Learning by Playing. Game-based Education System Design and Development : 4th International Conference on E-learning, Edutainment 2009, Banff, Canada, August 9-11, 2009, Proceedings

With the widespread interest in digital entertainment and the advances in the technologies of computer graphics, multimedia and virtual reality technologies, the new area of “Edutainment” has been accepted as a union of education and computer entertainment. Edutainment is recognized as an effective way of learning through a medium, such as a computer, software, games or AR/VR applications, that both educates and entertains. The Edutainment conference series was established and followed as a special event for the new interests in e-learning and digital entertainment. The main purpose of Edutainment conferences is the discussion, presentation, and information exchange of scientific and technological developments in the new community. The Edutainment conference series is a very interesting opportunity for researchers, engineers, and graduate students who wish to communicate at these international annual events. The conference series includes plenary invited talks, workshops, tutorials, paper presen- tion tracks, and panel discussions. The Edutainment conference series was initiated in Hangzhou, China in 2006. Following the success of the first (Edutainment 2006 in Hangzhou, China), the second (Edutainment 2007 in Hong Kong, China), and the third events (Edutainment 2008 in Nanjing, China), Edutainment 2009 was held August 9–11, 2009 in Banff, Canada. This year, we received 116 submissions from 25 different countries and regions - cluding Austria, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, UK, and USA.

Interactions in Games.- Gamers against All Odds.- Matchmaker: Interpersonal Touch in Gaming.- Doing It Right: Combining Edutainment Format Development and Research.- Simulation and Animation.- Virtual Apple Tree Pruning in Horticultural Education.- An Architecture for Flexible Entity Configuration in a Simulation Environment.- A Distributed Multi-agent Architecture in Simulation Based Medical Training.- Digital Museum and Digital Heritage.- A Review on Augmented Reality for Virtual Heritage System.- Mixing Telerobotics and Virtual Reality for Improving Immersion in Artwork Perception.- Developing a Film-Based Learning System with English Verbal Reduced Forms for Supporting English Listening Comprehension.- An Interactive 3D Exhibition System with Global Illumination for Digital Museum.- Lishe System.- E-Learning: The Strategies of Learning Culture and Arts.- SoundTag: RFID Based Wearable Computer Play Tool for Children.- Sketch Learning Environment with Diagnosis and Drawing Guidance from Rough Form to Detailed Contour Form.- Game Design and Development.- Construction of a Computer Game Oriented to Disaster Education and Reflections on Its Problems.- CharanisML: A Flexible Virtual Actor Control Interface.- Game Balance Principles in MMORPG with Pet System.- An Approach to Evaluation Component Design in Building Serious Game.- Do Improve Typing Skill But No Significant Difference between Drill-Based and Game-Based Typing Software.- Little Big Difference: Gender Aspects and Gender-Based Adaptation in Educational Games.- Game-Like Simulations for Online Adaptive Learning: A Case Study.- Motivational Factors in Educational MMORPGs: Some Implications for Education.- Designing a Trading Card Game as Educational Reward System to Improve Students’ Learning Motivations.- Where Academics Meet the Real World: Difficulties Encountered When Conducting a Project for Designing a Game-Based Learning in a Company.- Social and Cultural Issues.- An Entertainment System Using Thermal Feedback for Increasing Communication and Social Skills.- Student Attitudes towards Using Culturally-Oriented Educational Games to Improve Programming Proficiency: An Exploratory Study.- Towards Intelligent Computer Assisted Educational Role-Play.- Reflective Learning through Playing Digital Game The Sims 2.- Storytelling and Narrative in Education.- A Story Authoring System for Children.- Simplified Creation and Presentation of Non-linear Adaptive Content.- Exploration of Affect Sensing from Speech and Metaphorical Text.- Game-Based Learning/Training.- QuizMASter - A Multi-Agent Game-Style Learning Activity.- The Effects of Type of Interactivity in Experiential Game-Based Learning.- Virtual Sport System for Optimum Exercising Based on a User Model.- Engaging Kids with the Concept of Sustainability Using a Commercial Videogame-A Case Study.- Entertaining Education – Using Games-Based and Service-Oriented Learning to Improve STEM Education.- Learning English through Serious Games – Reflections on Teacher and Learner Performance.- VR-Based Education/Training.- ELEIN: E-Learning with 3D Interactive Emotional Agents.- Tangible Drag-and-Drop: Transferring Digital Content with a Remote Control.- Adaptation in Collaborative Virtual Environments for Training.- Pushdown Automata Simulator.- Construction Knowledge Transfer through Interactive Visualization.- Pathfinding Strategy for Multiple Non-Playing Characters in 2.5 D Game Worlds.- Research on Using Cult3D and Java to Realize Virtual Assembly.- Design and Implementation of Operation Replay for Virtual Experiment.- Vision and Imaging Technology in Games.- Adaptive Lip Feature Point Detection Algorithm for Real-Time Computer Vision-Based Smile Training System.- Fast Shape-Simplifying Image Abstraction Using Graphics Hardware.- Educational Robot and Toy.- Music-Making and Musical Comprehension with Robotic Building Blocks.- AdMoVeo: A Robotic Platform for Teaching Creative Programming to Designers.- Edutainment Robotics as Learning Tool.- Augmented Reality in Education/Training.- Designing a DSL Solution for the Domain of Augmented Reality Software Applications Specification.- A Study of Virtual Product Presentation with Whiteboard and Its Effect on Users Perception.- Survey on Collaborative AR for Multi-user in Urban Studies and Planning.- Enriching Users’ Edutainment through Embodied Video Interactive Games.- The Learning Effectiveness of Blended and Embodied Interactive Video Game on Kindergarten Students.- From Fingers to Embodiment: A Study on the Relations of the Usability, Dependability of the Embodied Interactive Video Games and the Elders’ Flow Experience.- Kindergartners’ Color Preference and Temperament in Embodied Interactive Video Game.- Researches on Educational Robots of Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program.- Researches on Using Robots in Education.- A Task-Based Role-Playing Game with Educational Robots for Learning Language.- Design of an Interactive Table for Mixed-Reality Learning Environments.- A Study of Collaboration and Conflicts Using Multi-robots.- A Case Analysis of Creative Spiral Instruction Model and Students’ Creative Problem Solving Performance in a LEGO® Robotics Course.- Gender Heterogeneous Groups in Cooperative Learning Applied in "Robots in Creative Course": A Pilot Study.- Exploring Children’s Perceptions of the Robots.- Development of an Emotional Robot as a Teaching Assistant.- Researches on Innovative Design of Learning Software and Content.- Empirical Research and Design of M-Learning System for College English.- Designing an e-Learning Reactivate Promotion for Unpopular Collections in Academic Library.- Multi-media e-Learning Platform Using Green Design with Near-Real Approach.- Interactive Whiteboard Teaching in English Education Based on Dual Code Theory and Bloom Teaching Quality.- A Cognitive-Interactive Approach to Chinese Characters Learning: System Design and Development.- An Automatic Course Generation System for Organizing Existent Learning Objects Using Particle Swarm Optimization.- The Experience of Adopting Game-Based Learning in Library Instruction.