Networked Interactive Media In Schools

Delivery of the second prototype, material, applications, documentation, lesson suggestions for teachers
Deliverable 4.4, ESE project NIMIS, No. 29301

Public NIMIS project report 4.1. Copyright by (in alphabetic order) Paul Brna, Bridget Cooper, Ulrich Hoppe, Andreas Lingnau, Isabel Machado, Alexandre Martins, Ana Paiva, Rui Prada, Frank Tewissen. Contributions by Ana Boto, Keith Holder, Marc Jansen, Christian Schfer, Liana Razmerita. Special thanks to Petra Etgen, Sally Freytag, Ilona Gates, Andrew Kellington, Fatima Neves, Bill Rudling, Kevin Stevenson, Claudia Tewissen. Further support and co-operation by Val Ashdown, Dawn Liversidge, Beate Pauwels, Dieter Peters, John Self.

Introduction
This Deliverable is part of Workpackage 4 (WP4) of the Esprit i3 ESE NIMIS Project No 29301. It is a continuation of Deliverable 4.3 and describes delivery of the second prototype. With respect to the goal of "rapid prototyping" and "participatory design" this Deliverable presents a kind of snapshot of the current NIMIS environment which will be under development until August 2000. Since the first prototype, the most significant progress has been made in the field of the three explicit applications Trrific Tales, Teatrix and Todays Talking Typewriter, T3 which are now stable for everyday usage in the classroom. Tools for the teachers have been developed to support the administration and supervision of classroom activities.

Pupils' applications
Teatrix
The design of the Teatrix application was based on the set of experiences run in O Nosso Sonho and from the results obtained a three-phased application was developed. These three phases were developed by taking in account not only the results obtained from the experiences but also by following the concepts associated with theatre. The three phases are strongly connected with the ritual associated with theatre performances: the backstage where the setting of the play takes place; on stage where the performance occurs; and, the audience where the public watches the performance. To better explain the development of the several phases and also to describe the functionality of each component, the user interface will be presented next. When starting the Teatrix application the following screen is presented to each child (see Fig. 1):

Fig. 1 Initial screen of Teatrix

From this screen, children have the following choices:

The Backstage: Through this option the child can prepare a new story and save it to future performances.

On Stage: Children can collaborative or individually create the story by acting.

The Audience: Children can assist to the performances that have been previously performed and they also have the possibility to write about it.

In the current version installed in O Nosso Sonho, the third phase is not yet completely implemented. In the following sections each of the phases will be described in more detail.

The Backstage
In this phase one of the children or even the teacher has the possibility to prepare or to set up a story for future performances. The setting up of a play or story is nothing more than specifying the story initial situation. When entering the Backstage option the user is given three choices: (1) the stage;(2) the cast and (3) information. Because there is no pre-defined order for the setting up of a story, the user has these 3 options always available. Lets analyse some of the details of the user-interface associated with this option:

Working Area
List of Items
Available Choices inside of the Backstage option

Fig. 2 General areas in the Backstage Phase The Backstage presents three different areas in all its screens, and by this provides the user with a consistent interface and makes the user interaction with the system much more easy and intuitive. The list of items available is used for several different functionality: for displaying all the scenarios; all the props; all the characters; all the characters of the cast, etc, but its physical representation (a scrollbar) and its

manipulation and way of interaction remains the same. So, the user just has to pick an item from the scrollbar and drag it to the working area or into other item (for example: dragging a prop into a scenario). The content of the list of items can be changed by just clicking on the selecting tabs (see Fig. 3). The selecting tabs are identified by the type of the list elements.

