Interactive Playground Research Articles

A Mixed Reality Environment for Mathematics

Throughout history, mathematicians and geometricians have relied on visualizations to convey abstract concepts effectively, including describing, discussing, studying, and teaching Mathematics. In Mathematics education, visualizations are still used whenever possible to support teaching, inspire students, and satisfy their need to see abstract Mathematical facts. In recent years, the integration of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in contemporary Mathematics education offers a fascinating and extremely motivating new tool for teachers, allowing students to visualize Mathematics in three dimensions. This article provides an overview of immersive environments developed in recent years to support geometry education, focusing on the combined use of VR and AR. By examining various methodologies and outcomes, we explore the potential of mixed reality in transforming how students engage with mathematical concepts. The procedures and outcomes of the methods of applications are discussed and described below. Keywords—Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, computer generated environment, geometry education, sentenced-based math problems, interactive playgrounds

TQL: a Case Study of Integrating DSL in a Product

Domain-specific languages power numerous modern applications and libraries, including but not limited to: Wolfram Alpha, Microsoft Excel, Graphviz. This work aims to share the experience gathered from developing TQL (Talisman Query Language) – a domain-specific language used in Talisman platform. Talisman platform is a set of tools to automate data processing tasks, developed by Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of RAS. TQL implementation, discussed in this article, supports error-recovery, can be run directly inside a browser as well as on a server, and it also has an interactive playground that visualizes the parse tree while typing. This article describes several techniques and technologies that were used to make these qualities possible while keeping a single, maintainable codebase.

Interactive Playgrounds and Children’s Outdoor Play Behavior: Children’s Perspectives

This paper provides an in-depth understanding of children’s perspectives toward playing on three interactive playgrounds located in a schoolyard in Enschede, a city located in the eastern part of the Netherlands, in the Twente region. The COM-B model of behavior change is used to explore children’s perspectives. This model defines behavior as the result of an interaction between three components that generate behavior: Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation. The perceptions and experiences of 27 children aged 8 to 12 from playing on these interactive playgrounds are investigated through go-along group interviews and focus group discussions. Based on our findings, we list key issues and general recommendations for designing interactive playgrounds for children’s outdoor play based on children’s perspectives. These key issues and recommendations are beneficial for practitioners, and in particular, interactive designers who develop interactive playgrounds that stimulate children’s outdoor play behavior.

A Study of Interactive Playground for Kindergarten in Cempaka Putih

This paper presents the study of using Interactive Playground, motivated by the condition of children which increases the adverse effects of lack of play, so the purpose of this budget is to get game designs that can facilitate children’s play and learning activities. Problems in design are: How playgrounds are applied in interactive design and also kindergartens in DKI Jakarta still have a lot of limited space and land for playing and child development through games. The purpose of this is so that children can experience learning well, succeed, develop social and physical skills. This research uses observation, comparative study, site analysis, typology, activity patterns, mass formation and simulation. Interactive Playground, from the results of comparative studies from several kindergarten schools from domestic and abroad called class rooms and other facilities require different spaces compared to nursery schools in Indonesia specifically in Jakarta.

Smart Playgrounds? Using Smart and Interactive Technologies to Combat Playground Underutilization

As settings planned and designed with children in mind, playgrounds have a lot to offer to children's physical, social and educational development. However, US playgrounds are often underutilized by middle-school children, as they become upstaged by electronic and computer games. This article explores the reasons for playground underutilization in the US through a historic overview of playground development and a review of literature sources that discuss the causes and consequences of playground utilization. It also draws from an empirical study of the author, who surveyed 897 middle-school children and 348 parents in twelve middle schools in Los Angeles to examine their feelings toward playgrounds and find out why they do not visit playgrounds more often. The survey found that many children found the playgrounds unexciting and wished for a different and more interactive setting. In response to this sentiment, the last part of the article examines the concepts of 'smart park' and 'interactive playground' and discusses opportunities that smart and interactive technologies present for developing twenty-first century playgrounds.

