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The widespread use of computer-based learning environments and the rise of big data have positioned learning analytics as a fundamental component of educational technology. Learning analytics provides methods for capturing and assessing student behaviors. In game-based learning environments, however, the development and integration of learning analytics has not yet reached their full potential. Research thus far has focused on the specification of learning analytics frameworks, implementation of different techniques and methods for the collection of data, and the development of automated assessment tools. Unfortunately, much work overlooks the importance of strategic data collection and therefore risks basing decisions on flawed or incomplete data. In this paper, we present our library that seeks to capture data in the context of a serious game, designed to be compatible with the Experience API (xAPI) and implemented in the Unity 3D game engine. Through this work, we aim to emphasize and extend the use of learning analytics in serious games, simplify the production of data, and record events with educational value.

Teaching is always affected by the advent of technology. Nowadays, mobile devices can offer an air of innovation in classrooms and multiple benefits in learning. On the other hand, IoT is expanding rapidly and promises to provide education with new dynamics: sensors and beacons may contribute to pervasive provision of educational content to students, whereas wearables can track the students' interaction with educational objects. As a result, learning is changing and may happen anywhere, anytime, and with any means. This evolution, described under the term Ubiquitous learning, promises to be the future of education for all ages and needs. This chapter presents the transformation of learning from traditional to e-learning, mobile learning, and Ubiquitous learning, and discusses the features and applications of the latter. Furthermore, authors describe the Experience API specification and investigate how it can be used to implement adaptive learning applications and make Ubiquitous learning a reality not only in typical but also in Early Childhood learning.

Research on the power management of server units and server room spaces can ease the installation of a Data Center, inferring cost reduction, and environmental protection for its operation. This type of research focuses either on the restriction of power consumption of the devices of a data center, or on the minimization of energy exchange between the data center space as a whole and its environment. The work presented here focuses mainly on the latter. In particular, we attempt to estimate the effect that can infer on the energy performance of a data room, various interventions on the structural envelop of the building that hosts the data center. The performance of the data center is evaluated in this work by measuring its PUE index. Our modeling methodology includes the selection of a proper simulation tool for the creation of the digital twin, that is of a digital clone, of our real data center, and then building its thermal model via energy measurements. In this work, the researchers exploit the potential of EnergyPlus software for modelling and simulating the behavior of a data center space. The energy measurements were conducted for a long period, using low cost IoT infrastructure, in the data center space of an Educational building in Heraklion Crete. This paper describes the procedures and the results of this work.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging Internet-based architecture, enabling the exchange of data and services in a global network. With the advent of the Internet of Things, more and more devices are connecting to the Internet in order to help people get and share data or program actions. In this paper, we introduce an IoT Agent, a Web application for monitoring and controlling a smart home remotely. The IoT Agent integrates a chat bot that can understand text or voice commands using natural language processing (NLP). With the use of NLP, home devices are more user-friendly and controlling them is easier, since even when a command or question/command is different from the presets, the system understands the user’s wishes and responds accordingly. Our solution exploits several available Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), namely: the Dialogflow API for the efficient integration of NLP to our IoT system, the Web Speech API for enriching user experience with voice recognition and synthesis features, MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) for the lightweight control of actuators and Firebase for dynamic data storage. This is the most significant innovation it brings: the integration of several third-party APIs and open source technologies into one mash-up, highlighting how a new IoT application can be built today using a multi-tier architecture. We believe that such a tiered architecture can be very useful for the rapid development of smart home applications.

In eLearning context searching for suitable educational material is still a challenging issue. During the last two decades, various digital repositories, such as Learning Object Repositories, institutional repositories and latterly Open Educational Resources, have been developed to accommodate collections of learning material that can be used for instructive and research purposes. In order to make this learning material publicly available through internet searching mechanisms, it has to be enriched with metadata. Nowadays, emerging Web 3.0 applications necessitate further enhancing learning resources with semantic knowledge to facilitate conceptually searching. Adding semantic value to educational resources could be achieved by modeling ontologically the metadata profile which describes them. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate the process of enhancing semantically learning resources by developing a new ontology and a prototype system to accommodate them. The designed ontology is originated from a metadata profile which is build according to the guidelines posed by Singapore Framework for Dublin Core Application Profiles. We focus on educational material for teaching courses on Informatics in primary and secondary education in Greece but the methodology and mechanism introduced could be easily adapted in any domain-specific setting.

