Teachers’ perceptions about IoT technologies in school activities

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Internet of Things is shifting the way people interact with each other, the way people interact with objects, and the way objects interact with each other. This reality is creating a new paradigm, where the world becomes more interconnected. In the field of Education, we are at the beginning of understanding the profound transformation that IoT can bring to teaching and learning, namely the exploitation of these technologies as a teaching resource. Despite different approaches, there seems to be a consensus regarding its transformative potential, especially when we think about the concept of hypersituation. This paper presents the main results relating to the teachers’ perception of an IoT-based learning environment supported by a low-cost and open-source IoT device and a set of didactic guides to approach curricular contents of the 7th grade in Portugal. Regarding the organization of the paper, firstly an introductory contextualization is presented, where IoT challenges and potentialities in education are highlighted. After that, we present the followed methodology during the research described. Finally, the results and conclusions, where the perceptions of the involved teachers, regarding the use of IoT technologies in the described contexts are shown and explained.