The Industry and Policy Context for Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion:Market Analysis, Future Prospects and Key Challenges in Videogames, Serious Games and Gamification

The effective use of digital games for empowerment and social inclusion (DGEI) of people and communities at risk of exclusion will be shaped by, and may influence the development of a range of sectors that supply products, services, technology and research. The principal industries that would appear to be implicated are the 'videogames' industry, and an emerging 'serious games' industry. The videogames industry is an ecosystem of developers, publishers and other service providers drawn from the interactive media, software and broader ICT industry that services the mainstream leisure market in games, The 'serious games' industry is a rather fragmented and growing network of firms, users, research and policy makers from a variety of sectors. This emerging industry is are trying to develop knowledge, products, services and a market for the use of digital games, and products inspired by digital games, for a range of non-leisure applications. This report provides a summary of the state of play of these industries, their trajectories and the challenges they face. It also analyses the contribution they could make to exploiting digital games for empowerment and social inclusion. Finally, it explores existing policy towards activities in these industries and markets, and draws conclusions as to the future policy relevance of engaging with them to support innovation and uptake of effective digital game-based approaches to empowerment and social inclusion.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

New trends in ICT regarding education

In the 21st century and because of the exponential growth of the Internet and Information Communication Technologies (ICT), people lived in a technological age, in all areas and in all contexts, we have daily contact with technology, with access to information, linked to it, we have a constant update of technological services and tools that change the method we study, work, communicate and socialize on an unprecedented scale. These constant changes oblige everyone regardless the age, gender or profession to possess a range of functional and critical thinking skills, such as Information Literacy, Media Literacy and Technology Literacy. This evolution, forces, the promoters of education, to be always aware of changes that society is introducing outside of the classroom. Today students don’t have the same role that used to, independently of age, they are very active and no longer the same introverted child that studied a few years ago in the classrooms. Also the educational environments can be created anywhere and used everywhere. According to this, students are used to seeking different forms and ways of motivation in and out of the classroom, they need that the learning and teaching process move along with the society and ICT changes. In order to ensure the success of today’s students, it’s important to give them the technological skills to make the correct use of ICT, to perform essential tasks for their training such as research and information selection, problems solvers and decision makers, creative and effective users of productivity tools and communicators, collaborators, publishers and producers of contents. The main purpose of this communication is, to show a part of ICT tools that can be used in educational settings to support learners, helping them to develop key skills in their training process, it’s also relevant to show how these tools can help teachers to achieve these objectives on the daily activities.No século XXI e por causa do crescimento exponencial da Internet e das Tecnologias de Comunicação da Informação (TIC), as pessoas vivem numa era tecnológica, em todas as áreas e em todos os contextos. Temos contacto diário com tecnologia, com acesso à informação e associado a este fenómeno existe uma constante atualização de serviços tecnológicos e ferramentas que mudam os métodos de estudo, trabalho, comunicação e socialização numa escala sem precedentes. Essas mudanças constantes obrigam a todos, independentemente da idade, sexo ou profissão, a possuir uma gama de habilidades de pensamento funcional e crítico, como literacia para a informação, literacia para os media e literacia tecnológica. Essa evolução, força os responsáveis da educação, a estarem sempre conscientes das mudanças que a sociedade está introduzindo fora da sala de aula. Hoje, os alunos não têm o mesmo papel que há uns anos atrás. As crianças são muito ativas, não revelando os comportamentos introvertidos que anteriormente evidenciavam. Além disso, os ambientes educacionais podem ser criados em qualquer lugar e usados em todo o lado. Os alunos estão habituados a procurar diferentes formas de motivação dentro e fora da sala de aula, eles precisam que o processo de ensino-aprendizagem acompanhe as mudanças da sociedade e das TIC. A fim de garantir o sucesso dos estudantes de hoje, é importante dar-lhes as habilidades tecnológicas para fazer o uso correto das TIC, para executar tarefas essenciais para sua formação, como a pesquisa e seleção de informações, aprender a solucionar problemas e a tomar decisões a ser utilizadores efetivos das ferramentas de produtividade, comunicação e colaboração, bem como serem editores e produtores de conteúdos. O principal objetivo desta comunicação é mostrar uma parte das ferramentas de TIC que podem ser usadas em ambientes educacionais para apoiar os alunos, ajudando-os a desenvolver habilidades-chave no seu processo formativo. Pretendemos também mostrar como é que essas ferramentas podem ajudar os professores a alcançar os objetivos pedagógicos nas atividades diárias