Fig. 3 Selecting Tabs The third area available is the other buttons, which give access to the other choices inside of the Backstage phase. For example, if we are in the option stage, this area will have the buttons for the cast and information options. In this area will be displayed not only the buttons but also a textual meaning associated with that buttons. This textual representation is only visible when the mouse is over a particular button. So, to start the setting up of the story, the user (child or teacher) can follow the following steps: Choosing the scenarios for the story The child chooses to start by picking the scenarios for his/her play. For picking and selecting the scenarios, children can simply do it by using the drag and drop facilities (see Fig. 4). Chosen Scenarios

Available Scenarios

Fig. 4 Backstage (Scenarios) When dragging a scenario to the working area the small square that stands for a specific scenario displays some small red circles that indicate how many exits exist in that scenario.

Example: This square stands for the Inside of the witchs house (the description is also displayed via tooltip). In this case one unique small red circle is displayed, which means that there is only one way of exiting from the witchs house. In order to establish the path between the scenarios, the child in control of the preparation must connect the different scenarios (by dragging a line between the small red circles of two scenarios).

Choosing the props for the story The choice of the props for each scenario is also done by dragging the selected prop, from the list of props available, into a particular scenario (see the following figure).

Dragging the prop cage to scenario

Fig. 5 Backstage (Props) The information about which props are present in the scenario is given through the display of a tooltip and visually by the attaching the icon to the square that represents the scenario (this icon just indicates that there are some props in that scenario). Choosing the cast of the story After having chosen the scenarios and the props the only thing that it is missing is the cast of the story. In order to choose the cast the child has to click on the cast button ( ) and the following screen appears:

Information about character (information area)

Cast of this story (cast

Available Character s

Roles

Stage Button Fig. 6 Backstage (Cast) To select the characters for that particular story the child has to drag the characters that s/he wants into the cast area. For example, a child can choose to have a girl, a boy and a witch or she can even choose 3 witches for her/his cast because the number and type of characters is not limited or pre-defined. After choosing the cast, the child has also the possibility to assign a name and a role to it. The action of assigning a role to a character is very important because it specifies the behaviour and goals of that character throughout the story creation process. If the child does not allocate a role to all characters, the system will do it internally. Optionally, the child can also attribute a name to her/his character by writing it in the name field of the information area. Placing the characters in the initial situation After having established the cast for the story, the author of the setting must also place the characters in their initial geographical position, i.e., placing each character in the scenario where it should be in the beginning of the story performance. To do this the child should click the stage button, present in the previous screen (see Fig. 6), in order to go back to the stage screen. In this screen the child should select the characters list (by clicking on the selection tabs) and after to drag the characters into the respective scenarios (the drag and drop procedure is the same of placing props in the scenarios). The information about which characters are present in the scenario is given through the display of a tooltip and visually by attaching the icon to the square that represents the scenario (as in the case of the props, this icon just indicates that there is at least one character on that scenario).

Naming the story and describing the initial situation The third option of the Backstage phase is the introduction of the written description of the story and to enter this information the user just has to click

on the info button ( ) present either in the stage or cast screens, to go to the information screen (see Fig. 7).

Name Field
Field for the initial situation description

Authors Name

Fig. 7 Backstage (Information) In this option the user has the possibility to enter the following data: the name of the story, the description of the initial situation and also the authors of such setting.

On Stage
Once the initial set up is done, children can then play the prepared story. Note that one story set-up can be used for creating many different stories. The set up only defines the initial situation, the characters and the scenarios, and it is not difficult to see that from the same starting point (even with the same scenarios) several stories may emerge. This story creation module is a multi-user module where several children can work together on the same story giving life to the characters. A child may have two roles in this phase: to be the owner of the story or just be one of its players. The owner is the one who took the initiative of the story creation and can also act as the director of the play. S/he chooses the story s/he wants to create from the set of stored set-ups and then waits for other children to join in. All children working in their desks are then notified of the story creation initiative taken by that child. They can join in and choose which character they want to perform (see Fig. 8). The owner sees every character that is being chosen and has the power to start the story performance. Conflicts may arise in the choice of the characters and thus, a negotiation process may be needed.

