Selected Papers from the Kaleidoscope Convergence Workshop

To foster synergy between research on collaborative, mobile and inquiry learning and between different scientific and methodological perspectives (namely, educational design, psychology and computer science) and to strengthen the cohesion of the community, the Kaleidoscope network has decided to organise a “Convergence Workshop” in conjunction with the 2006 Contractors' General Assembly in Amsterdam, Dec. 4-6. The two fields of collaborative and inquiry learning have been represented in the network as Special Interest Groups from the beginning. Mobile learning was established more recently as an initiative. The three themes actually complement each other in that collaborative learning focuses on a general modality of learning which is not particularly related to a specific content or domain, whereas inquiry learning does indeed come with a specific domain focus in the areas of science, mathematics and technology. Mobile learning takes up the potential of a new generation of networked interactive and communicative devices. We though this complementarity it would be a good precondition for synergy, but of course we also hope for wider synergies, e.g. with learning at work or AI in education, in the future. In accordance with the idea of stimulating synergy in the network, workshop contributions were sought from within Kaleidoscope in the categories of full paper presentations, young researcher papers and system demos or interactive presentations. Integration of at least two of the three fields of technology enhanced learning as well as multiple methodological perspectives were required for each single paper to be accepted. This collection comprises the five papers that have been selected for publication and for presentation at the workshop in a peer reviewing process. Two of the selected papers are in full paper category (Walker and Bourdeau et al.), one is a young researcher paper (Niramitranon et al.) and two describe system demos (van Joolingen and Bollen et al.). We hope that these presentations at the Convergence Workshop will indeed promote integration and synergy between different lines of research and thus contribute to the advancement and sustainability of the Kaleidoscope network. The Convergence Workshop Task Force