The mobile phone as a representative of mobile participatory sensing devices has become a part of people's daily life.
In the era of big data, the rapid development of mobile participatory sensing devices brings the explosive expansion of data, making information overload a serious problem.
These have inspired technologies that support active learning and discovery, self-monitoring, dynamic software, anchored instruction, networked devices, participatory simulations, serious games, and construction kits for tangible mathematics.
Therefore, it seems that, beginning in the teachers themselves but also encompassing students and the overall learning community, there is a lack of true and meaningful participatory culture of mobile devices users that can propel the full promise of technology.
Citizens can provide observations actively themselves (i.e. participatory sensing), enable their mobile devices to collect data automatically (i.e. opportunistic sensing, Lane et al. [2008]) and analyse or discuss the data or the environmental conditions using proprietary software or social media tools such as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
More precise measures of odor can be made in units of dilution to threshold using an olfactometer (Lambert et al. 2000); however, it was not feasible to use such a device in this participatory study.
Ubiquity of devices and services; the participatory panopticon of our communal experiences; self-describing media - we describe the media and the machines will work it out afterwards; and openness - Nintendo's Wii, for example, used standard hardware and created a powerful device very cheaply.
However, in participatory sensing, the active involvement of device custodians is required and it is often the case that most community and urban sensing initiatives are participatory in nature [25].
Likewise, reduced physical work load among workers with manual handling tasks has been reported in response to a participatory intervention emphasizing the use of technical assistive devices [ 36].
