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The recent use of mobile devices and the widespread adoption of wireless computer networks have stimulated mobile and ubiquitous computing research. In this context, education is being considered one of the main application areas. The ability to accurately track the learner's position through a location system and the context awareness support allow the discovery of new pedagogical opportunities. Nowadays, there are several approaches to the organization of ubiquitous computing environments, even though the majority of them employ a centralized architecture. This approach brings some benefits, like easing the access to the learner profiles, but it also has some disadvantages intrinsic to the model, like scalability concerns and the physical separation between the learners and their profile data. This article proposes a collaboration model created for decentralized environments, capable of improving the learning process through the stimulus to the interaction between learners. This approach is modeled using agents, employing on a socio-interactionist model based on the "most capable pair" concept first introduced by Vygotsky.

We propose a peer-to-peer event ordering and simulation technique aimed at networked real-time action games. Partially based on replicated simulators, its goal is to support decentralized playout in small-scale game sessions on instanced action spaces while being resistant to collusion cheating. The action spaces are linked to persistent-state social spaces of larger scale which are supported by centralized simulation. Together, these two kinds of spaces offer support for massively multiplayer on-line games (MMOGs) that offer a mix of socialization on large-scale persistent environments and fast interaction on small-scale temporary ones. Although player nodes on action spaces are required to run a conservative and an optimistic simulator simultaneously, we show that 2.2 simultaneous simulation steps are executed on average and that 11.95 simultaneous steps occur as the average peak situation for 20-player sessions with 150ms to 300ms network delays between nodes, 5% probability of any late events introducing errors, and rollback and re-execution operations having their execution spreaded through 100ms of real time or longer.

The increasing use of mobile devices and the dissemination of wireless networks have stimulated mobile and ubiquitous computing research. In this context, education is being considered one of the main application areas. New pedagogical opportunities are created through the use of location systems to track learners, and through context awareness support. This paper proposes a model to explore these opportunities using location information and context management as learning support tools. This model, called LOCAL, was conceived for small scale learning environments, but can be applied in large-scale as well. The model was implemented and the initial results show its utility to assist the teaching and learning processes.

The application of ubiquitous technologies in the improvement of education strategies is called Ubiquitous Learning. This article proposes the integration between two models dedicated to support ubiquitous learning environments, called Global and CoolEdu. CoolEdu is a generic collaboration model for decentralized environments. Global is an infrastructure designed to create ubiquitous learning environments. Global provides software agents that perform tasks common to ubiquitous learning processes. By extending these agents or adding new ones, a system can be specialized to support ubiquitous learning environments. The CoolEdu/Global integration created a collaborative and decentralized ubiquitous learning environment. The resulting environment was evaluated through a simulated scenario dedicated to explore its functionalities. The results were encouraging and showed the potential of deploying the environment in real situations.