Welcome to the SIGCHI Finland User Centric Design SIG seminar in Oulu, on Tuesday November 6th, 2012 at 13-15.

Seminar theme: Mobile Technology Tools for Schools

Location: Tuesday 6.11.2012 at 13-15, room TS127, University of Oulu (Linnanmaa, Oulu). The room is located in Tietotalo (Department of Computer Science and Engineering).

Sign up for the seminar by Friday November 2nd, 2012, at 12:00 noon here.

Seminar Program

13:00 Opening words (Jonna Häkkilä)

13:05 Elba del Carmen Valderrama Bahamóndez (University of Stuttgart): Adoption of multimedia mobile phones in the teaching-learning process in Primary Schools in Panama

13:45 Mari Ervasti (VTT): User Experiences and Values with Mobile Supervision of School Attendance

14:20 Ivan Sánchez (University of Oulu): Leave the desks! Promoting active learning using NFC technology

14:55 Closing words - Pekka Nikula (City of Oulu)

15:00 Seminar ends (Jonna Häkkilä) - Coffee

Presenters

Elba del Carmen Valderrama Bahamóndez is a Ph.D. student in the Human Computer Interaction group at University of Stuttgart and the Pervasive Computing and Engineering User Interface Group at University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany). She has a M.Sc. degree on Media Informatics from RWTH-Aachen University, and a B.Sc. degree on Computer Science Engineering from Technological University of Panama (UTP). In the UTP she has worked as adjunct lecturer in the departments of Computer Programming, and Computing and Simulation of the faculty of Computer Science Engineering. Elba research interests are in the field of HCI for development, m-learning, user centered design, and user interfaces for mobile devices.

Mari Ervasti, M.Sc (Tech), works as a research scientist at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. She received her Master's degree in Information Networks from the University of Oulu in 2007. She is currently finishing her D.Sc. degree to Tampere University of Technology. In her dissertation she evaluates user experiences evoked by novel mobile services with a goal of understanding and identifying the key value dimensions for different user groups in specific mobile service contexts, and how this value in experience knowledge can be categorized and utilized in user experience evaluation and used also to support service design processes. Ervasti has many years of experience in user-oriented research in real-life mobile service case studies, and has 20 scientific publications in the field. The evaluated service concepts include examples from many different application areas. She has gathered knowledge on how users from various backgrounds and very different age groups use mobile services in real-life situations.

Ivan Sanchez Milara (1981) is getting his M.Sc degree in Telecommunication Engineering this year from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain).  He is currently working as an assistant researcher at Computer Science and Engineering laboratory of University of Oulu. He has been working for several years with mobile applications and physical user interfaces. In the last two years, he has focused his research efforts on tangible interaction for learning environments. He has conducted several studies on how Near Field Communication (NFC) technology can be used to create more interactive learning environments