Steps Towards the International Internet Classroom: Workshop on Education Informatics.

I recently received a link to this workshop and call for papers:
Workshop on Education Informatics: Steps Towards the International ...

Here is information from the workshop web-page:

Objective

Could an international group provide free access to primary and secondary school curricula, aligned with national, state and local standards, delivered by our best AI tutoring technologies, in several languages, over the Internet? The purpose of this workshop is to discuss the feasibility of an International Internet Classroom Project, specifically...

…to sketch the core requirements for such a project and the immediate needs to get the project started. One critical requirement is that the core should be extensible, so researchers can incorporate and test the efficacy of their new technologies within the infrastructure – and with the participant pool – of the International Internet Classroom;

…to review the available sources of content, tools, platforms, student modeling methods, educational data mining techniques, pedagogical strategies, modes of content delivery, and concrete experiences deploying technology-based education;

…to explore the feasibility of common standards for representing content and student data and to review previous standards efforts in academia, the private sector, and government;

…to build connections among people who work on related projects and sketch a plan to build the International Internet Classroom.

We seek papers, including position papers, from all sectors – academia, industry and government – on all these subjects. Authors are encouraged to present their research, systems, tools, evaluations and deployment experiences in terms of and as contributions to what we hope will become the International Internet Classroom Project.
Submission Guidelines and Important Dates

Please submit papers using the final camera-ready formatting style specified in ECAI 08 Style Guide. Our requirements are not identical to ECAI's: Papers may be up to 6 pages long and should be submitted directly to Paul Cohen (cohen@isi.edu). All submissions must be sent in PDF or PS format.

Deadline for paper submission: 14 April 2008
Notification of acceptance/rejection: 12 May 2008
Deadline for camera-ready paper: 26 May 2008

Workshop Dates: 21- 22 July 2008

Organizing Committee and Program Committee

Paul Cohen USC Information Sciences Institute
Carole Beal K12@USC, USC Information Sciences Institute
Niall Adams Imperial College London


Carole Beal, one of the program organizers, is an educational psychologist at USC. She's worked on the Wayang Outpost.

This will give you more information about her work:

According to the K12usc.edu website:

"The Wayang Outpost is a web-based tutoring system for high school mathematics, with a specific emphasis on preparation for high-stakes achievement tests such as the SAT-Math exam. Students complete brief assessments of their learning style, including spatial cognition, math fact proficiency, math achievement, and mathematics motivation. They then receive multimedia tutoring on practice test items, and can select from either algorithmic explanations or more visually-oriented solutions. Integrated SkillBuilder units provide practice in specific math topics. Students receive motivational and progress feedback based on a model of learner engagement."

"Evaluation studies indicate that, after working with the system, students improve 20-25% on average on the integrated pre- and post-tests of math proficiency, and the improvement is greatest for students with the weakest math skills. We also find that students who describe themselves as disengaged from math are most likely to access the multimedia help in an effort to learn, suggesting that technology-based instruction can offer discouraged students a path to success in math."

"The Wayang Outpost tutoring system includes "virtual adventures" that embed math problem solving in narratives about environmental science, specifically, an imaginary research station in Indonesia. Students interact with virtual role model characters based on real scientists and researchers who use math in their field work."

The Wayang Outpost project is supported by National Science Foundation grants HRD 0411532 and REC 04118