Fig. 8 On Stage (Choice of a character) When everything is ready, the curtains open. The initial situation is narrated Once long ago, at the edge of a great forest, there lived a poor woodcutter with his wife and two children. The boy was called Hansel and the girl Gretel. A three-dimensional representation of the story world will appear and each child has a view of her/his characters scenario. The child can control her/his character by choosing a specific action from a set of defined actions. This set can change according to the characters type and role. All characters that were not chosen by any child that are needed for the pre-defined story are system controlled and act in a goal oriented manner based on their role. For example, a villain will have the major goal to harm the hero. The children can interact with each other, by means of their characters, being able to talk to the others, or perform actions in the world using the objects that will affect the others. The ability of speech is achieved through the use of a text to speech tool. Fig. 9 shows a scene in a forest with a witch, a girl and a big cooking pot. The wicked witch is following the little girl. The story emerges from the actions of the characters and their interactions. However, not all interactions lead to a coherent story. Thus, to support the achievement of a coherent structure in the performance, guaranteeing that the characters perform according to their roles a director may be put in charge (see Deliverable 5.2 for more details about the type of agents in Teatrix). When the story is considered finished, usually by the director (can also be finished by some children giving up), it will be stored for future replay or writing.

Fig. 9 On Stage (Story Performance or Acting)

The Audience
As has been said before, this phase is not yet completely implemented but its main objective is to give the possibility to the children to re-watch the performances that they have done whenever they want and to provide them also with the means to write about those performances. A detailed description will be given with the final prototype.

Trrific Tales
Glusburn has now had the full NIMIS classroom, as planned, in place for six months and it is used on a daily basis - often for as much as five hours per day and for uses throughout the curriculum as well as being used specifically to develop literacy. The teachers have found the NIMIS system invaluable and have now used the entire system peripherals such as the scanner and digital camera. The giant touch screen and computer network has proved very popular with both staff and children. The classroom is integrated constantly into normal everyday use and is also used by other children at times and for staff for ICT training. The NIMIS desktop and the prototype of the story-writing software, 'T'rrific Tales were installed in November 1999. The children are able to use the desktop very easily and are very excited by the story-writing software and have already produced collaborative stories on it. They are finding the software very easy to use, even in its present unfinished form although it will be much more supportive as other functionality is added. Observation of teaching sessions, including the use of videorecordings, ensure constant feedback for the developers in order to extend and improve the software. Word banks and speech synthesis are currently being added to the latest version of the T'rrific Tales and these are to be followed by agent support.

Teaching ideas for T'rrific Tales

This application used within the NIMIS classroom will be flexible enough to be used for a wide range of approaches to creative writing , of both a collaborative and individual nature. Its basic design supports story writing, but it is also flexible enough to be used for other forms of creative writing such as poetry and descriptive writing and we can already envisage the same software being used for a range of other purposes from the teaching of Maths to Modern Foreign Languages and a number of people have expressed interest in the software for these purposes. The suggestions below however will concentrate on the story-writing aspect for the present. There will eventually be an in-built facility to play and read an old story, sequence a story, change a story, help a character write a story, and write a totally new story. All these activities can be done in pairs, groups with the whole class working together or individually. These different levels of structure and choice are designed to support learners with a range of attainment levels, as found within the typical primary classroom and already provide a range of activities which can be done with minimal teacher support. Aimed primarily at the needs of a Yr 1 class in the UK, who are just beginning to develop their writing skills alongside their reading skills, the T'rrific Tales application will nevertheless be very versatile and will be also usable by older students of different levels of attainment. The software and the classroom in combination, maximise support of all kinds, including peer support through collaborative writing facilities, computer support through sympathetic intelligent agents and on-line writing support, thus freeing more time for quality teacher support.