Naegleria Fowleri Diagnosed with Hospital Autopsy in a Toddler: A Case Study

Abstract Casestudy Naegleria fowleri, an amoeba, is typically found in warm freshwater lakes, ponds, rivers and hot springs. It is responsible for causing the incredibly rare and lethal central nervous system infection called Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis (PAM). In the United States, 145 confirmed cases have been documented since 1962. Most cases are associated with freshwater lakes, ponds and reservoirs, while only a handful have been linked to artificial recreational venues such as pools, interactive water play-grounds, and spas. In addition to highlighting a rare amoebic disease, this case illustrates the continued importance of hospital autopsies especially given recent ruling to eliminate the autopsy requirement by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Results An otherwise healthy toddler had upper respiratory symptoms and otitis media days after returning from an artificial recreational water venue, becoming increasingly lethargic and febrile over the next few days. At the hospital, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) abnormalities were suggestive but not consistent with bacterial meningitis. A meningoencephalitis panel, a Computed Tomograph (CT) scan of the head, and chest-x-ray were negative for abnormalities. Appropriate antimicrobial therapy was initiated. Three days after hospital admission, his symptoms worsened including development of dysconjugate gaze and signs of cerebellitis. He became increasingly hemodynamically unstable, suffered an arrest, and passed away days later. Conclusion Since this death did not fall under the state’s statutes mandating medicolegal autopsy, a hospital- requested autopsy was performed. Cerebral edema and a light gray to light green exudate was along the inferior and lateral left temporal lobe, brain stem, and cerebellum. An exuberant lymphoplasmacytic infiltrate with scattered polymorphonuclear leukocytes expanded the meninges. Small histiocyte-like cells with distinct eccentric nuclei and granular, vacuolated cytoplasm, confirmed by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to be Naegleria fowleri, were best visualized in the Virchow-Robin spaces and deeper parenchyma.

Інноваційне освітнє середовище: технології створення

The implementation of educational reforms in Ukraine requires the modernization of teacher training. The imbalance between the social demand for highly qualified pedagogical staff and the outdated teacher training system stimulates the development of innovative educational environments, which should ensure the formation of high-level professional competence of university students. The article describes the experience of modeling an innovative environment by means of a student-centered training and practice center, which performs educational activities based on competency and STEM approaches. The conceptual basis of the technology is the guiding principles of partnership pedagogy, STEM education, competency and transdisciplinary approaches, technologies of student-centered teaching. The content component of the technology is modeling of natural science and mathematical education on the basis of current educational standards for institutions of higher and secondary education. The procedural component of the technology is the set of innovative forms and methods of educational activity that are integrated into long-term socio-scientific projects. Modeling of innovative educational environment by means of STEM and Art education provided an opportunity to introduce social and scientific projects satellites: children and youth experimentarium "Time Line", "Bank of Science", "Interesting Science in the City Streets" and others. The results of the work of the educational scientific laboratory are the development and implementation of innovative forms of educational activity in the system of training of future teachers. Innovative technology of transdisciplinary approach in education can be implemented by means of STEM platforms. The Center's Scientific and Methodological Laboratory investigates the process of introducing higher education technologies, develops a network of interactive playgrounds based on the STEM approach and approves innovative forms of educational activity. The Elements of the developed innovative scientific infrastructure were introduced at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of the V.O. Sukhomlynskyi Mykolayiv National University and in the educational institutions that are partners of the project.

Automated and unobtrusive measurement of physical activity in an interactive playground

Abstract Promoting physical activity is one of the main goals of interactive playgrounds. To validate whether this goal is met, we need to measure the amount of physical player activity. Traditional methods of measuring activity, such as observations or annotations of game sessions, require time and personnel. Others, such as heart rate monitors and accelerometers, need to be worn by the player. In this paper, we investigate whether physical activity can be measured unobtrusively by tracking players using depth cameras and applying computer vision algorithms. In a user study with 32 players, we measure the players’ speed while playing a game of tag, and demonstrate that our measures correlate well with exertion measured using heart rate sensors. This makes the method an attractive alternative to either manual coding or the use of worn devices. We also compare our approach to other exertion measurement methods. Finally, we demonstrate and discuss its potential for automated, unobtrusive measurements and real-time game adaptation.

