An iPod application was created to provide students with a mobile solution to achieve the following:
- Browse the entire trajectory, with direct access to all activities and task descriptions.
- Answer questions by recording videos, taking photos, and tweeting.
Upon launch, the application connects to MIRACLE’s backend services to download predefined content: the student groups, trajectory menu, questions and associated modes of answering, connections to the Tweet service, and a statistical logging system. Work produced thereafter is sent to the server for storage.
The iPods were available throughout the trajectory, both at the school and at the museum. The interface is depicted in Figure 4:
Figure 4. Ipod menu view.
Depending on menu section, answers can be sent as three different types (see Figure 5):
- Tweets: posted to the OpenFire Tweet service on the server (1,3)
- Pictures: posted to the RESTful service on the server, to be stored in the database (3)
- Videos: posted first to a private YouTube account, with the reference posted to the RESTful service if successful. (3,4)
- All activity on iPods logged automatically for research data analysis. (2)
Figure 5. iPod relations to the various services.