The participant design methodology used by NIMIS means that the teachers and pupils, have been involved throughout the design of the classroom and the software with the aim of producing a high quality system which both meets needs and supports good practice. Teachers and children have expressed their understanding of the story-writing process and outlined the kind of support, which they feel would enhance that process. Teachers have envisaged how they might use the software in the classroom before it was created and also supplied many ideas for how the software, now installed, might be used in class. With the younger, more egocentric children they felt that more teacher intervention would be needed for collaborative sessions. It was felt that different degrees of structure combined with clear goals, such as presenting their work to others would provide both support and motivation to ensure a high degree of motivation and attainment. Many of the suggestions below are extensions of practices, which might sometimes be used in class already. However within the new classroom and using the support of the new software, a much wider range of interaction between pupils and system is possible, allowing a multitude of creative ways of writing stories together. The large touch screen facility provides an excellent display area, which can be used for collaborative group work of all kinds and the collaborative areas in the software mean children can share ideas/stories at almost any stage of creation. Many of the suggestions below could be adapted to work with large or small groups, pairs or individually. Many of these activities, because they involve sharing and discussing ideas and style in stories could be described as having 'writing conferences' embedded in their structure. The activities also aim to support and extend creative attitudes to writing, both by using the possibilities for the juxtaposition of the everyday and fantasy elements embedded in the software itself, but also by playing imaginatively with story creation and by bringing shared understanding to bear on the enhancement and extension of creative writing skills. Doubtless teachers will conceive of many other ways of using this software once they have used it more and experimented with its flexibility, the list below is simply a starting point of suggestions, which may well be extended in the final report.

Suggestions: 1. Whole class activities:

Story in a round: Round the class - teacher or pupil starts off exciting/funny opening or traditional opening -or something pre-prepared . Each child can add a sentence to the story either by typing it themselves or with the help of others and the software support. The children can then read the finished story together, print it off -make it into a class book, display and read it for another class or take it home - whatever. Problem story: Teacher creates a story, which has a weak aspect, eg no adjectives, no ending, missing section. They read it out together a and teacher asks if the children can spot something in this story that doesn't sound so good?/or is missing? They then have to suggest and add improvements/additions to make it into a really good story. This allows for discussion and reflection about what constitutes a good story.

Change a story: In the same way the children could be asked to change a pre-written story -make it funny or sad or alter the ending or change the character of the hero/heroine , change the settings. What they didn't say? Class read a created story with narrative and speech bubbles and then the teacher asks the children to add thought bubbles - but what were they thinking -were they thinking something very different to what they were saying.? Eg: Cinderella says,' Of course I will get you tea for you sister' but thinks.You are so selfish and lazy -I can't believe it. Missing words/sounds: Create a story with just pictures and then ask children to tell it together -add sound effects, dialogue and exciting narrative rather than use speech synthesis. Missing pictures: Teacher creates text with no pictures and the children read it/ take it in turns to create pictures to go with the story - print it off. Missing bits: A story is partially created and children have to complete it - this could be to add the beginning the middle or the end or just one frame. Adding emotion/intonation: A story could be written and read using speech synthesis and the children could be asked how they would make the sound more exciting/interesting using different voices or groups of people and record the sound onto the story. Writing conference: Children present stories they have created to the other children, and as a group they discuss what is good about them, what effect they have on them as readers and how perhaps they might be improved.

2. Group Activities:
Most of the activities listed above could be done in smaller groups with the assistance of an adult: Other group suggestions Each pair has to pick, for example, three characters and two props and pass them to their neighbours via the collaborative space. They have to use this for the basis of a

