Magical Board Theatre: interactive stories that can be played on multiple boards: two educational prototypes

Interactive storytelling uses in education are limited by the time required for its production and the ephemeral nature of interaction systems, leading inter-active stories to have a short usefulness life. We have developed the concept of platform-independent interactive stories, called virtual choreographies, enabling interactive stories to be replayed on novel technological platforms as they emerge, tackling the second half of this problem. The first part was also approached via a graphical storyboarding approach. Both aspects have been prototyped in a demonstration, called Magical Board Theatre (“Teatro de Tabuleiro Mágico”, original Portuguese name). We present this prototype, including its storyboarding tool, summarize the virtual choreographies ap-proach, and demonstrate how the prototype operationalizes them with story and platform examples.This work is co-financed by the ERDF – European Regional Development Fundthrough the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalization - COMPETE 2020 and the Lisboa 2020 under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, and through the Portuguese National Innovation Agency (ANI) as a part of project CHIC «POCI-01-0247-FEDER-024498»".info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Preserving story choreographies across multiple platforms: an approach to platform-independent reuse of characters' behaviors for games, simulations, animations and interactive videos

This article presents an approach that allows the reuse of choreographies of digital stories, regardless of the platform for which they have been developed. Nowadays, story choreographies are linked to either game technology, simulations or interactive animations for which they have been implemented, so they become unavailable as these platforms become obsolete. This limits their reuse, because to perpetuate these digital stories requires new and repeated efforts and investments in its re-creation for new technological platforms that appear in substitution of the previous ones. We propose a methodology to safeguard the semantics of this "narrative choreographies" in an independent way, allowing them to be automatically adapted to new technological platforms when the original ones become obsolete.Tis work is co-financed by the ERDF – European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation - COMPETE 2020 and the Lisboa 2020 under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, and through the Portuguese National Innovation Agency (ANI) as a part of project CHIC «POCI-01-0247-FEDER024498».info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Digital storytelling approaches in virtual museums: umbrella review of systematic reviews

Museums have the mission of promoting and safeguarding objects of historical value and have undergone several modifications over time to take the focus off the object and give more importance to information and the visitor. Currently they encompass different types of experiences, either through digital and interactive elements, or through new approaches, such as storytelling, which has acted as a protagonist of these transformations. In this sense, the museum in the digital mode, known as virtual museum, plays an important role in this sharing of information and experiences. However, by having different modalities for navigation and interaction, especially in formats that simulate the physical visit, like virtual tours, they present some problems that have been identified in the literature, such as, solitary visit, lack of script to follow and little interaction with the exhibited objects. This literature review was conducted between 2013-2021 and 14 papers were selected for analysis. The results support the understanding of the role of narratives and the way museums use them in the virtual space and highlights the gaps of knowledge on the use of storytelling in this context.This work is financed by the ERDF – European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation - COMPETE 2020 Programme, and by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, within project PTDC/HAR-HIS/3024/2020.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Ensaios de transposição de narrativas textuais para plataformas digitais 2d e 3d aplicadas ao ensino superior a distância

As narrativas textuais têm sido utilizadas de diversas formas na educação. Analisámos as narrativas empregues num caso de abordagem didática baseada em aprendizagem situada, autorregulação e corregulação das aprendizagens, e avaliação formativa, designada e-SimProgramming, numa unidade curricular (UC) de Engenharia Informática do ensino superior português a distância. Visou-se neste trabalho verificar quais as adaptações necessárias para a transposição destas narrativas para os formatos 2D (em BD, Banda Desenhada) e 3D, com a expetativa de impulsionar uma maior imersividade dos estudantes nas narrativas. A UC é desenvolvida em seis tópicos sequenciais com conteúdos e atividades acedidas pelos estudantes de forma assíncrona na platafor-ma Moodle. Neste contexto, a UC utiliza atualmente narrativas em formato textual, desenvolvidas utilizando a técnica OC2RD2, com o objetivo de provocar o sentimento de “imersão na história”. A metodologia aplicada neste ensaio de transposição foi a DSR Design Science Research, com vista a identificar métodos eficazes para essa transposição. Foram realizados dois ensaios na fase de Design do Artefato da DSR, de cocriação interdisciplinar, para a transposição das narrativas tex-tuais de um dos tópicos da UC. As ferramentas utilizadas nestes ensaios de transposição foram a Magic Board Theater (3D) e a Banda Desenhada Player (2D), descritas em trabalho anterior. Os ensaios de transposição foram realizados a partir da adaptação dos elementos (personagens e ce-nários) pré-existentes nas ferramentas, ou seja, descontextualizados dos idealizados para a UC. Na análise comparativa entre as plataformas 2D e 3D, constatou-se que a plataforma de visualização de BD atende melhor aos requisitos da UC em seu contexto de oferta a distância, tendo em consi-deração fatores como: visualização sem tempo pré-definido; acesso sem necessidade de grande largura de banda de Internet; conexão com ficheiros externos dentro do contexto dos diálogos (in-clusivamente ficheiros multimédia); responsividade e fácil integração com a plataforma Moodle e permite imprimir ou exportar as narrativas para formato externo. Pelos resultados preliminares é possível afirmar que a transposição dos elementos de narrativas textuais para BD é uma opção viável e a ser considerada para o uso de narrativas no Ensino Superior a Distância em Cursos de Informática na transição do nível básico para o avançado.O presente trabalho foi financiado no âmbito do projeto LIFE SKILLS FOR EMPLOYMENT IN COVID-19 ERA THROUGH VR INNOVATION, cofinanciado pelo programa ERASMUS + da União Europeia. Projeto n.º: 2020-1-UK01-KA226-HE-094705. D. Pedrosa agradece à Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) e ao CIDTFF pelo apoio ao abrigo do estímulo ao emprego científico 2017, no âmbito do projeto CEECIND/00986/2017. E do projeto UID/ CED/00194/2020. Cristiane Bonfim agradece ao Instituto Federal de Brasília (IFB) o apoio de licença de qualificação para Doutoramento em Multimédia em Educação Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal. Processo Nº 23508.000982.2021-67.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Work-in-progress: the role of immersion when designing characters for adapting textual narratives into comic strips for online higher education: trials prototyping characters

