Search

[EN] Although a myriad of educational applications using tablets and multi-touch technology for kindergarten children have been developed in the last decade, most of these applications do not fully exploit multi-touch technology since the game world used is limited to the screen only. Considering a larger digital space in tablet-based educational scenarios would be beneficial since it would enable the design of engaging activities driven by curiosity, exploration, discovery and decisions on where the next action is situated in the digital virtual space by directional awareness. This paper therefore investigates kindergarten children's abilities to use a virtual world beyond the screen and evaluates three different types of visual prompts for communicating directional awareness. The results obtained show, firstly, that these specific users are able to use the space beyond the screen boundaries and that the evaluated prompts can effectively communicate information to kindergarten children. The paper also makes a set of recommendations to help designers choose the appropriate type of prompt for their application requirements., This work received financial support from Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and was funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) in the project TIN2014-60077-R (SUPEREMOS). This work is also supported by a pre-doctoral fellowship within the FPU program from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports to V. Nacher (FPU14/00136) and from GVA (ACIF/2014/214) to F. Garcia-Sanjuan.

[EN] A myriad of educational applications using tablets and multi-touch technology for kindergarten children have been developed in the last decade. However, despite the possible benefits of using visual prompts to communicate information to kindergarteners, these visual techniques have not been fully studied yet. This article therefore investigates kindergarten children¿s abilities to understand and follow several visual prompts about how to proceed and interact in a virtual 2D world. The results show that kindergarteners are able to effectively understand several visual prompts with different communication purposes despite being used simultaneously. The results also show that the use of the evaluated visual prompts to communicate data when playing reduces the number of interferences about technical nature fostering dialogues related to the learning activity guided by the instructors or caregivers. Hence, this work is a starting point for designing dialogic learning scenarios tailored to kindergarten children., This work is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) with Project TIN2014-60077-R; by VALi+d program from Conselleria d¿Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) under the fellowship ACIF/2014/214, and by the FPU program from Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport under the fellowship FPU14/00136

[EN] Gamification has been identified as an interesting technique to foster collaboration in educational contexts. However, there are not many approaches that tackle this in primary school learning environments. The most popular technologies in the classroom are still traditional video consoles and desktop computers, which complicate the design of collaborative activities since they are essentially mono-user. The recent popularization of handheld devices such as tablets and smartphones has made it possible to build affordable, scalable, and improvised collaborative gamifled activities by creating a multi-tablet environment. In this paper we present Quizbot, a collaborative gamifled quiz application to practice different subjects, which can be defined by educators beforehand. Two versions of the system are implemented: a tactile for tablets laid on a table, in which all the elements are digital; and a tangible in which the tablets are scattered on the floor and the components are both digital and physical objects. Both versions of Quizbot are evaluated and compared in a study with eighty primary-schooled children in terms of user experience and quality of collaboration supported. Results indicate that both versions of Quizbot are essentially equally fun and easy to use, and can effectively support collaboration, with the tangible version outperforming the other one with respect to make the children reach consensus after a discussion, split and parallelize work, and treat each other with more respect, but also presenting a poorer time management., We would like to thank Universitat Politecnica de Valencia's Summer School for their collaboration during the development of this study, as well as Colegio Internacional Ausias March for their support in the development of educational content., This work is supported by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) with Project TIN2014-60077-R. It is also supported by fellowship ACIF/2014/214 within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana), and by fellowship FPU14/00136 within the FPU program from Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport

[EN] The creation of artefacts and entities to be used in simulated worlds and games has been used in practice to foster creativity in informal activities. Motivational issues and entertainment have therefore been combined along with creative tasks. The systems with higher complexity and more creative capabilities are usually based on WIMP interfaces, which negatively impact on the role of collaboration and active participation. This paper summarizes the main findings and the authors' experiences in the project CreateWorlds, which relies on an interactive tabletop interface in order to support the creation of 2D games. Finally, the paper discusses some key challenges that will have to be addressed to support creative smart learning environments in the future., This work received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education under the National Strategic Program of Research and Project TIN2010-20488. Our thanks to Polimedia/UPV for the support in computer hardware. This work is also supported by fellowships APOSTD/2013/013 and ACIF/2014/214 within the VALi+d program from Consel·leria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana), and the fellowship FPU13/03831 funded by MECD under FPU program.