story. All present stories to each other at the end and explain how they incorporated the items into the story. Each pair chooses one element to put in a story (put on collaborative space -with extra vocabulary if required) and each pair has to write a story using all those elements and then compare them at the end. Children write a beginning - pass it to others who have to write the end or vice versa. Write a story (could just be one frame) take away a key element give to others they have to work out what is missing - pictures or text. A pair write a frame and then pass it on round the table, next pair write next frame, the pair who completes frame three/four/five has to finish story. A pair writes a detailed description of a character. They then pass it to another pair who incorporate it into their story and vice versa. Each pair in a larger group creates a detailed description of one character, which they then pass around and then each pair writes a story incorporating elements of these more in depth characters and share them all at the end. Each pair does a detailed textual observation /description of some landscape /feature (with photograph) and this is then incorporated into a story. The group reads a story together and they stop and hot-seat the characters at any point to help empathise and this could be written up on the collaborative area/big screen to help understand the rest of the story. This could also be done whilst constructing a story in a group to give depth and richness to the characters. Role plays could be carried out before during and after story-writing to add depth to the characters and situation. To encourage experimentation with language for example verbs could be replaced by sorts of fruit, or furniture or clothes eg. the bird banana-ed across the sky and appled on a tree before he blackberried a worm.

3. Paired activities:
Many of the activities described for groups could be done within pairs working together -taking turns to write frames or stories with given characters /settings or props. In addition to this: Pairs can write free choice stories together and present them to others afterwards.

Pairs could write together based on a theme or title in which they have to mix normality with fantasy. The day the witch came to school The day I fell into my story book.. Pairs take an old story and substitute a strange item for one of the more normal items - eg. a shoe for a magic wand and replace it throughout the pictures and text. Pairs have to write a story with an unusual word in it - eg. pancake ten times to make it funny. Pairs could choose a character and then do a detailed description of them and then later incorporate this character and others into a more elaborate story.

4. Individual:
Many of the activities described above could be done individually by pupils, who would get agent and teacher support. Children or the teacher could take pictures with digital camera in small groups and then load them into frames and create a story around their own pictures. They could take pictures for other children and supply them with the pictures to write stories. This could be based around a theme or a title or be the children's free choice. Children could choose their favourite character from a storybook and incorporate them into their own story. Children could put themselves/their best friend in a story and make themselves have lots of adventures etc. Children could take a member of their family and put them in the story. Children could think of their own favourite meal /TV character/colour/ pet/toy/and then incorporate that somehow into a story. Pick out favourite words/expressions from one story and put it into another story. Conclusions: Children have already experimented with some of these activities. Contrary to the teachers original opinions even these very young children were able to work in pairs together to produce stories, even without the support of word-banks and speech synthesis though they had some adult support to replace this and the path was not always smooth. They have already used the collaborative aspect of the software to exchange pictures and text and used the large screen to present their stories.

It becomes clear that using both the in-built cartoons, the children's own created drawings or pictures scanned in or taken with the camera, the software could be easily used, for stimulus for writing poetry as well as prose, for descriptive as well as narrative work and for factual accounts as well as creative writing. It could also be used for multilingual purposes and special needs support. These aspects may all be possibilities for future consideration.

The Trrific Tales application

The functionality of the Trrific Tales application has been extended since the last prototype, which was described in Deliverable 4.3. The basics of story creation by visually dragging story elements to a composer tool and writing textual descriptions in a writing tool have been kept and have now been enhanced in a number of ways. This includes the provision of textual support, in the form of a Wordbank where the children can have a fast and all-in-one access to the words which they use both in everyday school life and also as stated in the guidelines of the National Curriculum for England and Wales. Additionally, communication and data sharing tools were introduced to allow the children to share parts of their work and to collaboratively construct stories. The current state of the application can best be understood by describing the functionality of the different elements that compose the user interface, as shown in Fig. 10. The user interface has been built using the Java Swing set of visual components (package javax.swing). This image depicts the Trrific Tales application window (instance of the JInternalWindow class).

