Teaching children with and without disabilities school readiness skills

We know that computer assisted educational curricula are much more attention captivating and interesting to children compared with a classic paper and pencil approach to teaching. Educational computer games can easily engage students, captivate and maintain their attention allowing them both learning with teachers and practicing on their own time without the teacher’s direct attention. Overall, computer based instruction increases the motivation and results in faster acquisition of skills. Also, teaching children with developmental disabilities requires special set of tools and methods, due to decreased level of attention towards stimuli presented and lessened capability to learn in the ways typical children do. Therefore, computer based instruction seems to be a good match for these diverse learners because it offers multiple exemplars, interesting and interactive practice with constant feedback, multiplied learning opportunities without direct teacher engagement, and customization to each child’s needs. In this paper we present the expanded LeFCA framework that was proven successful for teaching children with autism basic skills and concepts, and we now tested it across various levels of learners with and without disabilities across 3 different languages: Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BHS), Italian and English (US). Within the pilot project, we produced four games for teaching matching, pointing out (based on visual and auditory stimuli) and labeling skills, which are considered to be primary skills needed for learning. We then expanded the frame with adding four more games that teach sorting, categorizing, sequencing and pattern making. The results of our user study, done with 20 participants in three different languages, showed that the created software in native languages was completely clear and user friendly for kids with and without special needs, and that is systematically and developmentally appropriately sequenced for learning. Additionally, we found that children were able to generalize learned skills, through a transfer to a new mediums or environments and their teacher reported that children were very motivated and enjoyed playing the games

Story guided virtual environments in educational applications

Over the last few years we have witnessed a rapid development and popularisation of serious gaming. This field is becoming approved in not only education, science, medicine, religion or engineering, but also in the area of cultural heritage through serious heritage games. This can be utilised for virtual reconstructions and virtual museums and possibly used for education in the form of edutainment, comprising various techniques, such as storytelling, visual expression of information, interactivity and entertainment [19]. This paper demonstrates a new concept of using story guided virtual environments for cultural heritage virtual reconstruction, with live virtual guides in an interactive Flash format. First we compare the implementations of the same environments in x3D and Flash and then we extend the project with digital storytelling, where a user is guided through the whole application using both narrative, non-interactive, movie-like elements and interactive exploration of the virtual environment. The introduced results can be easily adopted for serious games development

A curriculum for developing serious games for children with autism: A success story

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder, detectable early in development and characterized by the lack of socialization, development of language and patterns of rigid, repetitive, auto-stimulating behaviors that interfere with overall functioning of a person. Due to reduced level of attention and different style of learning, teaching children with ASD requires a particular set of tools and methods. Studies have shown that computer-based intervention, typically in form of serious games, can be effectively utilized for developing various skills, allowing children with disabilities both learning with teachers and practicing on their own time, when the taught concepts are presented in a fun, informal, and engaging way. Nonetheless, there is a limited amount of appropriately designed serious games for children with ASD, especially in less spread languages native to the children. In this paper we present a complete curriculum for final year Computer Science (CS) undergraduate students, aimed at developing web-based serious games for teaching children with and without autism basic concepts. In addition, we present multiple outcomes of such course taught by the authors, computer scientist and a psychologist and a special educator. We believe that inclusion of such curriculum in CS undergraduate programs could benefit both the students, children with ASD, teachers of both groups and the community in genera

An interactive E-book with an educational game for children with developmental disorders: a pilot user study

Children diagnosed with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as one of the most complex neurodevelopmental disabilities, are characterized by different brain and functioning development, distinct interaction with the environment and different learning patterns, language and social skills impairments, and repetitive auto-stimulating restricting behaviors. It has been shown that computer-assisted intervention is much more attention captivating and interesting to children compared with a classic approach to teaching, allowing for faster acquisition of skills. This makes these tools and the technology highly suitable for teaching children with autism basic developmental skills. In addition, interactive electronic books showed positive outcomes for comprehension and information acquisition in children with ASD, while decreasing inappropriate children behavior in the classroom. In this paper a pilot user study on an e-book with an embedded educational game for children with developmental disorders was presented. The results show that the e-book can be efficiently used for teaching children with ASD basic developmental skills and that the learned skills can be efficiently transfered to new media and environments. The framework will provide preschool children with and without disabilities with appropriate educational software, to build up their early cognitive abilities and school readiness skills, and promote incorporating technology as part of the educational and pedagogical process in school

Read, Play and Learn: An Interactive E-book for Children with Autism

Serious games can easily engage students, captivate and maintain their attention allowing them both learning with an adult, or on their own. But, teaching children with developmental disabilities like ASD, requires special set of tools and methods, due to decreased level of attention towards stimuli presented and lessened capability to learn in ways typical children do. Interactive multisensory computer based instruction seems to be a good match for these diverse learners because it offers multisensory learning experience, interactive practice with constant feedback, increased learning opportunities, and customization to each child’s needs. In this paper we present a web-based interactive educational e-book designed to engage a learner with additional auditory-visual stimulation related to the text being read in two languages, and by providing multi layered questions about the story read, for comprehension. Our educational goals were to teach children novel vocabulary, counting, identifying numbers and colors, and responding to inference questions

