Michael Meimaris’s research while affiliated with National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and other places

This paper reports on three digital GBL pilots which have taken place, respectively, in preschool , primary school and special education settings, for project assignments of the "ICT in Education" MSc program jointly run by the University of Athens, the University of Thessaly and the Technological Educational Institute of Piraeus, Greece. The pilots reported have involved 9 educators and 44 students in total and have been based on freeware micro-games, some new games developed from scratch as well as the "Magic Potion" digital adventure tale developed by the University of Athens Laboratory of New Technologies in Communication, Education and the Mass Media within the EPINOISI project. Interventions have focused on animating the application of DGBL material in class and effectively documenting student reactions and attitudes. Conclusions have been drawn on the learning potential of successfully animated DGBL interventions and on the expectations of young learners towards the games employed. The first pilot concerns a preschool intervention for learning basic math concepts. Four sessions have been organised with the participation of 10 preschool students, using freeware micro-games from the Up To Ten and Poisson Rouge web sites and the Minisebran suite, as well as a simple Flash game designed ad hoc. A prototype code of conduct during gameplay has been put in place and a number of conclusions have been drawn by observing and evaluating student reactions and opinions, expressed by the students through drawing and talking about their likes and dislikes. The second pilot has involved application of DGBL material on linguistic topics, in order to investigate whether digital games can enhance the functional-communicational perspective of language. The intervention involved two primary schools with a group of 15 students each, and observation/discussion were employed for evaluating results. Conditions of communication were created in which the students used the language, collaborated to seek clues and information, formulated and evaluated hypotheses and expressed opinions. During the last part of the pilot each student group was asked to describe a language game that would serve as a challenge for the other group, and two such prototype games were developed in Flash. This activity gave the students the opportunity to express themselves and apply their knowledge on structure and use of written language, while at the same time providing a frame of communication and "competition" between the two schools. The third intervention focused on DGBL material for children with autism disorders (AD). Four children with AD were given access to DGBL material in order to investigate the potential of digital games to activate their attention, bring a playful character to the learning process and make more amusing the achievement of objectives. The material employed includes online freeware games and commercial edutainment software, as well as parts of the "Magic Potion" digital adventure tale, whereas the educators created an additional Flash game for social/emotional skills. A number of remarkable outcomes have been observed during this pilot, whereas interesting issues were highlighted regarding game usability, student collaboration and the role of the educators.

In this chapter, Meimaris provides details and outcomes from two projects originating from the Laboratory of New Technologies in Communication, Education, and Mass Media at the University of Athens. Meimaris begins by highlighting the development and use of a new media tool, Milia, which supports online community-based digital storytelling (DST) through the construction and sharing of linear and non-linear multimodal narratives. Extending from this, the chapter uses two examples that demonstrate the benefits of using DST to provide mutual affective, cognitive and social benefits to young people and elders as they work together to create multimodal intergenerational narratives centred around the concept of jobs of yesteryears.

Technologies Laboratory in Communication, Education and the Mass Media (N.T.L.C.E.M.) have been carrying out a number of research projects in the field of Intergenerational Communication and Learning. Members of community centres for the elderly and public high school students have participated in the projects focusing on the social need for intergenerational communication. This paper presents the projects held, as well as their research goals and the conclusions the research team has arrived at. There were two key factors, common in all projects, which outline the chosen approach and contribute to the uniformity and concreteness of the conclusions: firstly, in all cases the intergenerational communication took place in an composite environment which offered online and offline interaction at the same place and time, and, secondly, all activities were designed in a way which promotes the idea that the elderly may not only benefit from ICT, but become active members of the new digital world and provide precious knowledge and experience in both local and global level. During the first research project 14 year-old students acted as tutors of the members of a community centre teaching them basic aspects of internet use. One year later another project was held, bringing together adolescents and elderly people in order for them to co-create digital videos based on the personal narrations of the elderly and implementation of the technical skills of the adolescents. As the elderly revealed their life experiences the students recorded them on video. They cooperated on the editing process and presented the final outcome to all participants. Social games and intergenerational learning was the main theme of the third workshop. High school students played the popular game "Frontier ville" with their elderly team-mates and participated in an on-line competition. A hands-on workshop was set whilst both generations grew their digital farm in the far-west. The fourth research project was called "Music for Two Generations", and was based on the hypothesis that both sides would be interested in discussing their musical tastes. Students and seniors used "every-day" digital applications, under the guidance of the research group members, in order to create a youtube account where they composed a playlist with their favourite songs. A general conclusion deriving from these projects would be that people from different generations can work together and communicate in a well-organized digital context. Moreover, they can create valuable digital artifacts as a confirmation of their co-operation and interaction achieved. Keywords intergenerational communication and learning; elderly and adolescents; technology, internet and digital media; interaction and collaboration Acknowledgments The work reported in this paper has been in part undertaken within the Programme of Research Actions of the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies of the University of Athens. Psarauti, Aris Tsakoumis, Antonis Psaltis and all other members of the UoA NTLab research group on Intergenerational Communication and Learning who have contributed, together with the reporting authors, in planning and implementing the pilot interventions presented in this paper. The help and support of teachers, students and parents of the Zekakio High School of Maroussi, Athens as well as of all the elderly people and staff members of the Open Care Center for the Elderly of Nikaia, Athens, is also acknowledged.

e-MobiLArt was a project tailored around the process of collaboratively creating interactive installations. This paper presents an introductory overview of the most important activities of the e-MobiLArt project from the perspective of its organizers and briefly discusses the collaborative process that took place among participants, curatorial advisors and organizers.