Tools Area

Work Area

Fig. 10 The Trrific Tales window

The Work Area The right-hand side of the window shows us the Work Area, depicted in Fig. 10 with a green bounding box around, and corresponds to the childs workspace for the current frame. In this area we have a customised extension of the media composer tool and the text tool. Additionally, a simple palette of drawing tools, similar to the one existing in the NIMIS application Drawing Tool has been included to allow the pupils to enrich their frame contents with personalised artwork. The textual content (i.e. text labels and text list items) can be dragged to the text area so it can be used by the children in the creation of their story frames. This drag & drop functionality, common to the whole NIMIS project, provides the basics for the manipulation of the Wordbank tool, described later on in this section. The Tools Area A view on the wordbank This area shows the set of tools available for the current activity mode in which the children are engaged in while creating their stories. An activity mode is a set of related activities that can be performed with a given set of tools. The visual arrangement of the functional tools i.e., buttons (JButton class), drop down choice lists (JComboBox class) and standard lists was made to meet the human-computer interface requirements of using both the WACOM tablets and the touch screen, so as to make the application usable by young children. The activity modes provide a structured view on the Wordbank, which itself presents the hierarchical structure shown on Tab. 1. This table shows us a logical view from the Document Type Definition (DTD) of the Wordbank XML files. The left-hand side of the table shows us the names of the structuring elements of the Wordbank. Their definition is shown on the right-hand side.
Element Wordbank StoryThemes Theme Backgrounds Characters Props Speech StoryElement Name Filename Describer thing doing description wordCategories wordCategory word storyIdeas storyIdea phrase Definition (storyThemes, wordCategories, storyIdeas) (theme+) (name, describer, backgrounds, characters, props) (storyElement*) (storyElement*) (storyElement*) (storyElement*) (name, describer, filename, thing+, doing+, description+) (#PCDATA) (#PCDATA) (#PCDATA) (#PCDATA) (#PCDATA) (#PCDATA) (wordCategory+) (name, describer, word+) (#PCDATA) (storyIdea+) (name, describer, phrase+) (#PCDATA)

Tab. 1 The Wordbanks internal structure. The term #PCDATA stands for parsed text.

The choice of a XML-based language to represent the Wordbank in the specifics of this application was supported by two main requirements: 1. Provision and data format compatible with the object-oriented structure of the software in a fast and low-effort fashion; 2. Translation facilitation: Given the multi-language context of the project, a suitable data format should be chosen in order to make the translation between user languages as straightforward as possible. The left-hand side of the window (surrounded by the red bounding box) is the Tool Area, in which the children are presented with the visual tools that enable them to compose their story frame. Due to the newly introduced Wordbank and group work functionality, this area has been structure with the help of a tabbed pane (JTabbedPane class), in which each tab corresponds to a different activity mode (Fig. 11).

Fig. 11 The activity mode tabs Each of these modes will be described in more detail in the following sections. The group tab Collaborative mode In this mode the children have at their disposal sharing tools that allow them to collaboratively create stories or enhance their own work with contributions from the other pupils. These contributions can be any of the resources available for story creation (e.g. bits of text and images). This tabs contents are divided into a Received area, in which the children receive contributions from their partners, and a Give area, which enables them to send images or text to any other child of their choice. The identification of the recipients will be made via the provision of image previews of the current state of the whole story (now depicted in the image as coloured buttons), which will identify the desired story frame to send the contributions to. The pictures tab Composing mode This tab contains the set of tools that allow the children to compose their story frame with pre-set story elements, i.e., characters, props, background images and speech balloons. The story elements are grouped in story themes, each corresponding to a different set of people, images and so forth. A theme can be selected by choosing an item from the themes list (a custom extension of the JList class). By performing that choice, the other visual elements of this tab will be populated with the contents of the chosen theme. A theme is structured into settings, things, speech balloons and people, each containing their set of pictures and descriptive words. Those can be selected by pressing the corresponding buttons in the bottom part of this tab (Fig. 13).

