AppInventory: A Visual Catalogue of Web 2.0 and Mobile Applications for Supporting Teaching and Learning Activities

Abstract

The availability of hundreds of Web 2.0 and mobile applications represent a great opportunity in helping teachers adopt student centred methodologies. These applications support users in creating and sharing digital artefacts, in aggregating, remixing and collecting heterogeneous materials and in communicating within working groups. When incorporated into daily teaching and learning activities (TLA), such applications can improve the collaborative, cognitive and creative work of the students, enhancing and redefining traditional educational practices. Nevertheless, although these applications are generally easy to find and use, there is a lack of knowledge about their existence, their functions and their potential in an educational setting. In this paper we describe AppInventory, a novel platform which contains a digital catalogue of applications: they are organized by applying an original taxonomy; the users can browse among them benefiting from a visual approach and semantic connections modelled using zz-structures.