Experience API (xAPI), the evolution of SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) in e-learning content specifications, stably gains ground in education, defense and training. In this paper we shortly describe the xAPI specification, compare it to its predecessor, the SCORM, and present our novel, Pervasive Learning System, which exploits the features offered by xAPI. Our implementation provides adapted learning content to the user according to his past activities, which are monitored via xAPI. Furthermore, our system provides the course instructor with a Dashboard and several powerful Learning Analytics. The latter offer insights into the learner‘s use of the course, average scores, actions performed and so on. Our Learning System does not involve the deployment of any Learning Management System. It is a flexible integrated system that may track and monitor the actions of users without the implication of external applications, whereas the statements may origin from diverse, scattered platforms.

Recent research has shown that the systematic involvement of a person with games, which are designated to exercise memory and concentration, contributes to the long-term preservation of the human memory and therefore leads to the prevention of dementia. Our work seeks to capitalize on the positive effects of serious games’ use in a variety of ways. In particular, we provide insights into the design and development process of two serious games dedicated to being used by elderly people with dementia. In their context, we also elaborate on the basic elements of a novel web-oriented platform, namely GARDINER (Games plAtform foR minD traIning aNd mEmory peRk), aimed at making available various memory games which may have been crafted by various sources. Finally, some empirical data derived from the use of our platform and games in practice is provided.

Current research argues that eLearning and mobile learning are forms of learning that could take place outside the classroom and the traditional learning environments. In addition, recent advancement in technology and increased use of smart devices permit students to carry with them a kind of portable smart device. Inevitably, sooner or later, these devices will become integral educational tools, such as pencils and books, while learning outside the classroom will continue to gain popularity as another form of learning. Ubiquitous learning aims to stimulate the wide use of ICT in Education and the enactment of autonomous digital resources for Outdoor learning. Technology could provide innovative ways of conducting outdoor courses, encompassing knowledge and physical activity. This paper presents the eClass-Pi system that facilitates outside the classroom eLearning and m-learning educational processes. It provides all the functionalities of a typical Learning Management Systems as well as synchronous and asynchronous teaching, portability and energy autonomy.

With the evolution of e-learning and its transformation into mobile learning, SCORM fails to keep up with learner’s need to discover knowledge through multiple and diverse sources. ADL’s Experience API (xAPI) fills this gap and offers a novel and flexible way to keep track of a learner’s activities and progress. In this paper, the xAPI and the concept behind it are shortly discussed, a brief comparison with SCORM is attempted and an innovative implementation of an adaptive LMS-free learning system with the use of xAPI is presented.

Games in education have always been a tool for increasing motivation and interest of learners. We present Location-Based Games (LBG) as a tool to involve and motivate students in the learning process. LBGs require the player to move around in order to complete a task and proceed in the storyline and use localization technology such as Global Positioning System (GPS). LBGs are built on physical worlds, while virtual world augmentations enable the interaction of physical and other related (cultural, historical etc.) data with the player. Augmented reality (AR) is used to provide this extra layer with 3D objects, avatars and animations for player’s interaction. In our paper we present a history learning LBG with the use of augmented reality in the form of 3D objects. We explore the concept, of having both virtual and physical worlds available within the same visual display environment.

The great development of technology recently provides innovations that improve everyday life. The major benefit of it is that medicine is also affected, so better healthcare can be provided. In that context, it can be critical for patients who suffer from chronic heart diseases to have in their availability a system that can monitor and analyse their electrocardiogram (ECG) displaying either normal or abnormal findings. The current chapter describes such a system that uploads, stores, processes and displays an ECG, calculating certain ECG findings necessary for doctors to make a diagnosis. To this end, the SANA mobile healthcare platform, with its OpenMRS open source enterprise electronic medical record system, has been chosen and extended in this work for storing, processing and displaying the ECG data. OpenMRS provides a user-friendly interface and a database for collecting medical big data. Analysis of ECG signals is leveraged by the Physionet toolkit. Physionet contains many ECG databases and the WFDB software for processing ECG signals. According to the scenario we have processed, an ECG is uploaded onto OpenMRS platform using a mobile device or any other Internet-enabled device and is stored in the database that OpenMRS uses. Then, ECG signal is filtered using a finite impulse response (FIR) filter to remove noise and using WFDB functions it is processed so certain intervals are determined. Finally, with the appropriate algorithms specific ECG findings are calculated. When the procedure completes, the results are stored into the database using SQL Queries. Using an HTML Form results and graphs are integrated into the OpenMRS website highlighting abnormal values with red color. Authorized users can have access to this information through any web browser.

