Discovery Demos: get in touch with the future of learning

Image: MyMachine

‘Dream machine’ robots created by children, powerful learning clips that are engaging and motivating students and tools to develop your non-verbal communication skills for public speaking – these are just a few of the cutting-edge solutions and breakthrough materials that you can ‘discover’ at this year’s ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN.

The OEB Discovery Demos will be an interactive show and tell of the latest ICT and learning projects and products. Amongst them will be MyMachine, a project that encourages children to let their imaginations run wild with thoughts of their dream robot. With help from higher education students, secondary tech schools and participating companies these robotic creatures are brought to life.

This is a multi-layered learning experience that connects early learners to industry, and involves students from various levels of education. It has been described as “an extraordinary example of implementing and promoting creativity in education”, and has won several awards including the 2009 World Summit award for best project worldwide using e-content and e-tools to promote creativity in education.

Then there’s Metalogue, a dialogue system with metacognitive capabilities created to help develop non-verbal communication skills. With funding from the European Commission, Metalogue can be used in social educational contexts for training young entrepreneurs and active citizens – for example the European Youth Parliament – or in a business education context for training call centre employees to better handle their customers.

Involved in the project is computer scientist Jan Schneider, who joined the Open University as a PhD candidate in 2013, and started working in the new learning experiences group of the technology-enhanced learning programme. He will be available to shed more light on the research and how Metalogue – dubbed the ‘presentation trainer’ – uses sensors to support complex learning activities.

You can also learn how to revamp your old learning materials by simply uploading them on your ipad and letting the Explain Everything app do the rest.

See how this tool, with its multiple functions, mixes old materials with brand new videos to create fresh and engaging learning clips and tutorials.

Stills from Explain Everything

Other tools on display will include the NHS ePortfolio, the dynamic mobile assessment platform being used by tens of thousands of health professionals; INTUITEL, an intelligent tutoring system that adapts itself to the needs of any learner; the Oculus Rift and more.

Find out more about the exciting projects you can get up-close with during the OEB Discovery Demos here. The demos will take place on Thursday, December 4, 14:15 – 16:45.