Interactive Environments for Learning

The Stanza Logo-Motoria

The Stanza Logo-Motoria is a multimodal interactive environment for learning. Since its first realization in 2008, it has been installed at the "E. Frinta" Primary School in Gorizia ("Gorizia 1" Comprehensive Institute, Italy) and other educational institutions where it has been used as an innovative tool to the traditional ways of teaching and it has been experimented with a large number of schoolchildren.
The Stanza Logo-Motoria (Stanza means room, Logo derives from the Greek word logos, and Motoria means movement/gesture/motion) is used by all the pupils of the school - from the first to the fifth grade - including children with disabilities.
The Stanza Logo-Motoria was conceived with the idea to pursue a specific educational objective: have a classroom become an Interactive and Multimodal Environment in order to provide schoolchildren with alternative learning methods that enable them to meet their real educational needs.
The first prototype of the Stanza Logo-Motoria was designed and developed in 2008 in collaboration with the InfoMus Lab of Department of Communication, Computer, and System Science of Genova University. The Stanza Logo-Motoria used in school from 2009 with scientific purposes, has been developed by the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale (CSC) of the Department of Information Engineering (DEI), University of Padova.
Video 1 shows an example of lesson in the Stanza Logo-Motoria.


Video 1: Learning in movement in the Stanza Logo-Motoria.

Objectives

The Stanza Logo-Motoria is used to develop a great deal of educational activities involving several school subjects:


The video 2 shows how the Stanza Logo-Motoria is used in ESL lessons.
Video 2: learning English in the Stanza Logo-Motoria.

The System

The Stanza Logo-Motoria is a modular system (Fig. 1 and 2) mainly composed by:


Fig.1: The system architecture of the Stanza Logo-Motoria.

The figure below shows a basic configuration of the Stanza Logo-Motoria.

Fig.2: The Stanza Logo-Motoria basic configuration.

The Stanza Logo-Motoria Applications

The Stanza Logo-Motoria architecture, briefly described above, can be adapted to specific educational needs by using different applications:


Resonant Memory

The Stanza Logo-Motoria can be used in different ways, one of these is based on the Resonant Memory application: the space captured by a webcam is divided into nine areas (Fig.3), eight of these are peripheral, whereas the ninth is central. Multimedia contents correspond to each area. A child explores the "resonant" space in which he/she can freely move without using sensors. In particular:


Fig.3: Resonant Memory modality.

The video analysis and sound rendering tasks are performed by a specific software for multimodal interaction able to manage:

Fiaba Magica (Fairy Tale)

The Fiaba Magica is an application for the Stanza Logo-Motoria with the main aim of improving the gesture intentionality of pupils with multi-disabilities. Fiaba Magica enables them to interact with a tale by performing simple gestures: the users may reconstruct sounds and images of a tale by widening their arms and moving within a specific space (Fig. 4).
With Fiaba Magica a child, entering a specific area of the Stanza Logo-Motoria, triggers a) the audio reproduction of the first part of the story and b) the projection on the screen of an image (for example two characters). Once the audio reproduction of the first part of the story is played, by raising their arms sideward, the user can play with the characters projected, animating them. The second and third advancement in the story is performed in the same way as the first.
At school, all the schoolchildren can use Fiaba Magica; teachers indeed could convey spatial concepts, personal awareness of the different body parts, how the body moves in relation to other bodies and objects and the understanding of where the body is in an environment, to learn new words and meanings, to do interactive listening.


Fig.4: The Fiaba Magica application.

PlayAndLearn

The PlayAndLearn application is an evolution of Fiaba Magica. It is an interactive and multimodal application for the Stanza Logo-Motoria with which pupils may acquire new words and meanings. The user's movements and gestures are used to trigger audio/visual contents.
The space of the Stanza Logo-Motoria is subdivided into three areas; each area is synchronized with a) the audio reproduction of a spoken word and its meaning and b) the projection of two animations. The user listens to the audio reproduction of the definition of a word and selects the animation which corresponds to the definition heard.
The selection is performed by widening their right or left arm sideward according to the position of the animation on the screen. The PlayAndLearn application tracks the user's movements and gestures by means of the Microsoft Kinect sensor.

FINALIST OF START CUP VENETO 2012

The project Stanza Logo-Motoria, presented by the TechnoTale Group, made up by Antonio Rodà, Sergio Canazza, Leonardo Amico (DEI of Padova University), and Serena Zanolla (DIMI of Udine University), won the third prize of START CUP VENETO 2012 (Fig. 5), the business plan competition that awards the best ideas of enterprise and promotes technology transfer.


Fig.5: The TechnoTale group at the Auditorium Santa Margherita of Venezia, Italy
(October 19, 2012).

More details on
audioInnova
www.audioinnova.com
Audio Innova

Research Threads

3D Audio
Audio in multimodal interfaces
Audio restoration
Interactive environments for learning
Music expression modeling
Physically-based sound modeling
Virtual rehabilitation

History of CSC research

Sub-Threads

The "Harmonic Walk"

Projects

A complete list of projects and industrial partners can be found here.