Virtual Field Trip via Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling is a practice of combining digital content such as 3-dimensional images, text, sound, images, and video to create a short story. It is the intersection between the old art of storytelling and access to powerful technologies. This project will be a step to experiment the development and effectiveness of digital storytelling and hopefully ignite a source of motivation and encourages others to tap into their interests and skills to develop their own digital storytelling and expand ICT usage in this country. School children look forward to traditional field trips. However, such trips are costly. VFT aims to reduce if not eliminate the constraints that traditional field trips face such as money, time, energy, resources, distance and inaccessible area. To fit the time frame, the VFT is created only for small selected areas in the KL Bird Park even though the KL Bird Park is not that big because some of the areas are not suitable to take panoramic pictures. The development of the VFT is adapted from QTVR Creation Steps by Kitchens (2006). The procedure consists of defining the problem statements and goals, literature review and research, creating image content through taking photos at the site, transforming the photos to QTVR node through stitching, design and construct prototype, inserting interactivity such as hotspots, delivering the output, and last but not least, evaluation. The final output of the project is the KL Bird Park Virtual Field Trip which consists of a photo based 3D panoramic images for each scene from the site which are linked to one another and also hotspots which are placed on the panoramic images to reveal the birds' information with one click on the hotspots. The informal evaluation of the final output that was conducted shows an overwhelming response and acceptance. All of the respondents would like to see more of this type of VFT in the future

Lecture Notes on Interactive Storytelling

These lecture notes collect the material used in the advanced course 'Interactive Storytelling' organized biannually at the Department of Future Technologies, University of Turku, Finland. Its aim is to present the key concepts behind interactive digital storytelling (IDS) as well as to review proposed and existing IDS systems. The course focuses on the four partakers of IDS: the platform, the designer, the interactor, and the storyworld. When constructing a platform, the problem is to select an appropriate approach from tightly controlled to emergent storytelling. On this platform, the designer is then responsible for creating the content (e.g., characters, props, scenes and events) for the storyworld, which is then experienced and influenced by the interactor. The structure and relationships between these partakers is explained from a theoretical perspective as well as using existing IDS systems as examples.</p

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

Whose Who? The Case for a Kantian Right of Publicity

Rapidly developing technological opportunities for unauthorized uses of identity-from virtual kidnapping to digitalcasting-coincide with growing demand for a preemptive federal right of publicity that can replace the existing welter of inconsistent state laws. Progress is impeded, however, by intractable doctrinal confusion and academic hostility to the right as allegedly inimical to society\u27s cultural need to manipulate celebrity images. Because the right of publicity is traditionally based on Lockean labor theory and analogized to intellectual property in created works, it is vulnerable to such attacks; to date, no serious attempt has been made to elaborate an alternative philosophical justification that can withstand them. In this Article, Dean Haemmerli uses Kantian philosophy to justify an autonomy-based right of publicity. In doing so, she challenges both the traditional approach to the right of publicity and its postmodernist critiques. First, the Article\u27s proposed reconception of the right of publicity rejects the existing doctrinal bifurcation of publicity and privacy rights and explicitly embraces both the economic and moral facets of the individual\u27s need to control the use of his identity. Second, by grounding the right in personal autonomy rather than purely pecuniary interests, the Article gives it greater weight in the balance against competing First Amendment considerations. At the same time, in order to contain potential abuses of a more expansive right, the Article considers First Amendment, fair use, and first sale doctrine limitations and incorporates various elements of these limitations into proposed legislative language establishing a preemptive federal right of publicity

Seeing beyond the state? : the negotiation of moral boundaries in the revival and development of Tibetan Buddhist monasticism in contemporary China

This study explores the revival and development of Tibetan Buddhist monasticism in contemporary China since 1980 and its relationship to a society undergoing rapid socio-economic transformations. The speed and extent of the revival has been one of the most extraordinary aspects of the Tibetan Buddhist resurgence. Yet, monastic actors are facing serious challenges as they attempt to 'move with the times' while maintaining the soteriological and mundane bases of monastic Buddhism in rapidly changing political, economic and social contexts. Thus far, accounts of the revival have largely been framed in relation to the Chinese state, the shifting public space for religion and culture and the 'Tibet question'. This study attempts to 'see beyond the state' to examine other contingent factors in the ongoing process of renewal and development. Taking the monastery as the central unit of a synthetic analysis of its relations to both state and society and exploring the topic 'from the ground up', this study focuses on the shifting mundane bases of Gelukpa 'mass monasticism' over the past 30 years at regional monastic centres and local monasteries in eastern Qinghai province, part of the Tibetan Amdo region. By paying attention to the subjective experiences of those involved in monastic development and focusing on its moral dimensions this study provides a fresh perspective on a process that has been intermeshed with, but not exclusively dominated or defined by, its relationship to the state

Concept Mapping Strategy For Academic Writing Tutorial In Open And Distant Learning Higher Institution

Universitas Terbuka (UT) an open and distant higher education institution of Indonesia conducts the in-service teacher education program. In order to complete the program, the students – mostly teachers - have to submit the final academic paper. In fact, most of the UT students have difficulty to write this academic paper. UT offers an academic writing course to solve this writing program. Most of the student view academic writing still as a difficult assignment. Most of the students view academic writing as a difficult assignment to complete. UT has to find an appropriate instructional strategy that can facilitate student to write the academic writing assignment. One of the instructional strategy that can be selected to solve the academic writing problems is concept mapping. The aim of this study is to elaborate the implementation of concept map as an instructional strategy to facilitate the open and distance learning students io complete academic writing assignments. A design based research was applied to measure the effectiveness of using concept mapping strategy in helping students to gain academic writing skills. The steps of research and development model from Borg, Gall and Gall which consist of instructional design and development phases were implemented in this study. The result of this study indicated that students were facilitated and enjoyed the process of academic writing used the concept map strategy

Army architects : The Royal Engineers and the development of building technology in the nineteenth century.

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