the Web Technology course webpage can be found at: http://www.maartenlamers.com/WT/

This forum thread will be used to communicate about the course, so check it regularly!

Best,
Maarten

Summer School – Film, Game, Emotion, Brain July 14 – 21 2012

Are you a postdoctoral researcher or a final year PHD student and you want to practice envisioning and setting up interdisciplinary research projects? And are you interested in accounts of the experience of film and games from the perspectives of psychology, neuroscience, computer science or cognitive media studies? Then participate in the CCCT summer school Film, Game, Emotion and the Brain in the center of Amsterdam, July 14- 21. 

During this week you will work together in teams with fellow postdocs and PhDs on an interdisciplinary research proposal. You will be coached by experienced researchers involved actual in interdisciplinary collaborative research in the field. You will exchange views and expertise with your international colleagues and with seniors. You may test your views, engage in new collaborations and plan actual research projects.

CCCT is a University of Amsterdam platform for collaboration among disciplines, including brain and cognition, information science, humanities and the social sciences. One of the ways we promote collaboration among disciplines is through thematic summer schools. The 2011 summer school’s theme was on empathy in media and art works, and it was a great success, resulting in many forms of collaboration.

There are no fees for participation, just a selection on the basis of matching research interests. And isn’t Amsterdam the place to be in summer anyway…

Interested? Go to http://www.ccct.uva.nl and sign up for the Summer School. Based on your qualifications we will determine if you are a suitable candidate for the Summer School. The deadline for applications is on the17th of May.

in the upcoming new year, I will be teaching the Research Seminar Artificial Intelligence, starting on Jan 12. Should you be curious about its content, or should you want to work ahead, then check out the course webpage on http://www.maartenlamers.com/RS/.

I know that some links to other LIACS courses don’t work properly, but that is insignificant.

All the best, enjoy christmas and new year’s, and looking forward to see you in January!
Maarten Lamers

Advances in Human-Computer Interaction Journal

Call for Papers
Special Issue on Computer Games in Education
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ahci/si/976985/cfp/

Demands for lifelong learning as well as new technology trends, such as mobile technologies and ubiquitous access to information and people, have changed the way we acquire knowledge and skills. Nowadays, children grow using interactive technology; their preferred interaction and learning styles are different from their parents’. The shift from learning by interacting with predefined information sources, a teacher and/or a textbook, to learning by engaging with multiple and interactive information sources and people (social networks, online content) requires alternative learning methods. Adults and even seniors are challenged with the need to continuously increase their knowledge and learn new things throughout their lives. New styles of learning require new ways of teaching. Demands exist for new learning experiences which are mobile, interactive, and engaging. Game-based learning is considered to be an effective tool for learning; recent trends in this space use mobile devices (m-learning). The design of edutainment systems draws on recent advances in video games from the entertainment field as well as advances in augmented reality and mobile devices for delivering new learning experiences. The goal of this special issue is to publish the most relevant works related to the main topic that will contribute to the improvement of the computer games in education.

We invite authors to contribute with high quality, original research articles as well as review articles. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

·      Game-based learning and m-learning systems

·      Serious gaming and gamification concepts focused on learning and training

·      Augmented/mixed reality game-based learning and m-learning systems

·      Design of new hardware and software solutions

·      Interaction methods and user evaluation in applications

·      Applications designed to be used by disabled people

·      Location-based games and ubiquitous technology

·      Ubiquitous learning

·      Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction for edutainment

·      Interactive (smart) toys

·      Collaborative game environments for learning

Manuscript due: Friday,  1 June 2012

First round of reviews: Friday, 24 August 2012

Lead Guest Editor

M. Carmen Juan, Instituto de automática e informètica industrial, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain

Guest Editors

Leila Alem, CSIRO ICT Centre, P.O. Box 76, Epping, Sydney, NSW 1710, Australia

Christian Geiger, Department of Media Mixed Reality and Visualization (MIREVI), Duesseldorf University of Applied Sciences, Duesseldorf, Germany

Owen Noel Newton Fernando, Keio-NUS CUTE Center, Interactive and Digital Media Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Teresa Romão, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal

Advances in Human-Computer Interaction Journal

Call for Papers
Special Issue on Computer Games in Education
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ahci/si/976985/cfp/

