ActiveCampus: experiments in community-oriented ubiquitous computing

The continuing proliferation of handheld computing devices offers a new platform for mobile computing applications that could enrich our experience of the world around us. Yet many questions about realizing this vision remain open. We have been investigating these questions at the University of California, San Diego, through the ActiveCampus Project. ActiveCampus explores technologies that can enrich the learning community in the midst of these changes. It explores wireless context-aware computing as a means to enhance the "learning community" experience of a large urban university. We have tested two applications: ActiveClass supports classroom activities, such as asking questions during a lecture, and ActiveCampus Explorer supports context-aware activities, such as instant messaging and location-aware maps annotated with dynamic hyperlinked information.