TABLE OF CONTENTSIMAGINE CUP GALLERY SHOWCASE

THEME: TECHNOLOGY TO IMPROVE THE WORLD OF EDUCATION

AUSTRIA 3

BELGIUM 4

DENMARK 5

EGYPT 6

FINLAND 7

FRANCE 8

GERMANY 9

GREECE 10

IRELAND 11

ITALY 12

NETHERLANDS 13

NORWAY 14

PAKISTAN 15

POLAND 16

PORTUGAL 17

RUSSIA 18

SERBIA 19

SPAIN20

TURKEY 21

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES22

UNITED KINGDOM23

Austria

Project Name: Intoi

Team Members: Michael Hurnaus, Jürgen Oberngruber, Christian Schafleitner and Claudia Oster

University: University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg, Austria

Project Summary: “Intoi – Interchange of Ideas” is a hardware/software setup serving as a digital whiteboard with enhanced functionality. Intoi combines the usability of traditional presentation tools with powerful cutting-edge technologies. Using digital pens on a rear-projection surface facilitates the user to deal with different type of media. Instead of just being able to write and draw, Intoi allows the user to open images, PDFs and Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. The limited size of classical drawing areas is no longer a problem, since Intoi's drawing area is of infinite size. Navigation on the page is done by simply sliding the hand over the projection surface.

Additional Documentation:

Belgium

Project Name: Doc & Duc

Team Members: Yann Crueghe, Jerome Boudart, Cecile Moitroux, Stephane Demarche

University Name: Haute École Rennequin Sualem (H.E.R.S.) – INPRES, Belgium

Project Summary: Doc&Duc is an early detection system for speech disabilities. It allows tailored follow-up carried out by professional speech therapists. One can create customized exercises adapted to children needs and there is a community to talk about problems and not feel isolated.

Denmark

Project Name: Student Development Framework

Team Members: Thomas Jørgensen, Peter Bach Andersen and Bjarne Poulsen

University: Department of Informatics and Mathematical Modelling, Technical University of Denmark

Project Summary:

There is an increasing focus on ensuring a better education and a growing political interest on the ability to measure the quality of the education in the EU.

Several political strategies have in the recent years been introduced in Denmark to improve the educational development of students. These political initiatives number, among other things, national tests. This project has been inspired by these national tests as well as other political strategies.

Additional Documentation:

Egypt

Project Name: EduCare

Team Members and University: Ahmed Fathalla – The American University in Cairo, Mohamed Radwan – Cairo University, Noha Radwan – Cairo University, Tarek ElGaaly – The American University in Cairo

Project Summary:

"EduCare is a comprehensive framework that improves the educational lifecycle of students with special needs.

EduCare automatically generates an individualized educational program tailored according to each student’s abilities and disabilities. Doing so relieves teachers and educational specialists from the burden of customizing course material and exams and provides students with an improved learning experience.

Furthermore, EduCare provides a vital bridge between parents, teachers and specialists. It allows parents to provide critical feedback about the student's psychological and physical state outside the walls of the school while allowing them to monitor the student's performance at school on a day-to-day basis.

By providing a fast and efficient communication link between parents, teachers and specialists EduCare drastically cuts down the time and cost needed to support education for challenged individuals and improves the quality of the education provided to these students. This in turn means that EduCare can increase the capacity of institutions providing this kind of special education allowing more and more challenged individuals to get the education they deserve.

Through its promise to increase both the quality and quantity of special education, EduCare can be a real solution to many of the learning problems the world faces today.”

Additional Documentation:

Finland

Project Name: Collaborative Lecture

Team Members: Aleksanteri Aaltonen, Ferrix Hovi, Jyry Suvilehto, Pyry Åvist

University Name: Technical University / Helsinki University, Finland

Project Summary: The Collaborative Lecture system brings interaction to classrooms. The system allows a new level of interaction between students and the lecturer, and students among themselves via a Web browser interface or even via a Windows Mobile -device. Students can converse with each other during the lecture; they can view the lecture slides from their PCs, they may ask anonymous questions from the lecturer and vote for or against questions of others. The lecturer can ask questionnaires from students and get immediate results during the lesson. In short, the system brings collaboration towards a common goal: learning. The solution is not limited only to academic environment, but is can as well be used in business trainings.

Additional Documentation:

France

Project Name: Re-Educate

Team Members: Bastien Ingweiller, Nathalie Pettier, Johanna Piou, Charles Hétier

University Name: ISEM, Toulon

Project Summary:

Education is an elementary right in most countries. It’s a means of socializing, developing personally and opening out to others. But millions of handicapped children don’t have access to a decent education. That’s why we have decided to create re-Educate. This software allows handicapped children to learn to read, write and develop their capacities with a learning method appropriate to their difficulties.