Demands for lifelong learning as well as new technology trends, such as mobile technologies and ubiquitous access to information and people, have changed the way we acquire knowledge and skills. Nowadays, children grow using interactive technology; their preferred interaction and learning styles are different from their parents’. The shift from learning by interacting with predefined information sources, a teacher and/or a textbook, to learning by engaging with multiple and interactive information sources and people (social networks, online content) requires alternative learning methods. Adults and even seniors are challenged with the need to continuously increase their knowledge and learn new things throughout their lives. New styles of learning require new ways of teaching. Demands exist for new learning experiences which are mobile, interactive, and engaging. Game-based learning is considered to be an effective tool for learning; recent trends in this space use mobile devices (m-learning). The design of edutainment systems draws on recent advances in video games from the entertainment field as well as advances in augmented reality and mobile devices for delivering new learning experiences. The goal of this special issue is to publish the most relevant works related to the main topic that will contribute to the improvement of the computer games in education.

We invite authors to contribute with high quality, original research articles as well as review articles. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

·      Game-based learning and m-learning systems

·      Serious gaming and gamification concepts focused on learning and training

·      Augmented/mixed reality game-based learning and m-learning systems

·      Design of new hardware and software solutions

·      Interaction methods and user evaluation in applications

·      Applications designed to be used by disabled people

·      Location-based games and ubiquitous technology

·      Ubiquitous learning

·      Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction for edutainment

·      Interactive (smart) toys

·      Collaborative game environments for learning

Manuscript due: Friday,  1 June 2012

First round of reviews: Friday, 24 August 2012

Lead Guest Editor

M. Carmen Juan, Instituto de automática e informètica industrial, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain

Guest Editors

Leila Alem, CSIRO ICT Centre, P.O. Box 76, Epping, Sydney, NSW 1710, Australia

Christian Geiger, Department of Media Mixed Reality and Visualization (MIREVI), Duesseldorf University of Applied Sciences, Duesseldorf, Germany

Owen Noel Newton Fernando, Keio-NUS CUTE Center, Interactive and Digital Media Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Teresa Romão, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal

The 11th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
In cooperation with the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)
12-15 June 2012, Bremen, Germany

http://www.dimeb.de/idc2012

The program of the IDC 2012 comprises a complete spectrum of events and sessions, exploring all fields in all aspects:
Workshops on cutting edge technologies such as digital fabrication and interactive technologies for children with special needs.
Two prestigious keynote speakers will provide a new perspective on issues of children’s socialisation to media from early on:

Keynote Speakers (confirmed):
Dr Shakuntala Banaji, The London School of Economics and Political Science
“Beyond Wild Dreams and High-Tech Fetishes: Learning about Media from Children in the Global South
Matthias Körnich, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Commissioning Editor - Children and Family Programs
“Exploring the world with the mouse - A model for children’s media”

An excursion to the German Emigration Centre with special talk on migration
A panel of experts with debate the issue of interaction for children in the context of digital inclusion
And of course short paper poster sessions as well as demos
The sessions present new insights on Designing with Children,  Experience Systems, Learning and Design Contexts, Interactive Technology for Algorithmic Thinking,

Learning through Embodiment,

Digital Story Telling and Evaluation

————————————————————————————
    CONFERENCE OVERVIEW
————————————————————————————
Modern technologies are changing the way children play, learn, and live.
New technologies have the potential to enhance communication,
collaboration, creativity, and reflective thinking among children.
As in prior conferences, IDC 2012 continues the IDC tradition aiming/to
understand children’s needs and how to design for them, by presenting
and discussing the most innovative research in the field of
interaction design for children, by exhibiting the most recent
developments in design and design methodologies, and by gathering the
leading minds in the field of interaction design for children./
As special themes, IDC 2012 would like to discuss childrens’ needs
under the perspectives of pedagogical aspects in theory and
practise as well as children from diverse cultural
backgrounds.
The design of digital and physical tools for
children can benefit greatly from considering insights and knowledge
based on educational theories. These
theories can also inform the choices that have to be made regarding
the learning settings and environments for the application of digital
technologies.
Further, when designing digital media for and with children, thediversity
of children should always be kept in mind. The encounter of children
of different cultural backgrounds as a consequence of migration is a
source of chances but also problems. New technologies can be used for
addressing potential problems and creating new opportunities related
to cultural diversity. This also includes the specific requirements
of young people in developing countries.
We would like to invite researchers to reflect upon methods, concepts,
new technology, evaluation, and theoretical or practical issues
concerning technology and children. We further ask authors to
explicitly reflect on the purpose and the underlying values of their
work.

