ReactiveWebATN: Web-based Handwriting Note Sharing System for Distance Learning

A digital pen is an effective tool for externalizing student’s thinking as handwritten notes with minimal burdens in operation. Sharing students’ thinking among the students and the teachers encourages collaborative learning. We have promoted such a learning style by implementing systems and experiments. In this paper, we describe a method and an implementation of web-based notes sharing system that can immediately update upon students’ notes drawing. By using streaming digital pens and WebSocket technologies, we have realized the real-time update of the students’ notes for a web-based application. Since the system framework is mostly based on open and standard web technologies, it is flexible and independent from particular system architecture as well as operating systems of the browsing devices.