Received

Give

Fig. 12 The group tab

Themes list

Story Elements list

Story Element describer

Story Elements list

Fig. 13 The pictures tab

The words tab Description mode The story elements textual content is not restricted to the name which is presented in the pictures tab, along with that elements image. In this new version of the application the text content has been further structured (according to the DTD in Tab. 1) in doings, things and descriptions. Doings consist of verbs and actions as well as phrases, things to nouns and finally descriptions correspond to adjective or adverbial expressions that can be used within that specific story element context. As an example, Tab. 1 shows us a partial view on the doings associated with the story element Classroom, which happens to be a background image. The selection of the other word categories is made by simply pressing the buttons on the lower part of this tabs page.

Fig. 14 The words tab

Todays Talking Typewriter, T3

The T3 application is in use every day since end of summer holidays in August 1999. Development is still going on since the first tests with pupils in May/June 1999. Every time a new version was installed in the Duisburg school we got feedback from the teachers and the pupils as well. This feedback and the needs for further teaching in the NIMIS classroom were the bases for the development of the T3 (see Deliverable 4.1 & 4.3). The current user interface and functionality is visualised in Fig. 15. In this Deliverable we describe the most important new features and modes of usage.

Fig. 15 T3 user interface

Collaboration in T3
To support collaboration within the T3 application, the writing area is synchronised by means of the MatchMaker software library for coupled objects (see Deliverable 3.1). The users cooperate in shared workspaces based on a replicated software architecture. Collaborative modes are technically introduced by coupling (or

synchronising) multiple application instances at runtime. After multiple design and redesign cycles the first collaborative version of the T3 application is now ready to use. A detailed analysis of children collaborating with T3 is currently going on in the German primary school (see Fig. 16). From a set of possible and reasonable collaboration modes (i.e. distribution of material, roles and goals), we focus on a mode, where the participants may use different material but have intentionally the same goal and role. A common application of this mode is, to split up the necessary material between the participants to induce collaboration.

Fig. 16: Collaboration of two first graders using T3 with a prepared worksheet for free work.

In the T3 experiment that is currently going on, the children write collaboratively in a shared writing area. Therefore the content of the phoneme table is distributed (e.g. one child may keep the consonants while the other one gets the vowels). The children that take part, are familiar with the application and get a very short introduction by the teacher about the collaborative task. Children collaborate in pairs, where one child is the initiator (i.e. that selects the partner by selecting his or her photo within the NIMIS desktop). The initiator gets the current content of the other's writing area, keeps the vowels and loses the consonants. The other child stays with the consonants only. The task of the experiment is to write four words collaboratively. No further instructions are given by the teacher, the children have to get organised on their own. Final results will be presented in Deliverable 6.3. Nevertheless, first observations already show, that most of the children are doing well, i.e. they are not less efficient in terms of correctness and speed compared with their individual work. Especially interesting is the fact that the children have to talk and discuss about words, letters and phonemes. The verbalisation of the needs and thoughts related to the writing might turn out to be the most significant and interesting effect.

Free work support

Free work is one of the main activities in the GGS Kirchstrae in Duisburg. To support these activities in the NIMIS classroom, the teacher can now prepare worksheets for the pupils and place them on the desktop. Technically, a prepared worksheet is a T3 or Composer data object with a background image (see Fig. 15), marked as read-only and placed on the NIMIS desktop. The child opens and edits these data objects as usual. When the application is closed the original worksheet will not be changed but a new data will be created in the pupils personal archive.

Software modules
The following sections describe modules and applications that are new or that have not yet been described in detail in former Deliverables.

Activity Monitor
One important tool for the teacher to control the activities in the NIMIS classroom is the Activity Monitor (see Fig. 17). It provides elements for controlling the Desktop itself (e.g. restart the Desktop on a computer) and provides input facilities for running applications (e.g. enter a word to the T application). Furthermore the Monitor visualises the activities of the pupils at the workplaces. Pictures of children will be shown when they are logged in and active applications will be represented by an icon.

Fig. 17: The NIMIS activity monitor. The Activity Monitor can be run as a standalone application, but normally it will be integrated in the TeacherDesktop, a special version of the NIMIS desktop. The TeacherDesktop gives the teacher access to some more tools, e.g. a tool for the database to add new children to a group. It also provides access to the printserver and the printer queue.

