Digital modeling of the impact of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake

Toys have played a role in the development of 3D skills for architects. As a continuation of this, games, a subgenre of which are city building games, the father of all is SimCity, a variant of construction management games, underlay a socio-economic model. Outgoing from a general view of the role of toys and games in building the skills of architects, we focus on the modelling of the impact of earthquakes on urban areas. The particular case considered is Lisbon 1755, set into the context of related developments such as l'Aquila 2009 and Bucharest 1977. We examined the 3D modelling of the city, which can be the base for computer games, namely the GIS based, Google Earth and Second Life. For all these modells we filled forms which are provided in the annexes, to see the usability and potential improvements, which will be considered in the model we propose. The later builds a game with a socio-economic component, but both later ones have the social component of crowd sourcing participation. The Second Life concept can be extended with narratives of chance like in board games, to realise the immersion like in a novel in the historic time depicted, organising for example virtual events in the public space framework modelled. Different Levels of Detail are identified as necessary in order to on one side identify the landmarks of the image of the city in the perception of inhabitants and tourists and on the other hand to model populations of buildings for future economic studies, based on a structural mechanics instead of statistical approach. Outgoing from this analysis we propose an own concept to model the impact of the 1755 earthquake on Lisbon. We based our concept on the analysis of the space and time aspects in the memory of the pre-disaster city, and considered 72 landmark buildings which can be symbolically modeled as spaces, based on a 2D to 3D concept. Depending on where they were situated, these have been affected by the earthquake or not. We provide besides the overview of the literature on games for architecture on urbanism purposes also this one on memory. This includes on its side a game, for lessons learned in the identification of the landmarks of the city. Apart of the game, there is a guided tour with timeline and the 3D model in itself. Codes are provided. For the analysis we used different views of the city: eye-level, silhouette (from the river) and aerial. This can be the basis of a future augmented reality application including the 3D model and the photos/ engravings of the time. The socio-economic component will be based on the modeling of material resources necessary to retrofit or reconstruct, for the detailedly considered „pombalino” buildings. But first of all identifying the urban morphology through 3D modeling is serving as a basis for master planning, especially the strategic planning of the minimal urban structure, in both preventive pre-earthquake intervention and post-earthquake reconstruction, as aimed for in the „Lisbon in motion” workshop and planned related ones

Educar pela Pesquisa – uma abordagem para o desenvolvimento e utilização de Softwares Educacionais

Este artigo que como objetivo apresentar o educar pela pesquisa como uma abordagem para o desenvolvimento e utilização de softwares educacionais. O Educar pela Pesquisa visa inovar a prática em sala de aula. Tal inovação se caracteriza pela motivação e incentivo dos alunos, por parte dos professores, pelo gosto e necessidade da pesquisa em aula. Para tanto deve ocorrer uma mudança no papel do professor e aluno, ambos devem contribuir significativamente na reconstrução do conhecimento. A reconstrução do conhecimento é considerada o critério diferencial da pesquisa, englobando teoria e prática, filosofia base do Educar pela Pesquisa. Através do SAEP-NET mostraremos como inserir o Educar pela Pesquisa de Pedro Demo em um sistema de apoio a professores, considerando o ciclo dialético proposto por Moraes, Galiazzi e Ramos, que representa a pesquisa em sala de aula como um ciclo composto por “questionamento”, “construção de argumentos” e “comunicação”

Emotions, behaviour and belief regulation in an intelligent guide with attitude

Abstract unavailable please refer to PD

Transforming the museum-community nexus with technology : a virtual museum infrastructure for participatory engagement and management