Bonding Development between Parents and Children through Playing Together to Improve Family Happiness

Introduction: This study aims to use the Indonesian translation of modified couple satisfaction index (CSI) tool to evaluate parental happiness scores at before and after participating playing together activities that was designed for bonding development between parents and children.Methods: By using a serial pre-post intervention experimental design, to assess a minimal of 263 couples of mothers and fathers having underfive year old child at before after the intervention, and two weeks after. The intervention was playing activities in an interactive playground spent by parents and child for 1.5–2 hours that were located in Medan, Jakarta, Surabaya and Makassar. The validated CSI semi-structured questionnaire (by using Cronbach’s alpha of 60% or more) was used to collect data to explore factors contributing to parents’ happiness. A multiple measure analysis was used to analyse the parents’ happiness improvements.Results: The CSI tool was valid with the Cronbach’s alpha of 0.87 and 0.84 for father and mother, respectively. This study could recruit a total of 370 couples, however only 282 couples completed all data collection. There are 11 items asked for parents’ happiness, 3 items regarding to factors contributing to parents’ happiness, and 6 items to assess parents’ satisfaction. There are improvements in all items by proportions, and the total score of parents’feeling about their relationship are significantly increased by time (P<0.001).Conclusion: The quality of playing together between parents and child can increase family happiness at both short and longer-periods.

Automatic behavior analysis in tag games: from traditional spaces to interactive playgrounds

Tag is a popular children’s playground game. It revolves around taggers that chase and then tag runners, upon which their roles switch. There are many variations of the game that aim to keep children engaged by presenting them with challenges and different types of gameplay. We argue that the introduction of sensing and floor projection technology in the playground can aid in providing both variation and challenge. To this end, we need to understand players’ behavior in the playground and steer the interactions using projections accordingly. In this paper, we first analyze the behavior of taggers and runners in a traditional tag setting. We focus on behavioral cues that differ between the two roles. Based on these, we present a probabilistic role recognition model. We then move to an interactive setting and evaluate the model on tag sessions in an interactive tag playground. Our model achieves 77.96 % accuracy, which demonstrates the feasibility of our approach. We identify several avenues for improvement. Eventually, these should lead to a more thorough understanding of what happens in the playground, not only regarding player roles but also when the play breaks down, for example when players are bored or cheat.

Socially Aware Interactive Playgrounds

Interactive playgrounds are technology-enhanced installations that aim to provide rich game experiences for children by combining the benefits of traditional playgrounds with those of digital games. These game experiences could be attained by addressing three design considerations: context-awareness, adaptability, and personalization. The authors propose using social signal processing (SSP) to enhance current interactive playgrounds to meet these criteria. This article surveys how SSP techniques can help playgrounds automatically sense and interpret children's social interactions, adapt game mechanics to induce targeted social behavior, and learn from the sensed behavior to meet players expectations and desires.

The use of cross-curricular activity on interactive playgrounds to supplement school-based physical activity: an exploratory study

Childhood obesity and physical inactivity are serious threats to the health and wellness of our schoolchildren. Research has shown that play and physical activity are important in development, behaviour and academic achievement. Through the efforts of coordinated school health program and a Physical Education for Progress grant, a county school system in a southern state was able to construct multiple innovative playground systems at schools and combine them with various academic units in a cross-curricular effort to address the wellness needs of students. Exploratory research using pedometers, accelerometers and an observation method examined physical activity intensity levels during cross-curricular sessions. Results indicated that this type of physical activity might be a viable supplement to daily school-based physical activity needs.

Mind the gap!

This article is based on an inquiry into the framing of artistic effects in space and addresses the interactions between two-year-old children and adult performers. I discuss how the traditional communication gap between actor and audience can be surmounted. My study is a crossover between performance art and drama pedagogy, which I describe as an interactive scenic playground. I will discuss how toddlers can be active participants in performance art by employing the materials and actions used by skilled kindergarten teachers. Specifically, these include clearly expressing expected intentions, bodily behaviours and social interactions. The interactions of toddlers with performers challenge dramaturgy and actors. The aim of this study is to analyse staging strategies for the benefit of interaction as a participatory and democratic learning process. My empirical sources consist of video footage, observations and notes from the actor-teacher group that performed with the toddlers in two small groups. My results include the sensory and embodied nonverbal contributions of toddlers to performative meaning making as they interacted with both textiles and people and developed into a community.

Design principle of playgrounds’ equipments and spaces for children: An interaction education approach

Children training through game playing are more effective than traditional academic methods. Therefore, proper designing of the playgrounds aimed at offering effective training can be one of the ways for improving the children's capabilities and development. The results of the surveys conducted in the playgrounds of Tehran city show that their conditions are not at a satisfactory level in terms of interaction with the children in order to train them. We studied interactions between the children and the play equipment and we prepared a checklist for designing interactive playgrounds for various skills to the children. Under this condition, it seems that playground design according to the mentioned checklist will be ended to more secure and safe environment for kids.