Each child is different, has different needs and not all has the chance to be daily assisted. re-Educate is more than simple educational software because teachers, doctors and family can follow his progress, supervise his work, configure the application and give him solutions to evolve.

To help these children to overcome their difficulties, re-Educate also integrates many different way of interactivity: voice, graphic tablet and HelPenJoy... HelPenJoy is an alternative to the mouse composed by a joystick which is totally parameterizable by the user. The innovative thing is that re-Educate integrates a functionality which allows a doctor to easily modify the active areas of the joystick (that correspond to the directions), the velocity of the cursor... it’s completely evolutionary.

Through a modern and interactive interface and new technologies like voice recognition, re-Educate opens new perspective in terms of education for children with reduced mobility. Now, they can freely explore their intellectual capacities by interact with re-Educate.

Germany

Project Name: UbiZoo

Team Members: Eike Falkenberg, Fatih Keles, Jan Napitupulu, Thomas Schmidt

University Name: Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften in Hamburg (HAW Hamburg)

Project Summary:

UbiZoo offers technological support for a visit to the zoo including educational preparation and reinforcement for students and teachers in the context of natural history instruction at primary schools. Through the integration of modern, mobile computers the visit to the zoo becomes an exciting experience, for pupils and teachers. The children at the same time are inspired to study and playfully attain knowledge.

Additional Documentation:

Greece

Team Name: Noesis

Team Members: Panagiotis Petrantonakis, Jason Vittorias, Alexandra Tsiligkyri, Dimitris Bolis, Leontios J. Hadjileontiadis

University Name: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Project Summary:

Following the UNESCO principles under the global Education for All movement (www.unesco.org/education), our project, namely Noesis, aims to normalise the education procedure of kids with autism spectrum disorders by creating a novel educational tool that takes into account their individual characteristics and adapts the educational procedure accordingly. By implementing the applied behavior analysis (ABA), the most effective education methodology of autistic children [1], enhanced with the latest perspectives in autism causes, i.e., embedding educational procedures that aim at mirror neurons (MN) [2] activation, a computer-based tool is designed to assist educators and ASD kids during their education intervention. Non-invasive biofeedback information (such as Heart Rate Variability-HRV and Galvanic Skin Response-GSR) is used to monitor kid’s stress during the educational sessions, combined with complexity analysis resulting in adjustable task difficulty, stimuli and help that fit each kid’s specific reaction to the current emotional state and task. Transparent monitoring of kid’s playing at his/her ‘private area’, by using Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags-receivers embedded within his/her game parts (e.g., balls, tubes, etc), along with robot-based activities provide additional information about the effects of gaming to his/her educational and social elevation. Moreover, fuzzy logic-based modeling [3] is used across the Noesis structure to model the whole educational activity, providing real-time scoring information to the educator. With Noesis, the teacher can select from a variety of 10.000 ABA materials the most appropriate to his/her individual pupil and perform cognitive and meta-cognitive procedures, with regard to the degree of success during the educational intervention. Statistical analysis, comparisons and reports are also outputted from Noesis, providing valuable information, both to the educator and the parents regarding their kid’s progress.

Noesis provides the bed-set not only for exploration of team’s abilities to think about and re-design ASD kid’s educational approach, but also to understand and integrate the needs of the whole ASD community (ASD-C), i.e., autistic kids, parents and educators, in a joint attempt to facilitate their education, increase their social behavior and contribute to a better quality of life.

Additional Documentation:

Ireland

Team Name: InGest

Team Members: Dan Kelly, Cathal Coffey, Eric Mc Clean, Mark Clerkin

University: National University of Ireland Maynooth

Project Summary:

InGest is a collection of educational tools aimed at teaching sign language. Users can choose tutorials depending on their level of experience and demonstrations are made through 3D hand gesture animation interface. Users can mimic the signs via a motion capture glove or a camera. InGest also allows users to chat online using sign language.

Additional Documentation:

Italy

Team Name: Dattebayo

Project Name: Yourself

Team Members: Alessandro Cartura - Polytechnic of Turin, Davide Benato - Polytechnic of Turin, Carlo Alberto Boano - Polytechnic of Turin, Melissa Veglio - High School “Curie” – Pinerolo

Project Summary:

The aim of offering a better education to everyone is as important, as it is difficult to realize.

YourSelf proposes an innovative architecture, based on a software application which helps create a closer relationship between students, teachers, schools and families.

The project’s basic idea is to create support software for elementary, middle and secondary schools which, by analyzing the students’ writing skills, in turn provides a method for analyzing the characteristics of each student, his/her potential and aptitudes, as well as understanding the deep motivations that can cause learning difficulties.

Based on the conclusions drawn, teachers can evaluate the students’ results in another light, allowing the family to participate in the learning process, while seeking possible solutions, so that students can be assisted in a personalized manner, properly understood and assisted in surmounting their difficulties.

