MCPresenter: A mobile tool supporting various collaborative learning practices in the classroom

Computers have been used to present a wide variety of digital learning material. However, most of the times computers are used for presenting learning material in a linear, pre-arranged sequence, using a one-to-many communication model between teacher and students. This single-speaker paradigm limits the students' participation and hinders the interaction with the teacher. The teacher is unable to properly assess the students' knowledge in order to give proper feedback and/or adapt the teaching style and content to the class. We propose a system that runs on PDAs and tablet-PCs having a human-computer interaction model based on gestures and free-hand sketching. The system functionalities allow the teacher to easily create presentation objects and decide the order in which they will be presented to the students and create problems which the students have to solve on the fly during the presentation. It also allows the teacher to manage permissions in order to allow students to annotate the learning material being presented. The collaborative annotation of the learning material scaffolds the teacher-student and student-student interactions.