Today, during the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ which is led by the Internet and the digital ecosystem it creates, schools are expected to achieve the development of not only the functional skills of literacy and numeracy but also of general knowledge. The apparent inadequacy of the standardized education system to respond to the needs and interests of 21st-century students urges researchers to adopt new forms of teaching as meaningful and high-quality teaching requires a more active use of innovative educational methods and tools. With the rapid development of IT globally, there is a tendency to utilize the capabilities of e-learning as a mode of distance learning since itcan function both independently of and in conjunction with conventional teaching. The varied applications of Web 2.0 tools create new possibilities in the educational sector. It provides the ability to develop innovative educational methods that transform students from passive recipients of information to knowledge creators through an active involvement in the learning process often within a modern interactive environment. This study presents the results of the implementation of a teaching intervention, with the use of a flexible and student-centered web system developed and used as complementary to the ‘Research Project’ course during the first term of the 2015-2016 school year. The ultimate goal of this effort was to highlight and consequently incorporate the use of a digital platform for student conferences which we implemented in schools as a means to research, learning, and skill development. The students had the opportunity to participate in a digital community which employed distance learning tools for communication, cooperation, and learning during a digital conference in which they had leading roles as writers and reviewers. The initial results of the pilot study indicated that the use of the digital platform increased the interest of students, supported the development of various skills and contributed to the overall improvement of the teaching and learning process., Today, during the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ which is led by the Internet and the digital ecosystem it creates, schools are expected to achieve the development of not only the functional skills of literacy and numeracy but also of general knowledge. The apparent inadequacy of the standardized education system to respond to the needs and interests of 21st-century students urges researchers to adopt new forms of teaching as meaningful and high-quality teaching requires a more active use of innovative educational methods and tools. With the rapid development of IT globally, there is a tendency to utilize the capabilities of e-learning as a mode of distance learning since it can function both independently of and in conjunction with conventional teaching. The varied applications of Web 2.0 tools create new possibilities in the educational sector. It provides the ability to develop innovative educational methods that transform students from passive recipients of information to knowledge creators through an active involvement in the learning process often within a modern interactive environment. This study presents the results of the implementation of a teaching intervention, with the use of a flexible and student-centered web system developed and used as complementary to the ‘Research Project’ course during the first term of the 2015-2016 school year. The ultimate goal of this effort was to highlight and consequently incorporate the use of a digital platform for student conferences which we implemented in schools as a means to research, learning, and skill development. The students had the opportunity to participate in a digital community which employed distance learning tools for communication, cooperation, and learning during a digital conference in which they had leading roles as writers and reviewers. The initial results of the pilot study indicated that the use of the digital platform increased the interest of students, supported the development of various skills and contributed to the overall improvement of the teaching and learning process.

The identification of fish subjects in controlled underwater environments, such as museum, falls into the category of image processing and recognition problems. An interesting aspect of such problems is that they require real time processing and thus effective processing methods must be evolved for the implementation. Although there have been a lot of approaches that solve the identification problem using specialized methods such as contour identification, recognition of distinctive characteristics, besides others, our team at the Multimedia Content lab of TEI Crete has focused on analyzing the color of still images taken from pools in order to rapidly identify subjects.

Games in education have always been a tool for increasing motivation and interest of learners. We present Location-Based Games (LBG) as a tool to involve and motivate students in the learning process. LBGs require the player to move around in order to complete a task and proceed in the storyline and use localization technology such as Global Positioning System (GPS). LBGs are built on physical worlds, while virtual world augmentations enable the interaction of physical and other related (cultural, historical etc.) data with the player. Augmented reality (AR) is used to provide this extra layer with 3D objects, avatars and animations for player’s interaction. In our paper we present a history learning LBG with the use of augmented reality in the form of 3D objects. We explore the concept, of having both virtual and physical worlds available within the same visual display environment.