Differentiating between users that interact on a tabletop could be beneficial for collaborative tasks to support territoriality-oriented features such as a more efficient space management or a better presentation of the contents. In this paper, we design a novel algorithm for the user differentiation or segmentation based on the simultaneous manipulation of the controls. This is a potential differentiating factor that has remained unexplored so far, and in combination with other factors may become relevant to successfully accomplish such differentiation task. Basically it relies on the idea that users manipulate digital elements with a single hand, and hence, if two controls are being used at the same time, they most likely belong to different users. On the generic algorithm, three different versions have been implemented that include several heuristics to address the problem. The comparison under a simulated experiment shows that the heuristic involving more knowledge on distances on user controls performed better according to different goodness functions. This shows promising to further development and refinement of the approach by expanding it with other potential factors to eventually build a robust user differentiation subsystem., This work received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education under the National Strategic Program of Research and Project TSI2010-20488. Our thanks to the ASIC/Polimedia team for the support in computer hardware.

[EN] The ever increasing elderly population requires a revision of technology to make it usable and meaningful for them. Most applications take into account their reduced physical and cognitive abilities in order to provide assistive services, but this paper focuses on building technology to improve these capacities through cognitive games. We present Tangibot, a tangible-mediated robot aimed at enabling more intuitive and appealing interactions. A usability study conducted on subjects at three different levels of cognitive impairment (none, mild, and severe) reveals that it is usable and engaging for users with no or mild cognitive impairment, and even though it is less usable for persons with severe impairment, it triggers positive emotional reactions among them, which makes it promising for their use in therapeutic activities., This work is supported by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) with Project TIN2014-60077-R. It is also supported by fellowship ACIF/2014/214 within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d'Educacio, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana), and by fellowship FPU14/00136 within the FPU program from Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport.

Several studies have shown the suitability of the direct manipulation style and the multi-touch technology for kindergarteners and, as a result, direct dragging has been established as the standard way of interaction when supporting drag manipulations for them. However, there are scenarios in which direct dragging is not appropriate. For example, when the object to be dragged has to move at a fixed speed or performing an animation independent of the actual direct movement speed or trajectory of the user's hand. However, nobody has yet explored the suitability of indirect dragging interaction mechanisms that allow designers to effectively implement these scenarios. This paper evaluates different mechanisms of indirect dragging manipulations (Tap-based, Accelerometer-based and Buttons-based) in order to identify those that could be used by kindergarteners in scenarios where the direct dragging is not suitable. The results show that even though kindergarten children are able to effectively use different types of indirect dragging techniques, some considerations in terms of completion time and precision must be taken into account.

Interaction with handheld devices is usually limited to multi-touch input in the small display area and does not consider the space above and around the surfaces. In this paper we present and evaluate a way of exploiting this 3D space by enabling precise mid-air interactions using fiducial markers to create multi-display educational games that foster collaboration and physical mobility. Our evaluation determines that sixty children aged 6 to 12 years can effectively perform precise mid-air manipulations with these markers and reports their positive impressions of this type of interaction.

Long-term hospitalization or paying frequent visits to a hospital can be a stressful experience for children. The lack of conversation partners can worsen the physical symptoms of their disease and cause feelings of loneliness or isolation. Although many technological efforts have been made to improve the wellbeing of children in hospital, they either underuse interaction, disregard co-located communication, or push it into the background. In this paper we present two ongoing case studies from a local hospital in which patients present special requirements regarding mobility and socialization, describe two activities based on tablet devices to collaboratively control physical and virtual artifacts, and discuss the different types of communication that these activities can enable.

This paper presents Airsteroids, a multi-player redesign of the classic arcade game Asteroids. The redesign makes use of handheld devices such as tablets and Smartphones and of MarkAirs, an around-device interaction (ADI) with fiducial markers that reduces occlusion on the screens and interference between users’ interactions., This work received financial support from Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the National Strategic Program of Research with Projects TIN2010-20488 and TIN2014-60077-R, and from Universitat Politècnica de València under Project UPV-FE-2014-24. It is also supported by fellowship ACIF/2014/214 within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana).

Entertainment technology increases children’s engagement in educational activities designed to develop abilities ranging from collaborative problem-solving and cognitive attention to self-esteem. However, little research has been done on designing educational and entertaining interactive technology for kindergarten children (up to 5 years old). Furthermore, most of the work in this area has considered traditional input devices such as the mouse and keyboard, which are not suitable for these very young children. More recently, other more intuitive means of interaction (touch and tangible interfaces) and advanced educational artifacts such as robots have emerged. In this work we therefore present a joint collaboration between technologists and kindergarten instructors to design and evaluate a technological platform using a mobile robot for kindergarten instruction, as well as an intuitive and user-friendly tangible user interface. The results obtained suggest the platform is not only usable by kindergarten children, but it also allows them to be fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In addition, the instructors reported that the system was well accepted and praised its versatility in use as a supporting tool for their everyday classroom activities., This work is funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) and supported by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness with Project TIN2014-60077-R, and from Universitat Politècnica de València under Project UPV-FE-2014-24. It is also supported by fellowship ACIF/2014/214within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana), and by fellowship FPU14/00136 within the FPU program from Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport.

