With the rapid growth of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, the classic centralized cloud computing paradigm faces several challenges such as high latency, low capacity and network failure. To address these challenges, fog computing brings the cloud closer to IoT devices. The fog provides IoT data processing and storage locally at IoT devices instead of sending them to the cloud. In contrast to the cloud, the fog provides services with faster response and greater quality. Therefore, fog computing may be considered the best choice to enable the IoT to provide efficient and secure services for many IoT users. This paper presents the state-of-the-art of fog computing and its integration with the IoT by highlighting the benefits and implementation challenges. This review will also focus on the architecture of the fog and emerging IoT applications that will be improved by using the fog model. Finally, open issues and future research directions regarding fog computing and the IoT are discussed.

In spite of the unprecedented popularity to use innovative gaming concepts within the educational context in order to promote active learning, engage people and solve motivational problems, there is an emerging body of research work arguing that gamification is not effective to increase neither the students engagement nor the learning outcomes. In this research paper, an empirical study is conducted to explore how gamification can firstly affect the student learning engagement and the interactivity level with e-learning technologies. Secondly, whether it can be considered as a driving thrust to support sustained learning. A question board is designed and implemented to enable students ask and answer questions related to their taught modules where academic staff can also contribute and validate the most correct answers. The acquisition of data is performed through a period of 10 months in order to investigate the gamification impact over time. The gamified platform was integrated with the online e-learning portal of a university where the adoption of e-learning is considered extremely poor. The obtained results have revealed that gamification can be considered as a valuable tool to entice users for the uptake of educational systems and increase their interactivity and engagement.