Creating an Interactive Supply Student

When an elementary or secondary school student is away from school for an extended period of time due to illness, the student is provided with a tutor or access to in-hospital classrooms to keep up with his/her studies. This arrangement is not only expensive but isolates the child from normal, everyday classroom experiences. PEBBLES (Providing Education By Bringing Learning Environments to Students), a remote controlled communication system, was developed to provide a student with access to his/her regular classroom from the hospital or home and to provide the student with a classroom presence. PEBBLES consists of a modified video conferencing system which allows two way visual and audio communication between the class/teacher and the remote student using ISDN (Integrated Service Digital Network). Four studies were carried out with children using various versions of PEBBLES. Each study has had an impact on the design of the PEBBLES system. This paper will report the design process and the human factors involved in creating this very innovative technology.