With the advent of iOS 7, a new technology from Apple called iBeacon appeared, iBeacon made a significant step forward in the Internet of Things (IoT) (Townsend, 2023). As technology is becoming a more central part of people’s lives, people’s devices start to talk to each other more and iBeacon helps a device figure out what is nearby and what it can talk to. Currently, iBeacon is also widely applied in education settings, which promotes heated discussion on its potential in education sector application (Spachos & Mackey, 2018), many publications have also been issued in the academia on the application of iBeacon in education settings, but so far, there has not been any review on these studies. This article presents a literature review of the studies on the application of iBeacon in education settings published from 2016 to 2020, aiming to discuss the widespread application of iBeacon in educational contexts, and shed light on its innovative potential and revolutionary potential; the discussions on using iBeacon in smart green building courses, context-aware ubiquitous learning environments, flipped classroom learning, and smart campus classroom attendance system show that iBeacon can efficaciously support teachers’ instructional activities and students’ learning activities, help teachers quickly obtain students’ learning situation in classroom and then may adjust their instructional approaches or contents, and help pupils effectually engage with their daily learning and develop their learning skills.
Keywords: Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Literature Review, education settings, iBeacon