Technical description As shown in Fig. 17 every computer is represented by a background image of the workplace. In the Duisburg classroom there are six tables ordered in three groups. Each table is designed for two children. The following table gives an overview on the Java package monitor: Object
ActivityMonitor

Description

Extends JPanel and is the core component. An instance of this component can be inserted into a JFrame or a JInternalFrame or other components. ApplicationLabel This class represents a running application which is visualised by an icon. An ApplicationLabel will be inserted into a WorkplaceInformationPanel ApplicationPopupMenu A PopupMenu which contains the commands for remote controlling a running application. It appears by a mouse click on a ApplicationLabel. ChildOnHostLabel Represents a child which is logged in on a Desktop. It will be visualised by the image of the child. ChildPopupMenu Similar to ApplicationPopupMenu. It contains the commands for remote control of a logged in child (e.g. log out the child from a Desktop). ClassroomWatchDog A thread running in the background, when the monitor is started. It works like ping to control whether a Desktop is running on a host or not. DesktopRestart This class is used, when the restart command for a remote Desktop is selected in the HostPopupMenu. HostLabel Represents a host in the classroom. The ChildOnHostLabel and the ApplicationLabel will be inserted into the HostLabel. HostPopupMenu Similar to the other PopupMenu. It contains e.g. the restart command for a Desktop. TablePanel Represents a Table. Normally it has a background image with two tables, so internal it is divided into two JPanels. TextPanel For every Desktop a TextPanel is inserted. Here the teacher can type words children want to write and transmit them to the RTW application. WatchDogEvent Used together with the ClassroomWatchDog. WatchDogListener Used together with the ClassroomWatchDog. WorkplaceInformationPanel Represents a Workplace, this means a WacomTablet or the MW Board. Here the ApplicationLabel and the ChildOnHostLabel will be inserted and displayed.

Tab. 2 The objects in the nimis.udui.monitor package

Usage Monitoring is very important to aid the teachers in the classroom. Every pupil, every application and every desktop instance is represented by a visual object. By clicking on these objects popup menus will appear and give access to a list of functions, specific to the underlying object (e.g. restart a Desktop, log out a child or close an application). The teachers are using the ActivityMonitor every day as a facilitator for the technical administration of the classroom.

Hardware environment and interfaces

Classroom Settings at O Nosso Sonho Cooperativa de Ensino
The set up of the school environment in Portugal will now be finished. For the O Nosso Sonho Cooperativa de Ensino the basic classroom infrastructure will consist of the following hardware components: Pupils workstations: 3 x IDE PC, LCD-Graphic Tablets, Keyboards, Loudspeakers and Headphones. Interactive Board 1 x IDE PC for future additional functionality (e.g. taking photos of children, story writing). Central Server: 1 x SCSI PC + Monitor. DIN-A4 Colour Ink Printer, DIN-A4 Colour Scanner. The desks were specially manufactured by a Portuguese company, and they will integrate the Wacom tablets and the speakers. Some special adjustments were also made to prevent the keyboard and the pen from falling.

Identification
For the user identification we have now found a chip-card system which will be evaluated in Duisburg during the next weeks. The chip-card reader can be installed between the keyboard and the computer so it does not require additional hardware installations. The results of the evaluation and the possible final integration of this chip-card reader into the NIMIS environment will be reported in Deliverable 1.4.

Summary
The second prototype presented in this Deliverable is based on the experiences with the first prototype and the results of workpackage 2 (Specification of supportable learning scenarios with associated components and interfaces) and workpackage 3 (Adequate classroom arrangements, integrating hardware components, devices and furniture). The feedback given by the teachers and pupils in Germany, England and Portugal will be considered for the further development. The final prototype including applications, tools and modules will be described in Deliverable 1.4.