M2Learn Framework released! A framework to improve new mobile learning development

Recently I released the code of the framework where I've been working on during last months: M2Learn.
You can find the open collaborative platform here: http://code.google.com/p/m2learn/

Please feel free to download, participate, collaborate, ask and suggest! Here you can find a brief summary:


The M2Learn framework is designed to address the requirements analysed in the previous chapter, regarding user-centric media (social networking; ubiquity; personalization; and interoperability); Future Internet; Education; and Digital Ecosystems. The framework offers an open API that helps developers to easily create new mobile applications with these features. From the scalability and reusability points of view, the framework supports plug-and-play configuration thanks to the use of standards, and definition of public interfaces. This feature allows adding new services to the environment without changing the software.

Regarding user-centric media, the framework is focused on user-driven collaboration and communication by supporting the inclusion of multimedia content in wikis, blogs, chats, and forums supported by existing e-learning platforms. It also supports participation in mobile social (learning-oriented) communities, thanks to its interaction with e-learning platforms and location technologies, promoting the called Internet by and for People and theP3 social networking (People-People-Place).

This concept is empowered by its ubiquity and pervasive features, which provide easy access to sensors and multi-modal interfaces (e.g. accelerometers), improving student engagement in content and activities; invisible management of location-based technologies (e.g. GPS, cell towers-triangulation, WiFi?); and support for the Internet of Things integrating a module that manages an RFID reader, All the data from these sensors and devices is gathered to compile the user’s context. This context is complemented by the access to services devoted to translate IDs or latitude and longitude coordinates into a name of area (e.g. room, building, street, city, and country), and associating it to services, or contents. All this contextual information can be also used to simplify the development of augmented reality applications, as a developer only needs to use the provided API (location+motion), and add the information that wants to mashup in the images from the camera.

All this contextual information (e.g. location, moment, profile, schedule, people around him/her, or preferences) is used to support the Internet of Services and the Internet of Knowledge, personalizing the access to content and services according to user’s context. Thus, the framework integrates modules for content and service discovery depending on spatial and temporal variables (associating resources to moments and places); personalized context-aware search results; and integration of mainstream and social media through the support of data feeds (RSS).

As a Future Internet cannot be conceived as an isolated application, but as a live ecosystem of both services and users, the framework is designed to serve as a leaven to the coexistence of multiple users that interact, collaborate and communicate with each other, giving rise to global value-added applications that mind the group’s context. In addition, the framework allows the creation of mashups by offering the users’ contextual information through an external service that.

Regarding educational requirements, the M2Learn framework gives support for some fundamental e-learning standards, such as LOM for Learning Objects, and IMS-QTI for assessment. In addition, it interacts with existing services in e-learning platforms (currently Moodle), such as calendar, chat, forum, blog, assignment, and wiki. It also supports integration of logs from external applications to put together in the e-learning platform the whole student’s e-portfolio, no matter if the educational experience comes from a mobile application, a game, or from the own e-learning platform.