A context model, design tool and architecture for context-aware systems designs

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Automatic shader tool for 3D animation production in Thai industries

The 3D animation has become a big business in Thailand.We conduct the focus group with key authorities in the Thai animation industry in order to understand the real issues in Thai animations business.We found that Thai animators trend to manually set the attributes for the effects.This causes human errors and time delay in the development process.The aim of this research is to develop an automatic shader tool to help reduce human errors and time delay. But at the same time, the tool should give the animators control over the necessary attributes setting. Moreover, it should act as a learning tool for the new animators in Thai animation industry as well. This is because Thai animation industries require their animators to have basic understanding about the effect setting.Our tool is then tested with the animators in their real environment.The experts find our tool works efficiently and help them getting their job done quickly. Moreover, the new animators find the tool easy to use and reduce errors as well

Designing for practice-based context-awareness in ubiquitous e-health environments

Existing approaches for supporting context-aware knowledge sharing in ubiquitous healthcare give little attention to practice-based structures of knowledge representation. They guide knowledge re-use at an abstract level and hardly incorporate details of actionable tasks and processes necessary for accomplishing work in a real-world context. This paper presents a context-aware model for supporting clinical knowledge sharing across organizational and geographical boundaries in ubiquitous e-health. The model draws on activity and situation awareness theories as well as the Belief-Desire Intention and Case-based Reasoning techniques in intelligent systems with the goal of enabling clinicians in disparate locations to gain a common representation of relevant situational information in each other's work contexts based on the notion of practice. We discuss the conceptual design of the model, present a formal approach for representing practice as context in a ubiquitous healthcare environment, and describe an application scenario and a prototype system to evaluate the proposed approach

Parents’ perspectives on their children’s music therapy: A synthesis of qualitative literature

There is no existing qualitative synthesis of the music therapy literature on parents’ perspectives on their children’s music therapy. This study seeks to fill this gap, motivated by the first author’s experiences as a clinician/researcher. A systematic search of health databases, hand searches of key journals and searches of doctoral theses were undertaken to identify relevant studies. Thirteen studies which met inclusion criteria, including a total of 102 participants, were identified. Relevant data were extracted from these studies for comparison and analysis, with quality of studies assessed using the CASP appraisal tool. Findings were analysed following procedures of thematic synthesis. Six descriptive themes were grouped into three analytic themes: Parents perceived positive impacts of music therapy on their children; parents experienced music therapy as a nurturing environment for themselves and their children; and some parents experienced challenges to their engagement with music therapy. Most studies (12/13) explored parents’ perceptions of music therapy where they were included in sessions. The findings identify positive perceptions of family-centred models of music therapy for children and parents. Parents’ perceptions of children were altered positively through experiencing them in new ways in music therapy. Parents also perceived positive outcomes for their children. These findings identify an emphasis in the qualitative literature on parents’ perceptions on research into music therapy which includes parents in sessions. Only one study explored perceptions of a model where parents were not present during their child’s sessions. More research is needed into parents’ perceptions of music therapy where parents are not present during sessions. Further intervention studies into family-centred models of music therapy with children are also recommended

A music therapy student's exploration of single session music therapy for children on a paediatric ward using action research methodology : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music Therapy at the New Zealand School of Music, Wellington, New Zealand

This study aimed to answer the question “How can I, as a music therapy student in a paediatric ward, provide children with beneficial single session music therapy?” In order to answer this question, action research methodology was employed. This methodology allowed the researcher to monitor and question her actions in order to improve her practice. Furthermore, principles from music therapy and other disciplines were applied and adapted. The researcher’s practice would be made more appropriate, therefore, for a paediatric ward where only brief information about the children was provided and limited time was available to work with them. There were four cycles in the study. The challenges and concerns that emerged through the course of this research were 1) how to approach the children or get the music therapy session underway, 2) how to provide suitable sessions for the different needs and developmental stages of the children; 3) how to be more aware of the children’s needs, and 4) how to maintain my inspiration. All the findings from these concerns were formulated into some helpful principles that played an important role during the course of this study. The principles are: 1) being flexible; 2) keeping the patients’ and the therapist’s control in balance; 3) being sensitive to children’s responses and to their needs; 4) being familiar with background knowledge; 5) being able to build a rapport in a short time; 6) being available; 7) being open-minded; and 8) being able to reduce the therapist’s anxiety. It is recommended that these principles be employed in other contexts where the therapist has little time at his/her disposal to assess or establish a rapport with the children, and where it is hard to predict the situation or plan the session ahead

The inclusion of the family members as primary carers in music therapy sessions with children in a special education centre; How does this help the child and the carer?

This qualitative study aims to explore the parents’ or other family members’ experiences in participating in music therapy sessions with their children with special needs. This aim leads to three research questions which were; 1) Can music therapy help to achieve aims set out for individual children with special needs and their parents or other family members 2) What are the functions of music therapy in nurturing communication between the parents or other family members and their children? and 3) How can the music therapist develop ways in which parents or other family members can use music to help their children? Six children who are attending the Special Education Centre, region 9 in Thailand, aged four to twelve years old with their family members who are their primary carers, participated in 24 music therapy sessions. Each session was videoed and the video recordings were discussed every two weeks with the carers. The carers were interviewed three times by the research assistants. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was employ to evaluate data collected from interviews. Furthermore, there were two home visits, one after a month when the 24th session was finished and another visit was two months after the 24th session was finished. From the interview analysis, there are 28 themes under five categories namely: 1) The carers’ expectations of the music therapy 2) The carers’ experience of seeing their children in the music therapy sessions 3) The carers’ experiences of seeing themselves in the sessions 4) The carers’ experiences of reviewing the video recordings from the music therapy sessions and 5) The carers’ experiences of using music at home. It can be summarised that music therapy made a positive impact on the children and their carers. The finding highlighted how the music therapy enhanced the social and communication skills of the children. Moreover, involving the carers in the sessions enabled the carers to have positive experiences with their children and these experiences led the carers to see and interact with their children differently. The findings suggest the ways to work with the carers in a therapeutic process and how to encourage the carers to use music at home with their childre

History as Part of Context

ing an influence on human activity. S 1 Rules Community Division of Labour Tools Subject S e Transformation Process Outcome Object Figure 1 Triangular Structure of Human Activity introduced by [Engestrm et al., 1999] Figure 1 shows that Activity Theory allows us to capture information about the current situation, (S 0 ) and the outcome (S e ) once the activity is performed. However, it does not provide an adequate account of a user's current object or intention (S 1 ). People often refer to experiences in the past while performing their current activity. Therefore, we have extended Activity Theory by adding the concept of History, illustrated in Figure 2. History is modelled as a set of states in the past. Each past state is represented as an Activity Theory model, which captures the context of past activities. This information includes the initial state (S 0 ), intention (S 1 ) and outcome (S e ) of the activity. 1 Figure 2 Extending Activity Theory to understand user's

Integrating History and Activity Theory in Context Aware System Design

In this paper, we describe our context model as a design tool for developing context aware systems. Activity Theory is introduced as a potential approach for identifying and relating the elements that should be taken into account when designing context aware systems. We extend Activity Theory by adding the concept of history to produce the basis for our context modelling