Museums play an important role in society as the custodians of heritage, and advances in technology have brought about opportunities for curating, preserving and disseminating heritage through virtual museums. However, this is not matched by an understanding of how these technologies can support these functions, especially given the varying levels of resources that museums have at their disposal. To address this problem, a hybrid methodology which combines underpinning theory and practice has been adopted. Initial investigation of the problem takes place through a contextualisation of museology and heritage studies, followed by exploratory case studies that yield design objectives for a Virtual Museum Infrastructure (VMI). A design of the VMI is proposed based on these objectives, and the VMI is instantiated, deployed and evaluated in real-world scenarios using a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. The findings of this investigation demonstrate that the use of technology provides new opportunities for engagement with heritage, as experts and community members alike can create, curate and preserve content, which can then be disseminated in engaging ways using immersive, yet affordable technologies. This work therefore demonstrates how technology can be used to: (1) support museums in the creation, curation, preservation and dissemination of heritage, through a VMI that provides support for all the stages of the media life cycle, (2) facilitate active use, so that content that is created once can be reused on multiple platforms (for example on the web, on mobile apps and in on-site installations), and (3) encourage connectivity by linking up local museums using a location-aware interface and facilitates the consumption content using digital literacies available to the public. The aforementioned points, coupled with the system instantiations that demonstrate them, represent the contributions of this thesis

Player agency in interactive narrative: audience, actor & author

The question motivating this review paper is, how can computer-based interactive narrative be used as a constructivist learn- ing activity? The paper proposes that player agency can be used to link interactive narrative to learner agency in constructivist theory, and to classify approaches to interactive narrative. The traditional question driving research in interactive narrative is, ‘how can an in- teractive narrative deal with a high degree of player agency, while maintaining a coherent and well-formed narrative?’ This question derives from an Aristotelian approach to interactive narrative that, as the question shows, is inherently antagonistic to player agency. Within this approach, player agency must be restricted and manip- ulated to maintain the narrative. Two alternative approaches based on Brecht’s Epic Theatre and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed are reviewed. If a Boalian approach to interactive narrative is taken the conflict between narrative and player agency dissolves. The question that emerges from this approach is quite different from the traditional question above, and presents a more useful approach to applying in- teractive narrative as a constructivist learning activity

Adaptivity of 3D web content in web-based virtual museums : a quality of service and quality of experience perspective

The 3D Web emerged as an agglomeration of technologies that brought the third dimension to the World Wide Web. Its forms spanned from being systems with limited 3D capabilities to complete and complex Web-Based Virtual Worlds. The advent of the 3D Web provided great opportunities to museums by giving them an innovative medium to disseminate collections' information and associated interpretations in the form of digital artefacts, and virtual reconstructions thus leading to a new revolutionary way in cultural heritage curation, preservation and dissemination thereby reaching a wider audience. This audience consumes 3D Web material on a myriad of devices (mobile devices, tablets and personal computers) and network regimes (WiFi, 4G, 3G, etc.). Choreographing and presenting 3D Web components across all these heterogeneous platforms and network regimes present a significant challenge yet to overcome. The challenge is to achieve a good user Quality of Experience (QoE) across all these platforms. This means that different levels of fidelity of media may be appropriate. Therefore, servers hosting those media types need to adapt to the capabilities of a wide range of networks and devices. To achieve this, the research contributes the design and implementation of Hannibal, an adaptive QoS & QoE-aware engine that allows Web-Based Virtual Museums to deliver the best possible user experience across those platforms. In order to ensure effective adaptivity of 3D content, this research furthers the understanding of the 3D web in terms of Quality of Service (QoS) through empirical investigations studying how 3D Web components perform and what are their bottlenecks and in terms of QoE studying the subjective perception of fidelity of 3D Digital Heritage artefacts. Results of these experiments lead to the design and implementation of Hannibal

A reference architecture for adaptive hypermedia applications

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Imulating storyteller-audience interactions in digital storytelling: questions, exchange structures & story objects