“LeFCA”: Learning framework for children with autism

Teaching children with autism requires special set of tools and methods, due to decreased level of attention towards stimuli presented and lessened capability to learn in the ways typical children do, which is manifested within this population. It has been previously shown that computer-assisted intervention is not only an effective method for developing various skills, allowing both learning with teachers and practicing on their own time without the teacher's direct attention, but it nonetheless increases the motivation and results in faster acquisition of these skills. In this paper we present the first step in developing the LeFCA framework, that will be used for teaching children with autism basic skills and concepts. Within the pilot project, we produced four games for developing matching, pointing out (based on visual and auditory stimuli) and labeling skills, which are considered to be primary skills needed for learning. The results of our preliminary study showed that the created software in native language is completely clear and user friendly for kids with Autism and other special needs, and that is systematically and developmentally appropriately sequenced for learning. Additionally, we found that children were able to generalize learned skills, through a transfer to a new medium or environment without any needed training (i.e. computer). All four participants mastered all programs without any instructional tactic needed

Educational E-book For Children With and Without Developmental Disorders

In the last decade, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) prevalence rate has signifcantly increased, which consequently led to the expansion of research and expenditure in the feld,predominantly focusing on searching for the cause. In a typical classroom scenario, working with children with ASD very often requires 1:1 teacher to child ratio, which makes it very expensive and difcult to implement. Serious games have been utilised as a medium for teaching various developmental skills, such as social interaction, speech, motor skills development, emotion recognition, and other basic concepts. Designing serious games for ASD population difers from other games and even other serious games signifcantly. It requires a holistic approach with extensive knowledge and expertise from felds other than computer science, such as psychology, sociology and cognitive science. However, once harnessed correctly, such games can be used by children with ASD on their own time, with or without supervision and they can be educational. In addition, they can adjust the appropriate pace while at the same time providing feedback in form of reinforcement and correction. Applying the rules of science of learning and teaching, one can design games that are educational for all types of learners, including children with ASD. In this paper, two independent user studies have been conducted, demonstrating how serious gaming and e-learning principles can be harnessed in order to intervene, develop or strengthen pivotal developmental skills, like learning novel vocabulary, counting, identifying numbers and colours, and responding to inference questions. We have tested the educational e-book with children diagnosed with ASD and with typically developing children to assess skill acquisition in native language for children with ASD and in English, a foreign language, for typically developing children to demonstrate the educational aspect of the game for all types of learners. We showed that the same e-book in two languages can be used for teaching diferent types of learners through a fun and engaging medium

Perceived Dynamic Range of HDR Images with no Semantic Information

Computing dynamic range of high dynamic range (HDR) content is an important procedure when selecting the test material, designing and validating algorithms, or analyzing aesthetic attributes of HDR content. It can be computed on a pixelbased level, measured through subjective tests or predicted using a mathematical model. However, all these methods have certain limitations. This paper investigates whether dynamic range of modeled images with no semantic information, but with the same first order statistics as the original, natural content, is perceived the same as for the corresponding natural images. If so, it would be possible to improve the perceived dynamic range (PDR) predictor model by using additional objective metrics, more suitable for such synthetic content. Within the subjective study, three experiments were conducted with 43 participants. The results show significant correlation between the mean opinion scores for the two image groups. Nevertheless, natural images still seem to provide better cues for evaluation of PDR

Quality Assessment of Deep-Learning-Based Image Compression

Image compression standards rely on predictive coding, transform coding, quantization and entropy coding, in order to achieve high compression performance. Very recently, deep generative models have been used to optimize or replace some of these operations, with very promising results. However, so far no systematic and independent study of the coding performance of these algorithms has been carried out. In this paper, for the first time, we conduct a subjective evaluation of two recent deeplearning-based image compression algorithms, comparing them to JPEG 2000 and to the recent BPG image codec based on HEVC Intra. We found that compression approaches based on deep auto-encoders can achieve coding performance higher than JPEG 2000, and sometimes as good as BPG. We also show experimentally that the PSNR metric is to be avoided when evaluating the visual quality of deep-learning-based methods, as their artifacts have different characteristics from those of DCT or wavelet-based codecs. In particular, images compressed at low bitrate appear more natural than JPEG 2000 coded pictures, according to a no-reference naturalness measure. Our study indicates that deep generative models are likely to bring huge innovation into the video coding arena in the coming years

Interactive digital storytelling in the Sarajevo survival tools virtual environment

Virtual museums enable Internet users to explore museum collections online. The question is how to enhance the viewer's experience and learning in such environments. In the Sarajevo Survival Tools virtual museum we introduced a new concept of interactive digital storytelling that will enable the visitors to explore the virtual exhibits - objects from the siege of Sarajevo - guided by a digital story. This way the virtual museum visitors will learn about the context of the displayed objects and be motivated to explore all of them. In this paper we present the virtual environment we developed and our experience with it. The results from three empirical studies we conducted, indicate the positive influence of digital storytelling and sound effects on visitors' perceptual response, resulting in increased motivation and enjoyment, and more effective information conveyance