Customized Learning Sequences (CLS) by Metadata.

In response to a longterm research program for a didactical ontology, this report intends to present the results and methods for representing didactical models from the ontology we developed. The question is: How can computer technology be used to support the communication of knowledge in an educational context? This question cannot be answered by psychological experiments that ignore the core of educational behaviour: the transmission of meaning (Hönigswald 1927). Therefore this article focuses on the didactical tradition. Computer technology as a medium requires a special form of knowledge organisation, which allows learners to go individually and in a reflective way through the content (Customized Learning Sequences), thus requiring teachers to produce individually navigable hypertexts. Individualization does not mean offering "pureâ€? self-directed learning, as learning presupposes instruction by others. We have to aid teachers in reorganizing knowledge to hypertexts that allows individual navigation. Supporting learners in finding their individual path is also a crucial factor.How to aid teachers and how to set up meaningful navigation aids will be discussed in four steps:\ud 1.) Theoretical considerations; 2.) First step of Web-Didactics: Decontextualisation; 3.) Second step of Web-\ud Didactics: Recontextualisation; 4.) Research. Which theoretical considerations are eternal for Web-Didactics

The Variable Markov Oracle: Algorithms for Human Gesture Applications

This article introduces the Variable Markov Oracle (VMO) data structure for multivariate time series indexing. VMO can identify repetitive fragments and find sequential similarities between observations. VMO can also be viewed as a combination of online clustering algorithms with variable-order Markov constraints. The authors use VMO for gesture query-by-content and gesture following. A probabilistic interpretation of the VMO query-matching algorithm is proposed to find an analogy to the inference problem in a hidden Markov model (HMM). This probabilistic interpretation extends VMO to be not only a data structure but also a model for time series. Query-by-content experiments were conducted on a gesture database that was recorded using a Kinect 3D camera, showing state-of-the-art performance. The query-by-content experiments' results are compared to previous works using HMM and dynamic time warping. Gesture following is described in the context of an interactive dance environment that aims to integrate human movements with computer-generated graphics to create an augmented reality performance

Graph-RAT: Combining data sources in music recommendation systems

The complexity of music recommendation systems has increased rapidly in recent years, drawing upon different sources of information: content analysis, web-mining, social tagging, etc. Unfortunately, the tools to scientifically evaluate such integrated systems are not readily available; nor are the base algorithms available. This article describes Graph-RAT (Graph-based Relational Analysis Toolkit), an open source toolkit that provides a framework for developing and evaluating novel hybrid systems. While this toolkit is designed for music recommendation, it has applications outside its discipline as well. An experiment—indicative of the sort of procedure that can be configured using the toolkit—is provided to illustrate its usefulness

RoboJam: A Musical Mixture Density Network for Collaborative Touchscreen Interaction

RoboJam is a machine-learning system for generating music that assists users of a touchscreen music app by performing responses to their short improvisations. This system uses a recurrent artificial neural network to generate sequences of touchscreen interactions and absolute timings, rather than high-level musical notes. To accomplish this, RoboJam's network uses a mixture density layer to predict appropriate touch interaction locations in space and time. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of RoboJam's network and how it has been integrated into a touchscreen music app. A preliminary evaluation analyses the system in terms of training, musical generation and user interaction

SimDialog: A visual game dialog editor

SimDialog is a visual editor for dialog in computer games. This paper presents the design of SimDialog, illustrating how script writers and non-programmers can easily create dialog for video games with complex branching structures and dynamic response characteristics. The system creates dialog as a directed graph. This allows for play using the dialog with a state-based cause and effect system that controls selection of non-player character responses and can provide a basic scoring mechanism for games