Irene Karaguilla Ficheman

Computer Assisted Music Therapy: A Case Study of an Augmented Reality Musical System for Children with Cerebral Palsy Rehabilitation

This article presents an experiment conducted with an Augmented Reality musical system for music therapy. In this system, colored cards with graphic symbols replace the music keyboard. Unlike the keyboard, composed of unchangeable and fixed keys, in this system the therapist can print cards of different sizes and place them in various ways, according to the desired motor exercise. Each card represents a different musical note in the timbre of a given musical instrument. A colored virtual cube is attached to each card. A music therapist initially evaluated the system and later an experiment was conducted with a child with cerebral palsy. Results showed the potential of this software in the rehabilitation process.

Accessibility in Digital Television: Designing remote controls

Free to air television is still an important tool to provide information and communication in many countries. Therefore, the universal access to the television system is very important. This paper presents a set of Digital Television accessible remote control devices designed for the Brazilian Digital Television. A research was conducted, interviewing people with disabilities in Brazil. Three remote control models were proposed, consolidating the main identified requirements, being accessible for a diverse group of impairments.

Power wheelchair open platform

Power wheelchairs have high costs in developing countries, making its access difficult to the physically impaired, its main target audience, and to groups that develop assistive technologies, such as researchers, independent developers and entrepreneurs. Free software and open hardware have been successfully used to bridge access gap in areas where cost was a problem, democratizing the innovation process. This paper presents an open hardware and software platform developed for power wheelchairs, which aims to contribute to research and development in this area and stimulate local industry to implement affordable assistive technologies. We believe this work can be used as model for future research on open electronics platforms.

Digital Learning Ecosystems: Authoring, Collaboration, Immersion and Mobility

In this paper we present a digital learning ecosystem model, which similarly to nature ecosystems consists of species, populations and communities interacting with each other and with the environment. We believe that this model can help the design of new learning tools especially during the inception phase.

Testing the OLPC Drawing Activity: An Usability Report

Recently, low cost mobile platforms specially developed for basic education have appeared on the market. The OLPC (one laptop per child) XO laptop, the Intel Classmate and the Encore Mobilis are examples of these new equipments. In the near future, these platforms could be distributed to public schools, enabling mobile learning and one-to-one computing environments in emerging school communities. Mobile learning focuses on learning across spaces, across contexts and learning with mobile devices. We have developed the Oficina software; a drawing activity developed to run on XOs educational laptops and is part of the XO distribution.We believe that usability tests are an essential step in the development of a software application and we have conducted such tests for the Oficina software. The work presents the description and some conclusions of the test we applied to children between 12 to 16 years old to verify easiness of its use.

EducaTrans: um Jogo Educativo para o Aprendizado do Trânsito

Este artigo apresenta o jogo EducaTrans, um jogo educacional que tem por objetivo a Educacao no Trânsito, um tema transversal de ensino na Educacao Basica. Para suportar o jogo aqui apresentado foi criada uma proposta de game engine educacional. O EducaTrans utiliza algoritmos geneticos como mecanismo de evolucao dos pedestres autonomos e oferece uma ferramenta divertida e desafiadora onde o aprendiz podera navegar em um ambiente que reproduz um cenario real com regras de trânsito bem definidas.

Perception of Health Professional about Clinical Utility of an Augmented Reality Musical System to Motor and Cognitive Rehabilitation

GenVirtual is a augmented reality musical software that allows development of activities in music therapy. This study aimed to analyze the perceptions of other health professionals about the clinical utility of GenVirtual. A secondary objective was to understand the attitudes of these professionals facing the augmented reality technology. Three focus groups composed of music therapists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists and nurses who assist people with motor or cognitive disabilities were assigned. The quantitative and qualitative data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. The outcomes showed that the view of the participants about the GenVirtual is as a tool that has great potential to be used in motor rehabilitation. The research brought new insights regarding the clinical use of GenVirtual with children, youth, adults and seniors and provided information about new features and improvements for future developments of the GenVirtual software.

Contributions of an Augmented Reality Musical System for the Stimulation of Motor Skills in Music Therapy Sessions

The music is able to awaken the most varied emotions in humans. According to Robert et al. (1988), listening to music, the ear transforms sound into electrical signals reaching the brain leading to increased production of endorphins. This hormone causes a sensation of wellbeing and relaxes the body, reducing heart rate and blood pressure. Human organism is endowed with a sound system capable of commanding the perception and production of sounds. When there is an imbalance in this system, the sick person feels less motivated and sadder. In this context, music can act as a therapeutic factor bringing back the balance that this person needs (Robert et al. 1988), (Leme, 1999).

Analyzing requirements with the digital learning ecosystem approach

Requirements analysis is a fundamental phase in the development of digital tools and concentrates essentially on computational aspects consisting on the identification of input and output flows as well as processing. Nevertheless, requirements analysis is difficult to conduct when contents and relations are complex and dynamic. Recently, the ecosystem approach has been used to understand and model phenomena that appear from the technology and its use. We propose to use this approach to conceive new digital learning tools during the requirements analysis. In this paper we present a Digital Learning Ecosystem definition and a model that can be applied to the conception of new educational tools. The detailed model includes a set of artefacts that support its application. The model applicability evaluation was achieved by applying it on previously developed study cases and showed how this approach revealed aspects that were not considered with traditional requirements analysis methods.

3D stereoscopic game development technique for smart TVs

A 3D stereoscopic high definition game technique developed for Smart television sets is presented. Despite its limited processing power and low memory, the technique takes advantage of embedded television set streaming feature and user-controlled 2D objects. In order to test the technique, we developed a game for a commercial television. As a result, a new technique and an immersive challenging 3D stereoscopic racing game for Interactive Smart TVs are presented.