Entertainment modeling through physiology in physical play

This paper is an extension of previous work on capturing and modeling the affective state of entertainment (“fun”) grounded on children's physiological state during physical game play. The goal is to construct, using representative statistics computed from children's physiological signals, an estimator of the degree to which games provided by the playground engage the players. Previous studies have identified the difficulties of isolating elements of physical activity attributed to reported entertainment derived (solely) from heart rate (HR) recordings. In the present article, a survey experiment on a larger scale and a physical activity control experiment for surmounting those difficulties are devised. In these experiments, children's HR, blood volume pulse (BVP) and skin conductance (SC) signals, as well as their expressed preferences of how much “fun” particular game variants are, are obtained using games implemented on the Playware physical interactive playground. Given effective data collection, a set of numerical features is computed from these measurements of the child's physiological state. A comprehensive statistical analysis shows that children's reported entertainment preferences correlate well with specific features of the recorded signals. Preference learning techniques combined with feature set selection methods permit the construction of user models that predict reported entertainment preferences given suitable signal features. The most accurate models are obtained through evolving artificial neural networks and are demonstrated and evaluated on a Playware game and a control task requiring physical activity. The best network is able to correctly match expressed preferences in 69.64% of cases on previously unseen data ( p -value = 0.0022 ) and indicates two dissimilar classes of children: those that prefer constantly energetic play of low mental/emotional load; and those that report as fun a dynamic play that involves high mental/emotional load independently of physical effort. The generality of the methodology, its limitations, its usability as a real-time feedback mechanism for entertainment augmentation and as a validation tool are discussed.

Design and testing of a novel interactive playground device

The concept of an interactive playground was born out of the specific need to tackle increasing levels of childhood obesity in the UK. A worryingly high proportion of children are inactive, preferring to spend their leisure time playing sedentary computer games or other electronic gaming devices. To engage this specific user group, an interactive, whole-body outdoor play device was devised. The device is intended to promote ‘stealth fitness’ with an aim to improve user's reaction time, coordination, agility, and cardiovascular fitness. This paper describes the design and experimentation phases undertaken to develop the device from an initial concept to a final product. Fifteen healthy children completed an experimental study consisting of three 5-min sessions. Heart rate was continuously monitored and ratings of enjoyment, competence, and perceived exertion were recorded after each session. The results indicate that using the new device elicits a large cardiovascular response while providing high levels of enjoyment.

MODELING AND AUGMENTING GAME ENTERTAINMENT THROUGH CHALLENGE AND CURIOSITY

This paper presents quantitative measurements/metrics of qualitative entertainment features within computer game environments and proposes artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for optimizing entertainment in such interactive systems. A human-verified metric of interest (i.e. player entertainment in real-time) for predator/prey games and a neuro-evolution on-line learning (i.e. during play) approach have already been reported in the literature to serve this purpose. In this paper, an alternative quantitative approach to entertainment modeling based on psychological studies in the field of computer games is introduced and a comparative study of the two approaches is presented. Feedforward neural networks (NNs) and fuzzy-NNs are used to model player satisfaction (interest) in real-time and investigate quantitatively how the qualitative factors of challenge and curiosity contribute to human entertainment. We demonstrate that appropriate non-extreme levels of challenge and curiosity generate high values of entertainment and we project the extensibility of the approach to other genres of digital entertainment (e.g. mixed-reality interactive playgrounds).

Entertainment capture through heart rate activity in physical interactive playgrounds

An approach for capturing and modeling individual entertainment (“fun”) preferences is applied to users of the innovative Playware playground, an interactive physical playground inspired by computer games, in this study. The goal is to construct, using representative statistics computed from children’s physiological signals, an estimator of the degree to which games provided by the playground engage the players. For this purpose children’s heart rate (HR) signals, and their expressed preferences of how much “fun” particular game variants are, are obtained from experiments using games implemented on the Playware playground. A comprehensive statistical analysis shows that children’s reported entertainment preferences correlate well with specific features of the HR signal. Neuro-evolution techniques combined with feature set selection methods permit the construction of user models that predict reported entertainment preferences given HR features. These models are expressed as artificial neural networks and are demonstrated and evaluated on two Playware games and two control tasks requiring physical activity. The best network is able to correctly match expressed preferences in 64% of cases on previously unseen data (p−value 6 · 10−5). The generality of the methodology, its limitations, its usability as a real-time feedback mechanism for entertainment augmentation and as a validation tool are discussed.