Sabrina Wilske
Digital media in education
University Bremen,
Bibliothekstr. 1,
D-28359 Bremen
Tel.:  +49-(0)421-218-64367
Fax:  +49-(0)421-218-4269
http://www.dimeb.de

Dear neuroinformatics colleague,

please join us on the quest how the brain performs parallel computations so immensely energy efficient and fast: If you haven’t done so already, please register for the 11 May Brain-inspired computing workshop by tomorrow, so that we can get the catering right. Below you find the previous announcement.

Also note that the who-is-who component of our website is now finished: you can add yourself, your image and a personal banner to NeuroInformatics.NL (see who-is-who tab).

Looking forward to see you in May,
Rembrandt Bakker

==
Previous announcement on the Brain-Inspired Computing workshop:

All should come to this workshop, as its primary intent is
to share thoughts and meet people. Originally the workshop
had the title ‘Unconventional Computing’.
That’s a very cool topic but also raised some questions:
is it about quantum computing, chemical computing,
amorphous computing, ternary computing, Domino Computation?
The new title ‘Brain-Inspired computing’ is a close match
to the five talks that will be presented in this workshop.
It will be very exciting to see how far we are in mimicking
the brain’s parallelism, energy efficiency and the use of
noise as a feature rather than a bug.

The workshop homepage is here:
http://www.neuroinformatics.nl/?q=workshop2012-2
Register on or before April 25th to get coffee and ‘borrel’.

The barebones program (full program at homepage)
13:15 Coffee
13:30 Prof. Nicolai Petkov, RU Groningen
  “Machine vision applications of a V4-inspired algorithm”
14:05 Prof. Pieter Roelfsema, Netherlands Institute for
    Neuroscience, Amsterdam
  “Algorithms for perceptual grouping as they are
  implemented in our brains”
14:40 Prof. Bart ter Haar Romeny, TU Eindhoven
  “Multi-scale, multi-orientation, multi-anything
  vision – Group Theory in the brain”
15:15 Tea
15:30 Prof. Wolfgang Maass, Institute for Theoretical
    Computer Science, TU Graz, Austria
  “Do brains play dice?”
16:05 Prof. Thomas Bäck, Natural Computing Group,
    LIACS, Leiden
  “Applications of Natural Computing”
16:40 Closing, Drinks
17:30 End

The workshop location is: Maliebaanzaal, UMC Utrecht.
That is 21 bus minutes from Utrecht CS,
or 22 bus minutes from Driebergen-Zeist,
or 3.3 km bike/walk from Bunnik.
Always check the workshop homepage for changes in
schedule or room.
Plan your journey here: http://9292.nl/reisadvies
(destination: UMC Utrecht)

The tentative subject of the next workshop is
‘Clinical Neuroinformatics’. Ideas for
contributions are more than welcome.

—
Workshop program comittee:
Bart ter Haar Romenij
Nicolai Petkov

NeuroInformatics.NL:
chair: Paul Tiesinga
coordinator: Rembrandt Bakker (0645774665)
secretary: Gea Hulzebos
NIHC support: Moniek Lijster

The studentship will be supervised by Dr Stephen Boyd-Davis, Research Leader, School of Design.

Start date: The successful applicant must take up the studentship before 30 September 2012. An earlier start is preferred where possible.

Deadline for applications: 17th May 2012

For further information, see: http://www.rca.ac.uk/Default.aspx?ContentID=161457&GroupID=161452

http://www.werkenbijdeoverheid.nl/vacatures/detail/Hogeschooldocent-docent-Interaction-Design/index.cfm?baanplein_id=20021-730756037142&adm_pin=20021&searchPath;=/vacatures/searchResult

Maarten

The theme of the conference is ‘Networks: Complex Futures’. The theme is based on the idea that networks, whether they are in the area of chemistry, economics or communication, have certain features in common. The Conference will celebrate interdisciplinarity by setting up working groups to discuss fundamental questions regarding networks in science, society and the humanities. The Conference itself will take place from 13 to 16 August, and will conclude with a cultural and social programme on 17 August.

For further details, you can also refer to the website, which will be accessible as of 30 March 2012: http://www.uva.nl/Bright2012.

Ideal candidates will meet the following requirements:
- have good communication skills in English,
- have completed at least their third year of studies with excellent results (Master’s and PhD candidates are also welcome to apply),
- display an interest in European institutions, especially the LERU, with regard to the subject matter of the Conference.

10 students can be selected to represent Leiden University. The selection of the 10 delegates starts next week. When you’re interested, make sure to send a motivation letter and cv to h dot j dot j dot g dot beerkens at BB dot leidenuniv dot nl. Deadline for application is Friday April 20th 2012!!