The first Asia-Pacific Regional Workshop on Mobile Computing in Education was held on March 19^th and 20^th in Singapore.  For two days, 40 attendees including 35 from the Asia-Pacific region and 5 from the US discussed and exchanged their research results and experiences in Pen computing in Education.

The purpose of this workshop was to promote mobile computing in education in the Asia Pacific region by showing the latest applications and by observing its actual implementation in education in Singapore; to provide a meeting place for Pen/Ink technology researchers from academia, Microsoft developers of Tablet PC and MSRA researchers, and users of Pen/Ink technology in Education to exchange the wide variation of views and thoughts on Pen/Ink technology in Education; and to share the latest results of research and developments of applications of Pen computing in education. 

Special Features

A major feature of this workshop was the hands-on demos. We prepared 30 Tablet PCs connected to the local network for all attendees.  During the presentations, workshop participants actually ran Pen/Ink applications with instructions by the presenters so that they could experience using educational applications developed by presenters. This kind of experience helped participants understand and share the technology as well as understanding users' view points.

The second feature of the workshop was the visit to Crescent Girls School and a demo session by Huelab at the school. Currently, Microsoft Singapore provides support to establish and operate the Backpack.net center at the National Institute of Education where the center provides support for Singapore public schools to adopt Tablet PCs in class rooms. This year, twenty five schools have created courses utilizing Tablet PCs. Crescent Girls School is the front runner of this Tablet PC-based education; every student owns a Tablet PC and all of the academic classes are taught using Tablet PCs in the class rooms.

So, more than 1000 Tablet PCs are running every day on campus with extensive technical support provided by faculty members and hardware support such as battery charging stations in the hallways of each floor. Heulab is a partner of the Backpack.net program and provide educational software for Tablet PCs. At Crescent Girls School, several applications developed by Heulab are being used.

Workshop participants actually visited two class rooms to see teaching in progress using Tablet PCs, and Heulab CEO, Mr. Rakesh Gupta, demonstrated his company's products for education on Tablet PCs.

Agenda