Includes bibliographical references.This work revolves around the design and evaluation of digital storytelling simulating real personal storytelling. Study One was an ethnography, of real storytellers, which revealed types of narratives, dynamism and interactivity in storytelling. This was used to design digital storytelling, which simulated the behaviours of real storytellers. Three design ideas, questions, exchange structures and story objects , were prototyped and evaluated in Studies Two, Three and Four. Study One took place over three months at the District Six Museum, Cape Town. We studied narratives from three guides about their Apartheid-era experiences. Discourse analyses showed the narratives: (a) were structured as clauses, each relating a story event or thought; (b) varied minimally across retellings; (c) incorporated storyteller-audience interactions (periodic questions) between clauses which matched teacher-student interactions described by Sinclair & Coulthard (1975); and, in exchange structures, guides periodically asked audiences questions; and (d) incorporated the museum exhibit and memory box objects. The digital storytelling design focused on: simulating questions and exchange structures; and story objects, allowing user-triggered narratives. We implemented a virtual environment containing two interactive storyteller agents, and several story objects. Study Two (n=101) manipulated the effect of questions and exchange structures on story experience. Study Three (n=69) manipulated the effect of story objects on story experience. Story experience was composed of: interest in the narrative context, enjoyment of and engagement in the storytelling, and the storytelling realism. These were measured with a questionnaire created for these studies; psychometric analysis showed it to be valid and reliable. Linear models showed questions increased interest (F =5.72, p =0.02) and engagement (F= 3.92, p =0.05) while exchange structures increased interest ( F =6, p =0.02), enjoyment ( F =4.14, p <0.04) and engagement ( F =10.53, p =0.002). Usage logs showed participants interacted readily with both while the agents could answer a mean of 35% of user questions. Story objects did not impact story experience. Study Two and Three's participants reported high story experience scores and predominantly positive qualitative feedback. In Study Four (n=93), the prototype was exhibited at District Six Museum for nine days. We observed visitor interaction, logged usage automatically and gathered voluntary feedback, which was largely positive. Visitors tended to engage passively with the prototype and linear models showed age was a predictor of the number of question ( F= 31.75, p <0.001) and exchange structure ( F =4.45, p <0.04) inputs. Additionally, multiple visitors would use the prototype simultaneously. We conclude that integrating different methodologies allowed us to simulate real storyteller-audience interactions and that the questions and exchange structure interactions we designed improved experiences of digital personal narratives. This design may be replicated by others seeking to similarly preserve the experience of personal storytelling

ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE IN VIRTUAL REALITY DOES IMMERSION REALLY AID LEARNING?

This study explored whether students benefited from an immersive panoramic display while studying subject matter that is visually complex and information-rich. Specifically, middle-school students learned about ancient Egyptian art and society using an educational learning game, Gates of Horus, which is based on a simplified three dimensional computer model of an Egyptian temple. First, we demonstrated that the game is an effective learning tool by comparing written post-test results from students who played the game and students in a no-treatment control group. Next, we compared the learning results of two groups of students who used the same mechanical controls to navigate through the computer model of the temple and to interact with its features. One of the groups saw the temple on a standard computer desktop monitor while the other-saw it in a visually immersive display (a partial dome) The major difference in the test results between the two groups appeared when the students gave a verbal show-and-tell presentation about the Temple and the facts and concepts related to it. During that exercise, the students had no cognitive scaffolding other than the Virtual Egyptian Temple which was projected on a wall. The student navigated through the temple and described its major features. Students who had used the visually immersive display volunteered notably more than those who had used a computer monitor. The other major tests were questionnaires, which by their nature provide a great deal of scaffolding for the task of recalling the required information. For these tests we believe that this scaffolding aided students' recall to the point where it overwhelmed the differences produced by any difference in the display. We conclude that the immersive display provides better supports for the student's learning activities for this material. To our knowledge, this is the first formal study to show concrete evidence that visual immersion can improve learning for a non-science topic

Player Agency in Interactive Narrative: Audience, Actor & Author

The question motivating this review paper is, how can computer-based interactive narrative be used as a constructivist learn- ing activity? The paper proposes that player agency can be used to link interactive narrative to learner agency in constructivist theory, and to classify approaches to interactive narrative. The traditional question driving research in interactive narrative is, ‘how can an in- teractive narrative deal with a high degree of player agency, while maintaining a coherent and well-formed narrative?’ This question derives from an Aristotelian approach to interactive narrative that, as the question shows, is inherently antagonistic to player agency. Within this approach, player agency must be restricted and manip- ulated to maintain the narrative. Two alternative approaches based on Brecht’s Epic Theatre and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed are reviewed. If a Boalian approach to interactive narrative is taken the conflict between narrative and player agency dissolves. The question that emerges from this approach is quite different from the traditional question above, and presents a more useful approach to applying in- teractive narrative as a constructivist learning activity