From the early days of computing, computer scientists hoped that computers would revolutionize education. Systems like PLATO did not meet the expectations of their builders. Further attempts include using the World Wide Web in education.

This paper studies a technology environment that also uses mobile technology. A smart classroom is used in which the teacher has an all-in-one computer with access to a student database. In addition, each pair of students shares an all-in-one computer with a multitouch display, near field communication (NFC) readers, NFC smart cards, and NFC mobile devices. All students swipe their NFC cards “over the NFC reader to log into the system and register their attendance” and each “student’s name and position is displayed on the teacher’s interface.” Buttons allow a student to provide the teacher feedback. Students’ feedback is displayed in real time to the teacher, which can help the teacher provide additional elaboration or examples to improve student understanding.

A questionnaire was used before and after the smart classroom was used for five weeks in an introductory course. The comments are generally very positive, for example, “Computer science is fun.” The questionnaire was distributed in week eight of an 18-week course. The smart classroom was used starting in week ten. The questionnaire was then given again to students five weeks after the smart classroom was introduced, and the students were told that the data from the previous questionnaire was lost to blind the students to the intentions of the survey.

Statistical analysis of the results shows that overall the attitudes of students toward computer science improved after five weeks of attending the smart classroom. I am, however, left with an uneasy feeling, as there are some significant privacy concerns in using the smart classroom that are not discussed.