Long-term and frequent hospitalized children are under high loads of emotional stress, which affects their well-being in addition to the illness they are suffering. This thesis proposes and will focus on an approach to use Multi-Display Environments (MDE) in pediatric hospitalization contexts to improve patients’ emotional intelligence so they can deal with the negative emotions produced by their situation., This work is supported by Spanish MINECO (TIN2010-20488 and TIN2014-60077-R), from Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV-FE-2014-24), and from GVA (APOSTD/2013/013 and ACIF/2014/214).

[EN] Differentiating between users that interact simultaneously on a tabletop could be beneficial for collaborative tasks. Hence, the applications could support more effectively several territoriality-oriented features and they could provide a more efficient space management or a better presentation of the contents. This work presents a series of software factors which could be used to obtain such differentiation. Also, we design a novel algorithm for the controls segmentation according to their owner based on one of those factors: the simultaneous manipulation of controls. This is a potential differentiating factor that has remained unexplored so far, and in combination with others may become relevant to successfully accomplish such differentiation task. Basically it relies on the idea that users manipulate digital elements with a single hand, and therefore, if two controls are being used at the same time, they most likely belong to different users. On the generic algorithm, three different versions have been implemented that include several heuristics to address the problem. The comparison under a simulated experiment shows that the heuristic involving more knowledge on distances on user controls performed better according to different goodness functions. The results show this factor promising to further development and refinement of the approach by expanding it with other potential factors to eventually build a robust user differentiation subsystem, [ES] Diferenciar entre los usuarios que están trabajando simultáneamente entorno a una superficie interactiva podría ser beneficioso para tareas colaborativas. Así, las aplicaciones podrían soportar de manera más efectiva ciertos aspectos orientados a la territorialidad, a la gestión eficiente del espacio disponible y a la representación de los contenidos. En este trabajo se comenta una serie de factores software que podrían usarse para realizar dicha diferenciación, y se diseña un algoritmo para la agrupación de controles según su dueño basado en uno de estos factores: la manipulación simultánea de controles. Este factor no ha sido explorado en detalle hasta este momento, y, mediante su combinación con otros factores, podría resultar relevante para el objetivo buscado. Básicamente, se basa en la idea de que los usuarios suelen manipular los elementos de interfaz con una sola mano y, por lo tanto, dos controles que están siendo manipulados al mismo tiempo es muy probable que pertenezcan a usuarios distintos. Se han realizado tres versiones diferentes del algoritmo anterior, cada una basada en una heurística diferente. La comparación de las mismas bajo un experimento simulado muestra que la heurística que involucra más información sobre la distancia física entre los controles se comporta mejor de acuerdo a una serie de métricas definidas. Los resultados se muestran relevantes para seguir explorando y refinando este enfoque, expandiéndolo con otros factores potenciales, y así conseguir construir un subsistema de diferenciación potente y robusto.

Digital media and software have been used in supporting learning. Activities based on games should place the emphasis on the phase of creating artifacts for the game world, not on just playing or consuming contents. This chapter briefly reviews a number of outstanding efforts on providing advanced systems for the creation of digital games or simulations by children or young users, and analyzes their characteristics in terms of technology and the creation degree offered in both authorship and play processes.

In this paper we present TangiWheel, a collection manipulation widget for tabletop displays. Our implementation is flexible, allowing either multi-touch or interaction, or even a hybrid scheme to better suit user choice and convenience. Different TangiWheel aspects and features are compared with other existing widgets for collection manipulation. The study reveals that TangiWheel is the first proposal to support a hybrid input modality with large resemblance levels between touch and tangible interaction styles. Several experiments were conducted to evaluate the techniques used in each input scheme for a better understanding of tangible surface interfaces in complex tasks performed by a single user (e.g., involving a typical master-slave exploration pattern). The results show that tangibles perform significantly better than fingers, despite dealing with a greater number of interactions, in situations that require a large number of acquisitions and basic manipulation tasks such as establishing location and orientation. However, when users have to perform multiple exploration and selection operations that do not require previous basic manipulation tasks, for instance when collections are fixed in the interface layout, touch input is significantly better in terms of required time and number of actions. Finally, when a more elastic collection layout or more complex additional insertion or displacement operations are needed, the hybrid and tangible approaches clearly outperform finger-based interactions.. ©2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC & Science Press, China, The work is supported by the Ministry of Education of Spain under Grant No. TSI2010-20488. Alejandro Catala is supported by an FPU fellowship for pre-doctoral research staff training granted by the Ministry of Education of Spain with reference AP2006-00181.