This document discusses 'inkblog', a pen-based blogging tool designed for e-learning environments that allows users to create handwritten posts and sketches. It addresses the limitations of traditional keyboard input in educational settings and proposes features to facilitate the use of electronic ink in weblogs, aiming to enhance user interaction. The document outlines the architecture of the inkblog system, its validation approaches, and future development plans for improving its functionalities.

1. InkBlog
A Pen-Based Blog Tool for e-Learning Environments
André C. da Silva1,2 Heloísa V. da Rocha1,3
acsilva@ic.unicamp.br heloisa@ic.unicamp.br
Ph.D. Student Advisor
1Institute of Computing and 3NIED / UNICAMP
2Federal Institute of São Paulo
São Paulo – Brazil
InSITE 2013 Porto, Portugal - July, 3rd 2013

2. Outline
● Introduction
– Blogs, Weblogs and Edublogs
– Pen-based computing
● Motivation
● Approach
– The InkBlog
● Final Considerations and Future Works

3. Introduction
● Weblog
– communication and collaborative tool disposed in
Web that aims to promote the sharing of messages
among participants through an area named blog
● Users can publish text, images, videos, audio and links
– Posts typically displayed in reverse chronological
order
● the most recent post appears first
– Allow visitors to leave comments

4. Introduction
● Edublog
– Blogs used as
instructional resources
– archive and support student and teacher learning by
facilitating reflection, questioning by self and
others, collaboration and by providing contexts for
engaging in higher-order thinking (Ray, 2006)

5. Introduction

6. Introduction
● Blogs and
e-Learning environments
– Each course participant (student or teacher) owns a
blog, where the user can post and manage messages
– Each participant may access other course
participants’ blogs, comment posted messages by
the owner of the blog
– Usually, the users interact with in a text editor that
allows users without HTML (HyperText Markup
Language) skills to write rich text

7. The Weblog tool in the Ae e-Learning environment

8. The Weblog tool in the Ae e-Learning environment

9. Introduction
● Design process:

10. Introduction

11. Motivation
● Just changing the interaction hardware (da
Silva, Freire, & da Rocha, 2013) :
– brings interaction problems
– does not take advantages of the
interaction style features

12. Motivation
● For example, in the blog case:
● Users needs typing the text using the pen in a
virtual keyboard
– Low efficient
– A boring task
– Do not take the mainly pen purpose: handwriting
and do sketches easily
Prejudice the usability

13. Pen-Based Computing (I)
● Refers to a computer user-interface using a pen,
rather than devices such as a keyboard or a
mouse
● User interfaces for pen computing can be
implemented in several ways:
– using the pen as a pointing input device
– considering direct manipulation, handwriting or
gesture recognition (better advantages)

14. Pen-Based Computing (II)
● Berque, Bonebright and Whitesell (2004)
– “these concepts [from computer science curriculum] are
very difficult to communicate quickly and
extemporaneously using a keyboard and they are also
difficult to describe orally”
● Florea and Radu (2007)
– concept maps to improve the quality and efficiency of the
instructional process
● Benlloch, Buendía and Cano (2009)
– six steps based on a teaching method that incorporates active
learning techniques

15. Pen-Based Computing (III)
● Backon (2006)
– “the keyboard allows a rapid typewriting and do
texts structured by topics, but only pen can allow a
creativity increment, better flexibility and a natural
record of the think development process and
rationale in all stages (ideal requirements for the
educational environment)”

16. Pen-Based Computing (IV)
● Some educational applications:
– OrganicPad (Pargas et al., 2007)
– MathBrush (Labahn et al., 2008)
● “entering mathematics on a computer is problematic, it is
more natural write the formulae than inputting the latex
form, maple form or mathematic form”
– Classroom Presenter (Anderson et al., 2007)
– Pen Annotation and @Graph (Florea and Radu,
2007)
– …
All limited to
the Tablet PC
platform

17. Research Question
● How to get the pen computing advantages in
Web tools, mainly in e-Learning environments?
– Users with pen-based devices, such as tablet, can
access Weblogs and easily read the posts, but
writing blog post is not too easy: the user needs to
type the text

18. Solution and Approach
● Add features to manipulate electronic ink into a blog
tool to make it easier to handwrite or sketched posts in
pen-based devices
● Approach:
– Study the blog tool and her architecture
– Study technologies to receive data from pen
– Implement modules to receive data from pen
– Store the data in the database
– Implement modules to render the data
– Validate using various browsers

19. The Weblog Tool Architecture
id Weblog Architecture
«presentation»
Web
«system»
WeblogSystem
«system»
FileServerSystem
«e-learning»
WeblogMgr
«e-learning»
MessageMgr
«e-learning»
CommentMgr
«infra»
WeblogDAO
«infra»
MessageDAO
«infra»
MessageStatusDAO
«infra»
CommentDAO
«infra»
CommentStatusDAO
«infra»
AttachedFileDAO
«system»
LMSAPISystem
ILMSAPI
ICommentStatusDAO
ICommentDAO
IMessageStatusDAO
IMessageDAO
IAttachedFileDAO
IAttachedFileDAO
IWeblogDAO
IMessageCommentMgt
ICommentMgtIMessageMgtIWeblogMgt
IFileServerSystem
IWeblogSystem

20. The Weblog Tool Architecture
id Weblog Architecture
Client
Browser
Server
presentation layer
system layer
IWeblogSystem
POST - HTML

21. The InkBlog Architecture
id InkBlog Architecture
Client
Browser
InkEditor
InkRenderer
Server
presentation layer
system layer
InkController
InkML parts
InkML / POST -
HTTP
IWeblogSystem

22. InkBlog Tool

23. InkBlog Tool InkEditor

24. InkBlog Tool

25. Validation
● Using Tablet PC
● Model: HP TouchSmart PC TX2
– Keyboard
– Mouse
– Pen sensitive display (12”)
– Windows Vista and Windows 8
– Google Chrome browser version 22.0
and Mozilla Firefox version 15.0.1

26. InkBlog – Google Chrome/Vista

27. InkBlog – Mozilla Firefox/Vista

28. InkBlog –Safari/iPhone

29. InkBlog - Android

30. Final Considerations
● InkBlog: allow users do handwriting posts and
draws sketches to do their activities
– We improve the Ae´s Weblog with components to
generate and manipulate electronic ink, calling this
new tool as InkBlog
– We chose well-defined and promising technologies,
such as W3C InkML and HTML5
– First version of InkEditor:
● can be integrated with other tools

31. Future Works
● Do more validation studies mainly in real
contexts
Humanities
Arts
Engineering
Biology
Physics
Mathematics

32. Future Works
● Study the impact of adding other data types
– Some tools need access data from other tools.
– E .g. the search tools: how to do a search in InkML
data?
● Increase the InkEditor functionalities, such as
ink selection, copy and paste features
● Implement gesture support

33. Acknowledgment
Instituto de
Computação

34. InkBlog
A Pen-Based Blog Tool for e-Learning Environments
André C. da Silva1,2 Heloísa V. da Rocha1,3
acsilva@ic.unicamp.br heloisa@ic.unicamp.br
Ph.D. Student Advisor
1Institute of Computing and 3NIED / UNICAMP
2Federal Institute of São Paulo
São Paulo – Brazil
InSITE 2013 Porto, Portugal - July, 3rd 2013
Muito
Obrigado!