobile devices for special education students have led to the design of skill acquisition software applications. Advances in mobile technologies development have made progress possible in helping teachers with autistic students modelling and evaluation. "Chain of Words" theoretical basis is the autism inventory known as IDEA (Inventory of Autism Spectrum Disorders). Our application is based on the functional area of communication. Tests carried out in educational institutions using "Chain of Words" have shown that it is an adequate intervention supporting tool for such deficits. In addition, teacher can customize task contents according to each child's characteristics; thus allowing a more personal intervention within the communication field.

Formative feedback is one of the most recognized types of feedback in academics. However, for feedback to be effective it must be task‐specific, immediate, corrective and positive. At present, automatic feedback is far from these characteristics and leaves the instructor as a fundamental agent in the teaching‐learning process of programming. Faced with this scenario, the lecturer needs support tools that help them to give formative feedback in educational scenarios with many students and little time. In this paper, we have demonstrated that, by using a tool called COLMENA, any lecturer may give students effective formative feedback which is task‐specific, immediate and corrective. COLMENA is a system that combines real‐time Eclipse IDE data retrieval on compilation errors and analytical dashboards in a webapp solution for lecturers and students. In this study, two different approaches have been compared, considering two academic courses with and without COLMENA feedback, respectively. The results indicate that novice students receiving feedback from the lecturer via COLMENA reduced their errors, demonstrating that feedback generated from compilation errors is effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a new educational tool that relies on Semantic Web technologies to enhance lessons content. We conducted an experiment with 32 students whose results demonstrate better performance when exposed to our tool in comparison with a plain native tool. Consequently, this prototype opens new possibilities in lessons content enhancement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mobile and game-based learning are novel approaches characterised by the use of mobile devices and enabling learning anywhere and at any time. In this paper, we share an experience-based design and a pilot study to introduce music learning in preschool education. SAMI (Software for music learning in early childhood education) is a mobile application consisting of four games which main objectives are ear training, sound discrimination and music composition. The pilot study carried out in a real-life setting with third-year kindergarten children provides empirical data about music learning outcomes and compares an experimental group of children using SAMI with a control group which follows the traditional Montessori bells method. Our study results reveal a number of key findings for the design of preschool mobile games and the potential of using mobile technologies for music learning in early childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The use of the Internet has been progressively integrated into our daily lives. This has also been true for all levels of education, where virtual learning environments have been the means by which teachers, students and educational institutions managed and distributed educational experiences. However, the present design of these systems make students have difficulties in deploying their meta-cognitive skills, in addition to producing a cognitive overload due to an inadequate content organization and navigation. Thus, it is necessary to provide learning platforms with a process that allows for the adaptation of these systems to students' characteristics, needs and context in order to enhance the teaching-learning process. This paper describes an adaptive model for Learning Management Systems (LMSs) that using variables central to the learning process allows for the application of adaptive rules to the different types of contents and knowledge to be transferred and acquired. In practice, the resulting model allows to develop adaptive courses that support and promote learning and self-regulation in virtual learning environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]