Joan Soler-Adillon

A novel approach to interactive playgrounds: the interactive slide project

The incipient research on interactive playgrounds is a promising field that can enhance in many ways growth, health and education of children and youngsters. In this paper, we present a novel approach to interactive playgrounds by describing the physical and interaction design of a new platform: the Interactive Slide. We concentrate on the main design issues and relate the acceptance of this platform; specifically through two applications that we have designed for it: one for children 4 to 8 years and a second for youngsters 10 to 14. This platform can provide a fertile ground for creative, leisure and educational applications and experiences. However, our main focus is on countering lack of physical activity and lack of socialization in children, which are important issues in all developed countries (and some underdeveloped ones) and especially important in Europe because of their accelerated pace of incidence.

El material intangible de l'art interactiu: agència, comportament i emergència

This paper presents a conceptual analysis of some of the basic notions for the practice of interactive art and the relations among them. A sound understanding of these notions is essential for the creation of the aesthetics of artistically behaving systems. Interactivity, agency, behavior and emergence are presented as the building blocks of this practice, understanding that they are at least as important as the materials that physically instantiate the pieces and installations that constitute the body of interactive art. Interactivity is defined and confronted to the metaphor of the conversation and to the idea of designing interactive systems with artistic purposes. The notions of agency, behavior and performativity are reviewed through the reading of Andrew Pickering’s account for the ontology of Cybernetics and in relation to interactive art practices. Finally, the concept of emergence and Peter Cariani’s emergence-relative-to-a-model are presented as a theoretical framework with which the analysis and creation of unexpected and non pre-designed behaviors in interactive systems can be based.

Wikipedia en la Universidad: cambios en la percepción de valor con la creación de contenidos

Wikipedia es un recurso muy utilizado por estudiantes universitarios, pero no esta necesariamente bien valorado en terminos de fiabilidad, ni tampoco es visto como un entorno en el que hacer aportaciones de contenido. Este articulo presenta un proyecto de docencia e investigacion que consiste en proponer que los estudiantes editen o creen articulos para la Wikipedia, y en comprobar si la experiencia modifica su valoracion de la misma. Se realizo la experiencia en la Universidad Pompeu Fabra (Espana) y la Universidad de Nis (Serbia) con un total de 240 alumnos. Editaron articulos y respondieron dos cuestionarios, uno antes y otro despues de la experiencia. Se compararon las respuestas mediante una serie de pruebas T para muestras emparejadas, a partir de las cuales pudimos comprobar que los datos mostraban un cambio significativo en su percepcion sobre la fiabilidad y la utilidad de la Wikipedia y sobre la probabilidad de encontrar informacion falsa en ella. Tambien cambio su apreciacion de la tarea de editar articulos, que se valoro como interesante y represento un reto. En cambio, su valoracion del prestigio social de la Wikipedia, tanto en el contexto universitario como el general, no vario significativamente. Adicionalmente, las preguntas abiertas y el feedback informal permitieron recoger informaciones muy valiosas respecto a la valoracion del conjunto de la experiencia

Self-organization and novelty: Pre-configurations of emergence in early British cybernetics

Emergence appears in the literature as related to self-organization and novelty. For many authors it is the result of multiple interactions among agents within a system, which generate phenomena that could not be understood, nor anticipated, through the analysis of the elements and their behaviors in isolation. For others, emergent phenomena are related to fundamental novelty and, thus, to creativity. These two formulations of emergence can be traced back to the experimental work of some key early cybernetic experimental devices by Ross Ashby, Grey Walter and Gordon Pask. As a group, the devices illustrate the potential of both formulations of emergence and of its combination. As such, they can help with the elaboration of a framework to understand emergence in the context of interactive art and communication, both to analyze its presence in interactive systems and to design systems that aim to generate them.

Immersive Journalism and Virtual Reality

Immersive journalism is a practice that places the audience at the center of the journalistic narrative, creating first-person experiences by using Virtual Reality technologies and 360 degree video. This chapter reviews some of the current key ideas in understanding its importance and implications. Storytelling, empathy, the virtual/real duality, and interactivity are discussed along with several key works of the current new wave of immersive technologies. The text looks at both how immersive journalism connects to and how it innovates from the first VR experiences dated from over 20 years ago, in a moment when immersive technologies afford a context for these new storytelling practices to be consolidated.

Wikipedia in Higher Education: Changes in Perceived Value through Content Contribution.

Wikipedia is a widely used resource by university students, but it is not necessarily regarded as being reliable and trustworthy by them, nor is it seen as a context in which to make content contributions. This paper presents a teaching and research project that consisted in having students edit or create Wikipedia articles and testing whether or not this experience changed their perceived value of the platform. We conducted our experience at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain) and University of Niš (Niš, Serbia) with a total number of 240 students. These students edited articles and answered two questionnaires, one before and one after the exercise. We compared the pre and post experience answers to the questionnaires with a series of paired samples t-tests, through which our data showed that students did significantly change their perception of reliability and usefulness, and of likeliness of finding false information on Wikipedia. Their appreciation of the task of writing Wikipedia articles, in terms of it being interesting and challenge also increased. They did not significantly change, however, their judgement on the social value of the platform, neither in the university nor in the general context. In addition, the open questions and informal feedback allowed us to gather valuable insights towards the evaluation of the overall experience. RESUMEN Wikipedia es un recurso muy utilizado por estudiantes universitarios, pero no está necesariamente bien valorado en términos de fiabilidad, ni tampoco es visto como un entorno en el que hacer aportaciones de contenido. Este artículo presenta un proyecto de docencia e investigación que consiste en proponer que los estudiantes editen o creen artículos para la Wikipedia, y en comprobar si la experiencia modifica su valoración de la misma. Se realizó la experiencia en la Universidad Pompeu Fabra (España) y la Universidad de Niš (Serbia) con un total de 240 alumnos. Editaron artículos y respondieron dos cuestionarios, uno antes y otro después de la experiencia. Se compararon las respuestas mediante una serie de pruebas T para muestras emparejadas, a partir de las cuales pudimos comprobar que los datos mostraban un cambio significativo en su percepción sobre la fiabilidad y la utilidad de la Wikipedia y sobre la probabilidad de encontrar información falsa en ella. También cambió su apreciación de la tarea de editar artículos, que se valoró como interesante y representó un reto. En cambio, su valoración del prestigio social de la Wikipedia, tanto en el contexto universitario como el general, no varió significativamente. Adicionalmente, las preguntas abiertas y el feedback informal permitieron recoger informaciones muy valiosas respecto a la valoración del conjunto de la experiencia.