A critical factor in immersive educational narratives is identification by students with the characters. In this work-in-progress analyzes the process of rendering characters from textual narratives into visual form by non-artists (i.e., instructors). We tried to match archetypes with their visual representation through the platforms: Pixton, Powtoon (both 2D) and The Sims4 (3D). The limitations of characterization can impact students' narrative immersion. As future work we intend to test with the target group and observe the improvements needed to increase identification and sense of immersion in the narrative.This work was funded under National Funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under project PTDC/CEDEDG/30040/2017 and the project LIFE SKILLS FOR EMPLOYMENT IN COVID-19 ERA THROUGH VR INNOVATION, co-funded by the ERASMUS + program of the European Union. Project No.: 2020-1-UK01- KA226-HE094705. D. Pedrosa thanks the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) and CIDTFF (UID/CED/00194/2020) - Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal, for Stimulus of Scientific Employment – CEECIND/00986/2017 Individual Support 2017. C. Bonfim thanks the Instituto Federal de Brasília (IFB) the support of license qualification for PhD in Multimedia in Education at Universidade de Aveiro. Process No. 23508.000982.2021-67info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Virtual tour in the digital TV: Interactive presentation of remote locations using the 360° Google Street View´s immersion methodology

This document presented the relationship between Digital TV - through their interactivity - and virtual tours, regarding the presentation of remote locations based on the methodology employed in virtual tours of Google Street View. Briefly expounded the evolution of some issues necessary for the proper understanding of the project as: Virtual Tour, Google Street View, Tourism and Digital TV, drawing parallels and points of encounter between these social and cultural phenomena, and present a reflection on using conceptual image at the expense of its use as a visual representation only. This research was presented a possible adaptation to the Digital TV visitation to remote places through 360° panoramic tours. As validation of the hypothesis, an application was developed for Digital TV containing a virtual tour to a museum in the light of the methods used to develop virtual tours to the internet in order to demonstrate their use successfully in this new platform. As a complement, a WEB system was developed able to generate this NCL application, suitable for Digital TV.Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível SuperiorEste trabalho apresentou a relação entre a TV Digital - através de seus recursos de interatividade - e passeios virtuais, no que tange a apresentação de lugares remotos tendo como base a metodologia empregada nos passeios virtuais do Google Street View1. De forma resumida explanou a evolução de alguns temas necessários ao bom entendimento do projeto como: Passeio/Tour virtual, Google Street View, Turismo e TV Digital, traçando paralelos e pontos de encontro entre estes fenômenos sociais e culturais, além de apresentar uma reflexão sobre o uso da imagem conceitual em detrimento do seu uso como representação exclusivamente visual. Foi apresentado nesta pesquisa um formato possível de adaptação à TV Digital de visitação a lugares remotos através de Tours panorâmicos 360°. Como validação da hipótese levantada, um aplicativo foi desenvolvido para TV Digital contendo um passeio virtual a um museu à luz dos métodos utilizados para desenvolvimento de passeios virtuais para internet, a fim de demonstrar o seu uso com êxito nessa nova plataforma. Como complemento, foi desenvolvido um sistema WEB capaz de gerar essa aplicação no formato NCL, próprio para TV Digital