Rethinking Assessment: Information Literacy Instruction and the ACRL Framework

Most information literacy instruction (ILI) done in academic libraries today is based on the ACRL’s Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, but with the replacement of these standards by the new Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, there is a need to re-evaluate current teaching strategies and instructional techniques so that they can better serve the Framework’s goals. This paper explores current trends in ILI instruction and in the area of assessment in particular, since ILI assessment provides an opportunity not only to evaluate teaching effectiveness but also to reinforce the learning goals of the new Framework itself. It proposes several ways that assessment strategies can be aligned with the goals of the Framework by using guided group discussion, online discussion platforms, and social media platforms, and proposes further avenues for research in the evaluation of such strategies

Semantic web learning technology design: addressing pedagogical challenges and precarious futures

Semantic web technologies have the potential to extend and transform teaching and learning, particularly in those educational settings in which learners are encouraged to engage with ‘authentic’ data from multiple sources. In the course of the ‘Ensemble’ project, teachers and learners in different disciplinary contexts in UK Higher Education worked with educational researchers and technologists to explore the potential of such technologies through participatory design and rapid prototyping. These activities exposed some of the barriers to the development and adoption of emergent learning technologies, but also highlighted the wide range of factors, not all of them technological or pedagogical, that might contribute to enthusiasm for and adoption of such technologies. This suggests that the scope and purpose of research and design activities may need to be broadened and the paper concludes with a discussion of how the tradition of operaismo or ‘workers’ enquiry’ may help to frame such activities. This is particularly relevant in a period when the both educational institutions and the working environments for which learners are being prepared are becoming increasingly fractured, and some measure of ‘precarity’ is increasingly the norm

Social media analytics: a survey of techniques, tools and platforms

This paper is written for (social science) researchers seeking to analyze the wealth of social media now available. It presents a comprehensive review of software tools for social networking media, wikis, really simple syndication feeds, blogs, newsgroups, chat and news feeds. For completeness, it also includes introductions to social media scraping, storage, data cleaning and sentiment analysis. Although principally a review, the paper also provides a methodology and a critique of social media tools. Analyzing social media, in particular Twitter feeds for sentiment analysis, has become a major research and business activity due to the availability of web-based application programming interfaces (APIs) provided by Twitter, Facebook and News services. This has led to an ‘explosion’ of data services, software tools for scraping and analysis and social media analytics platforms. It is also a research area undergoing rapid change and evolution due to commercial pressures and the potential for using social media data for computational (social science) research. Using a simple taxonomy, this paper provides a review of leading software tools and how to use them to scrape, cleanse and analyze the spectrum of social media. In addition, it discussed the requirement of an experimental computational environment for social media research and presents as an illustration the system architecture of a social media (analytics) platform built by University College London. The principal contribution of this paper is to provide an overview (including code fragments) for scientists seeking to utilize social media scraping and analytics either in their research or business. The data retrieval techniques that are presented in this paper are valid at the time of writing this paper (June 2014), but they are subject to change since social media data scraping APIs are rapidly changing

Visualyzart Project – The role in education

The VisualYzARt project intends to develop research on mobile platforms, web and social scenarios in order to bring augmented reality and natural interaction for the general public, aiming to study and validate the adequacy of YVision platform in various fields of activity such as digital arts, design, education, culture and leisure. The VisualYzARt project members analysed the components available in YVision platform and are defining new ones that allow the creation of applications to a chosen activity, effectively adding a new language to the domain YVision. In this paper we will present the role of the InstitutoPolitécnico de Santarém which falls into the field of education.VisualYzART is funded by QREN – Sistema de Incentivos à Investigação e Desenvolvimento Tecnológico (SI I&DT), Project n. º 23201 - VisualYzARt (from January 2013 to December 2014). Partners: YDreams Portugal; Instituto Politécnico de Santarém - Gabinete de e-Learning; Universidade de Coimbra - Centro de Informática e Sistemas; Instituto Politécnico de Leiria - Centro de Investigação em Informática e Comunicações; Universidade Católica do Porto - Centro de Investigação em Ciência e Tecnologia das Artes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Connectivism: a knowledge learning theory for the digital age?

<b>Background</b> The emergence of the internet, particularly Web 2.0 has provided access to the views and opinions of a wide range of individuals opening up opportunities for new forms of communication and knowledge formation. Previous ways of navigating and filtering available information are likely to prove ineffective in these new contexts. Connectivism is one of the most prominent of the network learning theories which have been developed for e-learning environments. It is beginning to be recognised by medical educators. This paper aims to examine connectivism and its potential application.<p></p> <b>Content</b> The conceptual framework and application of connectivism are presented along with an outline of the main criticisms. Its’ potential application in medical education is then considered.<p></p> <b>Conclusions</b> While connectivism provides a useful lens through which teaching and learning using digital technologies can be better understood and managed, further development and testing is required. There is unlikely to be a single theory that will explain learning in technological enabled networks. Educators have an important role to play in online network learning