This paper focuses on the use of a commercial game, [COTS (Commercial off-the-shelf games for learning)], as a main motivating and educational tool, to make kids of 11 years old aware of the relationship, between every day actions and activities with emissions. It also intends to prove that, with the use of the game, a satisfactory level of modified behaviour towards the concept of sustainability is achieved by changing attitudes and taking actions. Furthermore, it intends to introduce a method, which is related to the efficient implementation of COTS, in primary school, educational projects.

Besides the long-ago established importance of gameplay as a privileged framework for learning and socialization, which promotes equality alongside with acceptance of differences, motivation through challenge and absence of punishment in the case or errors, modern digital games enjoy a number of additional features such as their enhanced capability to simulate real-world and everyday-life situations in a straightforward fashion, as well as their ability to attract player's engagement through augmented playability mechanisms and balanced game feedback. All these features make digital games a most promising learning tool, in both formal and informal settings and for general and special education alike. This keynote talk will revolve around research practices and initiatives in the area of computer-based learning, conducted by the New Technologies Laboratory in Communication, Education and the Mass Media of the University of Athens. Major emphasis will be placed on the defined learning framework for a specialized formation program for primary, secondary and special education teachers supporting students with mild mental retardation (MMR) and on the research and development, along the lines of this framework, of digital games-based learning (DGBL) material for MMR students deployed and tested within the special classroom, as part of practical seminars and hands-on activities. This work is conducted in the context of the EPINOISI R&D project (http://www.media.uoa.gr/epinoisi). The digital games-based material for MMR students currently under development within the EPINOISI project is based on game applications already available as well as developed from scratch, covering subject matter relevant to language and mathematics skills for everyday life, interpersonal relations and communication, acquaintance with adult life, selected topics from the curriculum of secondary special education, as well as digital creative activities.

This paper aims at investigating the emergence of new forms of communication environments supported by the integration of new mobile and locative media technologies and the impact that the implementation of these systems may have on mediated communication within the urban context. The paper focuses on such systems accessed via mainly 3D interfaces and supported by different output devices (mobile phone screen, augmented reality HMDs etc.), which may ultimately afford a hybrid (synthetic & physical) spatial experience and a novel form of social interaction. Cities, as complex systems and contexts supporting communication are being reordered by technological systems and networks. Advances in mobile and wireless communication technologies (new mobile devices, GPS enabled phones etc.) and a series of location-based activities (games, socialising services, commercial applications and artworks) have begun to transform the potential for social relations taking place within the urban public space, as well as our perception of public spaces in general. Firstly the paper discusses the technologies supporting such systems: interactive 3D graphics interfaces for mobile devices, locative media, augmented reality interfaces. Then, the paper investigates the experience of interacting with such systems from a user's perspective. Finally, the impact of utilizing these systems for supporting interpersonal mediated communication within the urban context is discussed. Consequently, these emerging types of communication may lead to a new kind of agora, involving new forms of civic, cultural and political participation. Of particular interest to this paper is the manner in which the spatial context, where "situated" communication occurs, is transformed by the introduction of these technologies. The emergence of locative-ness reintroduces the parameter of real location within the communication activity thus mapping the "virtual" mental space of communication to the physical space where the real bodies of communicating participants exist. Another important parameter taken into account in the paper is the actual interface through which each participant experiences the process.

This paper aims at investigating the emergence of new forms of communication envi- ronments supported by the integration of new mobile and locative media technologies and the impact that the implementation of these systems may have on mediated com- munication within the urban context. The paper focuses on such systems accessed via mainly 3D interfaces and supported by different output devices (mobile phone screen, augmented reality HMDs etc.), which may ultimately afford a hybrid (synthetic & physical) spatial experience and a novel form of social interaction. Cities, as complex systems and contexts supporting communication are being re-ordered by technological systems and networks. Advances in mobile and wireless communication technologies (new mobile devices, GPS enabled phones etc.) and a series of location-based activities (games, socialising services, commercial applications and artworks) have begun to transform the potential for social relations taking place within the urban public space, as well as our perception of public spaces in general. Firstly the paper discusses the tech- nologies supporting such systems: interactive 3D graphics interfaces for mobile devices, locative media, augmented reality interfaces. Then, the paper investigates the experien- ce of interacting with such systems from a user's perspective. Finally, the impact of uti- lizing these systems for supporting interpersonal mediated communication within the urban context is discussed. Consequently, these emerging types of communication may lead to a new kind of agora, involving new forms of civic, cultural and political parti- cipation. Of particular interest to this paper is the manner in which the spatial context, where "situated" communication occurs, is transformed by the introduction of these technologies. The emergence of locative-ness re-introduces the parameter of real loca- tion within the communication activity thus mapping the "virtual" mental space of communication to the physical space where the real bodies of communicating partici- pants exist. Another important parameter taken into account in the paper is the actual interface through which each participant experiences the process.