The students’ education will not be improved in the number of notions learned or a greater amount of knowledge imparted, but in the sense of a better quality of learning. To achieve this goal, we must analyze the highest form of communication, bar none, devised by man over the centuries: handwriting.

Thanks to YourSelf, students are in fact stimulated and aided in overcoming their learning difficulties, becoming acquainted with their own potentials and weak points, while being allowed to discover their aptitudes and characteristics. The program therefore provides an important support in helping them decide their future.

Netherlands

Project Name: I-Connect

Team Members: Yousef El Dardiry, Jan Drenthen and Pieter Annemaet

University Name: TU Delft, Netherlands

Winning Team in the middle from left to right: Yousef El Dardiry,Jan Drenthen and Pieter Annemaet

Project Summary: As society becomes more and more global, it is important that children start to learn about other cultures at a very young age. I-Connect gives children these opportunities by letting them play simple games with children of their age living thousands of miles away. Using a simple icon language they will be able to communicate with each other, without sharing a common tongue. Furthermore they can see each other using a web cam.

Norway

Team Name: Team Avanade/NITH

Project Name: Homework HelpO’Matic

Team Members: Ruben Olav Larsen, Anders Bondehagen, Johan Misvær Grønstad, Øyvind Thomassen

University Name: Norwegian School of Information Technology

Project Summary: The Internet is rapidly becoming the single most important source for information. Young students have to learn how to use this new tool with a certain level of criticism, and how to use this information for their homework.

Children often feel they don’t get the help they need. Few parents have the time to sit down and help their children with their homework assignments, or the knowledge to answer many of assignment questions correctly.

How do we bridge this gap? The answer must be an automated system where no human recourses are directly monopolized by the individual.

Homework HelpO’matic is a fully automated system for analysis of rich text, document rating, and returns hints (help/sources) back to the user. Homework HelpO’matic is directly tied to the assignments of the teaching plan at the school. The teacher adds the assignments and ties the students to it.

The student’s then gets automatic help with the assignment. Based on how many points they score, they gain levels. Every level opens a new source they can use for the assignment. This process is nicknamed “the learning game” and will be a motivating factor for the students to meet their assignment goals, and to obtain the best grade possible.

Pakistan

Project Name: AVRiL

Team Members: Ahmad Humayun, Yahya Amanullah Cheema, Ozair Muazzam, Tayyab Javed

University Name: School of Science and Engineering, LUMS, Pakistan

Project Summary:

AVRiL aims to revolutionize the access to education for the less fortunate, while facilitating the ones already receiving high standards of education. The goal is to completely automate the classroom lecture-recording process, eliminating all human elements including the cameramen and the director, thereby reducing cost and yet producing unobtrusive, high-quality video with an immersive "classroom look-and-feel". This will make educational content-creation accessible and affordable for all universities and colleges to record day-to-day lectures and publish them on the Internet.

Additional Documentation:

Poland

Project Name: Onespace

Team Name: Team inPut

Team Members: Marek Wronowski, Michał Tartanus, Szymon Wybranski, Michal Zygmunt

University: Poznan University of Technology

Project Summary: Onespace enables a group of users to work on the single project at the same time. It provides not only audio and video communication, but also enables you to switch between different users’ desktops as easy as you were switching between applications. Onespace allows students to switch to their teacher’s desktop to follow teacher’s lessons. The same teacher can track students’ progresses simultaneously displaying students’ desktops on his or her monitor. Thanks to the Microsoft MultiPoint

feature, all users sharing the same desktop can use their own mouse cursors to collaborate in class. With Onespace, you can also drag your running application window out of your screen so it appears on your friends desktop. Parents could even use Onespace while on a business trip to help their children with homework. Onespace, joins people into groups, and is a perfect solution not only for educational or business applications. It can be used for joining people with common interests and problems as well. Users who are a part of a community can co-operate, learn and help one another. You are not limited by your location or language skills. Onespace will automatically translate your conversation into desired language. It is not a closed solution which means you can use Onespace with any existing application.

Portugal

Project Name: The Chefs

Team Members: Bárbara Bettencourt, José Santos, Pedro Faleiro, and Rui Milagaia

University Name: Nova University and Aberta University, Lisbon

Project Summary:

The Digital Kitchen Assistant (DKA) is a helpful kitchen system that guides the user, in the adventure of cooking, in a safe manner, stimulating learning in a practical, creative and fun experience.

Its objective is to be a multifaceted platform that combines practical, educational and playful elements

enabling the user to learn in a active way instead of just being a passive knowledge absorber. It turns on the thirst for knowledge by stimulating curiosity and offering information on various areas such as gastronomy, nutrition, history, geography and much more.