We design, implement and evaluate performance of Exantas application which is compatible with Android Operating System Smartphone devices. As Exantas tool was able to show ancients travelers the correct route to follow, we show that our application can help educational staff to improve their skills and evaluate on the fly how efficient is the educational style that they follow. Results can help teachers measure while teaching how much of the lessons content has been successfully absorbed by students and what are the topics that need further analysis or even a completely new explanation approach. Moreover, teachers are now able to perform quickly and without effort, small evaluation tests during their lessons for each student individually and keep tracking of their overall semester performance, concluding in a more extensive, generic and reliable grading system. As experiments show, Exantas is able to reduce teaching efforts and to reveal real lessons comprehension status since teachers can make multiple Questions to all students and receive answers in seconds. Moreover, all queries are processed anonymously ensuring anonymity and integrity since students are not afraid to provide their actual answers when teaching method is evaluated, and individually for each account when students’ performance is checked.

In the forthcoming wireless world of E-healthcare systems, the medical staff should be able to seamlessly access medical services from a variety of terminals while on the go with the same “look and feel” and with highly diverse capabilities (e.g., mobile phones, smartphones, PDAs, laptops, PCs). In that context, the knowledge of terminal capabilities is essential for service provision so users are only offered customized services and content supported by the device they currently use for network access. The challenge is how the mediating application server detects the effective level of capabilities of the requesting devices, so each client receives the requested content in a form that its terminal device can properly present. This contribution focuses on the issue of dynamic adaptation of medical services and content to the terminal capabilities of the requesting device, so with a generic service design all possible client devices can be served.

Managing the IT environment of large organizations such as the Greek School Network is challenging not only due to the complexity, diversity and age of the information processing infrastructure but also due to geographic dispersion and the IT support model. Recently, the Network attempted to follow known practices for IT enterprise management; in order to organize and automate both supervision and intervention it employed centralized system management architectures. This paper records the challenges encountered in order to configure a deployable, high-end enterprise platform for the management of school labs across the Greek School Network. The paper reaches the conclusion that such systems or services are not always straightforward to deploy or scale and discusses alternative directions that can bring general purpose infrastructure management for organisations that cannot benefit from enterprise systems yet are still in need of analogous functionality.

Diagnosis of epilepsy in childhood is often difficult as the symptoms are often atypical and the epilepsy syndromes are multiform. Methods from the domain of artificial intelligence give the opportunity to formalize medical knowledge and standardize various diagnostic procedures in specific domains of medicine. We developed a decision support system using artificial intelligence techniques for the classification and ultimately the diagnosis of epilepsies and epilepsy syndromes in children. The system incorporates knowledge from the International Classification of Epilepsies and Epileptic Syndromes. It was assessed using clinical data and the system's conclusions were compared with the diagnoses proposed by an experienced doctor. The system and the physician reached identical diagnoses in 85.2% of the cases. In an additional 8.2% of the cases, the system's diagnosis was similar to that of the physician, thus raising its overall success rate to 93.4%. The system can be helpful, especially for trainees, since it only needs to import the clinical and laboratory data. Decision making and differential diagnosis are then performed automatically. (J Child Neurol 2002;17:357-363).

Nowadays, the use of Web based Education (WbE) in distance learning education is considered to be an innovative method of learning. Supportive parties argue that WbE renews the educational practice through the use of computers and their applied methodology, as well as the technologies provided by the use of the internet. These result in consciously renewing the educational material and in creating a flexible structure which promotes the individualization of learning. The proposed model aims at delivering technological classes through the internet, offering a flexible use of means and tools, allowing a synthetic presentation of selected bibliographic texts that cover the whole cognitional object, developing a cooperative spirit and individualising the learning procedure.

The participation rates in adult education in Greece are low in comparison with other European countries. Within the framework of the present research an effort has been undertaken in order to evaluate the program of training instructors of adults through distance learning education hosted by the GSAE (General Secretary for Adult Education) and the ICAE (Institute for the Continuing Adult Education) in Greece. Among the most important outcomes of this research was considered to be the positive attitude of the participants concerning the program in general as well as the electronic educational material distributed. Furthermore, the hybrid educational process selected for use by the program was thought to be particularly flexible. As for the programâ??s negative aspects, the main problems noted were the distance certain trainees had to cover in order to participate physically during the scheduled meetings, as well as the technical issues arose within the e-learning environment.