A Concept for Exploring Western Music Tonality in Physical Space

Musical theory about the structure and morphology of Western tonality is quite difficult to teach to young children, due to the relatively complex mathematical concepts behind tonality. Children usually grasp the concepts of musical harmony intuitively through listening to music examples. Placing the 12 notes of the well-tempered scale into a spatial arrangement, in which the proximity of these notes represents their mutual harmonic relationship, would allow to link physical motion through a spatial area with the exploration of music tonality. Music theorists have postulated the Circle of Fifth, the “Spiral Array”, and the “Tonnetz” as paradigms for spatial arrangements of music notes which allow mapping the distance between notes onto their “mutual consonance”. These approaches mostly have been of qualitative nature, leaving the actual numeric parameters of the spatial description undetermined. In this paper, these parameters have been determined, leading to a concrete numerical description of the planar Tonnetz. This allows the design of a physical space in which the music notes are distributed in space according to their musical consonance. Set up in an outdoor area, handheld devices (e.g. PDA) with integrated Global Positioning System can be used to play these notes at their actual physical location. This makes it possible for children to explore this musical space by moving through the real spatial area and experience the relationships of the notes through their proximity. Defining a range for each note as a circular area around each note location, consonant chords can be produced in those areas where those circles overlap. Using this concept, games can be developed in which the listeners have to perform certain tasks related to this musical space. This appears to be a promising approach for the music education of young children who can intuitively learn about music morphology without being explicitly taught about the complex theoretical mathematical background

Persuasive Design in Teaching and Learning

The EuroPLOT project (2010-2013) has developed Persuasive Learning and Technologies (PLOTs) and has evaluated them in four real-world case studies, which cover the widely different teaching scenarios of university education, adult learning in industry, informal learning at a museum, literature studies, and language learning. At the International Workshop of EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET 2013), the results of the project were presented, and an overview of related research was given. One of the main conclusions of EuroPLOT has been that the specific learning context has to be considered when applying persuasive designs. At IWEPLET 2013, both the theoretical background as well as evaluations of persuasive technology demonstrations were presented. This paper provides an overview of these presentations

Proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET 2013)

"This book contains the proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET) 2013 which was held on 16.-17.September 2013 in Paphos (Cyprus) in conjunction with the EC-TEL conference. The workshop and hence the proceedings are divided in two parts: on Day 1 the EuroPLOT project and its results are introduced, with papers about the specific case studies and their evaluation. On Day 2, peer-reviewed papers are presented which address specific topics and issues going beyond the EuroPLOT scope. This workshop is one of the deliverables (D 2.6) of the EuroPLOT project, which has been funded from November 2010 – October 2013 by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLL) by grant #511633. The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate Persuasive Learning Objects and Technologies (PLOTS), based on ideas of BJ Fogg. The purpose of this workshop is to summarize the findings obtained during this project and disseminate them to an interested audience. Furthermore, it shall foster discussions about the future of persuasive technology and design in the context of learning, education and teaching. The international community working in this area of research is relatively small. Nevertheless, we have received a number of high-quality submissions which went through a peer-review process before being selected for presentation and publication. We hope that the information found in this book is useful to the reader and that more interest in this novel approach of persuasive design for teaching/education/learning is stimulated. We are very grateful to the organisers of EC-TEL 2013 for allowing to host IWEPLET 2013 within their organisational facilities which helped us a lot in preparing this event. I am also very grateful to everyone in the EuroPLOT team for collaborating so effectively in these three years towards creating excellent outputs, and for being such a nice group with a very positive spirit also beyond work. And finally I would like to thank the EACEA for providing the financial resources for the EuroPLOT project and for being very helpful when needed. This funding made it possible to organise the IWEPLET workshop without charging a fee from the participants.

Experimental Measures of Affine and Non-affine Deformation in Granular Shear

Through 2D granular Couette flow experiments, we probe failure and deformation of disordered solids under shear. Shear produces smooth affine deformations in such a solid and also irresversible so-called non-affine particle displacements. We examine both processes. We show that the non-affine part is associated with diffusion, and also can be used to define a granular temperature. Distributions for single particle non-affine displacements, \dri, satisfy P_1(\dri) \propto \exp [-|\dri/\Delta r|^{\alpha}] ($\alpha \stackrel{<}{\sim} 2$). We suggest that the shear band forms due to a radially outward diffusive flux/non-affine motion which is balanced in the steady state by inward diffusion due to density gradients.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Using SCORM for Interactive Teaching in Higher Education

The Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) has evolved in recent years as a standard for linking digital interactive Learning Objects (LO) into digital learning management systems (LMS). This standard has been used in a variety of teaching and learning contexts. We are experimenting with SCORM in teaching and have developed a number of SCORM compliant LOs. In particular we have authored SCORM LOs by application of the freely available software Courselab, and have hosted these LOs within the Learning Management System (LMS) Blackboard Vista. In one case study we have deployed a SCORM LO for the purpose of testing the numeracy capabilities of new students for business-related courses. Within this LO 20 mathematical problems were presented, based on variables that were created through random number generators. This ensured that each student received an individual problem within the specific scope of the task. The students had a number of attempts, and if these had been used up, the solution was displayed, and the student could try the problem again, with a different set of numbers. After the problems had been solved by the student, the SCORM module gave an automatic assessment of the numeracy capabilities of each student, classified into various categories as defined by the scope of each of the 20 problems. In this study the SCORM module had not been hosted by a LMS but was run as standalone, due to limitations of our LMS regarding the handling of variables (in SCORM 1.2 there is a limit of 100 Javascript variables). This meant that the students’ results were not automatically transferred into the gradebook of the LMS. However, since this was only an informal assessment of the students’ capabilities without grading, it was not a problem that this test was not embedded within the LMS. Feedback provided by students was very positive, and also the teaching staff found it very effective to use. The online evaluation has been carried out with the cohort of students who used the LO in the winter semester 2009/10 to receive feedback on their views as to ease of use, appearance of the test and several other areas to be presented in the full version of the paper. In winter semester 2010/11 there are further students accessing this mode of numerical evaluation, and it has been made available on the University repository to be used as required by others. A second case study investigated the employment of SCORM as the main electronic teaching method within a technical field. While this module used traditional lectures and tutorials as the main teaching method, the SCORM objects were hosted within the LMS and provided the backbone of the learning material. Consequently, the student’s were enabled to review the lecture slides as SCORM slides and to solve small assignments and quizzes given within the SCORM module. Because the LOs were embedded within the LMS, the progress of each individual student could be monitored and on that basis important feedback is possible Some technical problems occurred related to the embedding of the SCORM objects within the LMS, which made the overall process of teaching and grading slightly cumbersome but which did not present insurmountable difficulties. Overall the use of SCORM LO appears to be a method well suitable for interactive teaching. The interaction from the student with the virtual learning environment (VLE) does mean that it can be used for distance learning students as once the LO is made available, the tutor is mainly a facilitator for the technology rather than an assessor

The Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra - Produktion klassischer Orchestermusik am Computer

"Elektronische Klangerzeugung und digitale Musikbearbeitungs-Werkzeuge sind in der Unterhaltungsmusik seit langem weit verbreitet. In der klassischen Musikszene jedoch setzt sich die Anwendung solcher Methoden nur langsam durch, da meist die individuelle Interpretation der Musik durch den Künstler im Vordergrund steht und nicht die absolute „Erzeugung“ von Musik. Die Verfügbarkeit von qualitativ hochwertigen Instrumentalsamples zu günstigen Preisen hat jedoch in den letzten Jahren völlig neue Möglichkeiten der Musikerzeugung eröffnet und diese einem weiteren Kreis verfügbar gemacht. In erster Linie haben diese Technologien den Musik-Kompositionsprozeß verändert: Sequenzer-Software ermöglicht dabei das einfache Erstellen auch komplexer Partituren, und durch realistisch klingende Instrumentalsamples kann der gewünschte Klangeindruck durch Simulation erzielt werden. Jedoch können diese Technologien auch zur Erstellung einer interpretativen Musikaufnahme verwendet werden. Waren ursprünglich solche „Renditions“ durch die limitierte Klangqualität der Instrumentalsamples eher als schematische Skizzen der Musik zu verstehen, so ergeben sich jetzt die Möglichkeiten einer eigenständigen musikalisch vollwertigen Interpretation einer klassischen Musikkomposition. Dies erlaubt im Prinzip, daß ein einzelner Künstler ein ganzes Orchester „spielen“ kann. In diesem Paper wird gezeigt, daß die computer-gestützte Generierung von „klassischer Musik“, insbesondere komplexe Orchestermusik, sehr wohl möglich ist und auch ästhetischen Ansprüchen an Klangqualität und Interpretation gerecht werden kann, falls in dem Generierungsprozess einige grundlegende Prinzipien beachtet werden.