A new test environment for IoT technology is now being opened at a secondary school in Arvika. Companies and entrepreneurs who have a service or product that can contribute to the school's health promotion work are welcome to get in touch.
In the newly opened Minneberg School, the safety and well-being of the students is built into the architecture, to meet the needs of each individual. For example, the building has been designed so that all students have a clear sense of belonging in the building. There are areas for activities, community and quiet parts for recovery. The two-level dining room is an example, where the upper floor offers a quiet environment during lunch.
At the same time, a two-year investment is underway to investigate how IoT technology can promote student health, where the school becomes a test environment. The project is a collaboration between Arvika municipality, DigitalWell Arena, Karlstad University, Scaaler IoT Labs and is financed by Vinnova.
It can be about companies and entrepreneurs who want to test new services and products, or existing technology that is applied in new ways.
Minnebergsskolan opens opportunities for testing in a real environment. Robert Rhönnstad looks forward to being able to take part in the companies' ideas about how IoT technology can contribute to increased student health.
Robert Rhönnstad, senior IT architect at SCAALER, is responsible for the company contacts in the project. Among other things, he believes that analysis of combined data sources can contribute to new insights into health and performance in school.
- It can be about time of day, noise, temperature or air quality. The result of these together can provide new insights into student health, instead of drawing simple conclusions about, for example, absenteeism. It can create new angles for technology that is not really intended for school, he says.
The greatest opportunities for testing are around the collection of data at group level or linked to a physical environment. Of course, data at the individual level is also of interest, but there the ethical regulations create clear limitations.
Monitors privacy issues
Agnieszka Kitowska, postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Service Research at Karlstad University, is involved in the project to handle questions about personal privacy linked to the technology being tested. Perhaps the most obvious is the type of data that the connected sensors collect, but also how it is stored and transported, and who has access to the information that is collected.
There are also ethical aspects to data collected at the group level.
- Consider a scenario in school where voice recognition is used to judge whether certain students are quieter or more vocal, where girls and boys differ. It could lead to wrong assumptions if you linked it to grades. A certain gender could be assumed to have better grades because they are quieter – while there could be a completely different reason, says Agnieszka Kitowska.
Opens up great possibilities
Exactly which technology should be tested in schools is an open question. The aim is that the application of IoT technology should be able to contribute to new methods to strengthen the students' health - and thereby increase learning. At the same time, an environment is created where the school, business and academia work together to exchange knowledge.
- All companies and entrepreneurs with an idea about how their service or product can be useful in the project are welcome to get in touch, says Robert Rhönnstad.
