Exploiting Linked Open Data for supporting mobile learning experiences

In this paper we present MeLOD, a mobile learning environment which exploits the huge amount of dataset in the Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud to provide contextualized and updated information based on students' location. The position of the student, sent by the mobile device, is used to interlink Geonames, DBpedia and Europeana datasets in order to provide information about all the cultural heritage sites close to the student. One of the advantages of using LOD datasets as the knowledge base (KB) of the system, is that new datasets can be easily interconnected to the existing KB. From a pedagogical point of view the MeLOD environment has been designed with the aim of supporting: a) personalized learning experiences, since students can select their preferences related to language, categories of interest and preferred media type to experience a unique learning journey; b) location based learning, by providing geo-located information depending on the mobile learners localization and by exploiting the Linked Open Data capabilities; c) social learning activities by making explicit the ties between the students profile and their interactions with peers and learning material. Data regarding the cultural heritage visited by each student, the educational materials accessed by him/her, the votes and comments published by the learners, provide feedback to teachers and can provide recommendations for next students' visits. From a technical point of view the MeLOD environment is composed by two main modules: a mobile application, with a friendly user interface, that shows the information to the students during their visit, and a set of web services that elaborate the requests coming from the mobile application to provide interlinked information from different open datasets. A prototype of the MeLOD mobile application has been developed for iOS devices and it is available for free on the Apple Store. More information about the environment are available at: http://melod.pa.itd.cnr.it/.