The user is able to search for a recipe by numerous criteria including cooking time and ingredients. More than just a recipe collection, DKA is a knowledge repository that intends to stimulate curiosity through the cooking process by having sub-menus available with related information. With sensory information DKA is able to guide the user through his experience to a better chance of good results. It’s one step further in the smart kitchen solution.

DKA provides the user a fun learning experience in the kitchen and tries to convert him in a real chef.

Russia

Team Name: M-Team

Team Members: Konstantin Kichinskiy, Konstantin Gorskiy, Mikhail Gurenkov, Andrey Sverdlov

University Name: Moscow Aviation Institute (Technical University)

Project Summary:

Mapedia is an educational system that uses mind-maps to represent student understanding of the subject, and collaborative editing techniques for group learning.

Additional Documentation:

Serbia

Team Name: SMOR Team

Project Name: Drive On

Team Members:

Neven Tubić (Faculty of Organizational Sciences)

Milan Stojić (Faculty of Organizational Sciences)

Ivan Vujić (Faculty of Organizational Sciences)

Sava Čajetinac (Faculty of Applied Arts)

Project Summary:

The project is in a virtual simulation environment, created in order to offer a new functionality in the learning of car driving. The concept of DIS (Distributed Interactive Simulation) is exploited to develop the software and to implement whole project on several personal computers connected by network, resulting in effective low-cost solution. Student interacts with simulator using a real car controls, with 60-360 degrees surrounding view, while instructor controls simulation over Instructor Console. The vehicle dynamic model is tuned to represent relevant driving characteristics of a real car. Street traffic is represented by a number of computer driven vehicles (i.e. by virtual intelligent drivers), which respect the traffic rules and adapts to student’s driving mistakes. The solution offers safe training in risky situations and different weather conditions, unlike the traditional training. It can be easily adapted to other types of vehicles, extended by driving-learning assistance system or virtual (artificially intelligent) instructor.

Additional Documentation:

Spain

Team Name: SC@UT

Team Members: José Luis González Sánchez, Cristóbal Espinosa Morente, Oscar Pino Morillas

University Name: University of Granada

Project Summary:

Augmentative and Adaptive Communication System for Autistic Children. Sc@ut is an augmentative and adaptive communication software with the following objectives: to resolve communication troubles children with autistic spectrum disorders have, by means of the design and development of a communicator adapted to these people; and to provide a personalized and comprehensive education: Due to every autistic child being different, we must emphasize the needing of a personalized education, according to his/her learning capabilities and progress. Sc@ut’s versatility permits to adapt and create units of work personalized to every child’s profile, the scenarios he/she is used to and his/her educational needs. But education must be comprehensive too. Often, children with communication disorders suffer from isolation or have serious difficulties to integrate, because not only of their lack of verbal language, but also severe behavior troubles (i.e. aggression, self-inflicted injury, tantrum, objects breakage…). Generally, they are a way of communicating a desire or needing, attracting their parents or teachers’ attention. Thus, if we facilitate a more appropriate and adapted communication manner, the frequency of these disruptive behaviors will diminish.

The developed system is being used by more than 30 children in schools and autism associations. It´s a vital tool both for students, parents and teachers, since it allows them to communicate and, thus, facilitates access to education to children who, without our system, couldn’t have that access.

At a functional level, we may define Sc@ut as a technical aid – running on Pocket PC devices (Windows Mobile®, .Net Compact Framework 2.0) as well as XP Tablet or Desktop (.Net Framework 2.0)- able to use any pictographic communication system that makes it easy to create agendas, pictograms and units of work which contents are created by the educator by following pedagogical objectives for every specific child. Templates offer the children a communication representation within an hypermedia network – internally represented on XML-. Hypermedia technology allows the children to learn new concepts and relate them with other acquired before. We’ve also developed a Desktop application for the design of templates and user’s profiles that uses Web Services to download/upload the files created with it from/to the server, so that they may be reused. We have implemented on Microsoft® Visual Studio 2005, with C# being the programming language. At this moment, we are using Microsoft® XNA platform for development running on both Desktop and XBOX 360 console.

Turkey

Project Name: PARE.NeT

Team Members: Murat Bilici, Erman Oral, Can Kayacan

University Name: Istanbul Technical University

Project Summary:

Say you are a parent and wonder what your baby is telling you in his/her own baby language... Communicating with little babies is a common problem of parents all over the world. Based on research results showing that babies use their voices as a common language until they begin to speak, PARE.NeT aims to enable and enrich the communication between parents and babies. PARE.NeT, through technology, offers an education platform for parents where they learn to communicate effectively. As the baby-expression-language is unique and as PARE.NeT supports multi-language, it resolves the worldwide problem.

United Arab Emirates

Project Name: Learning On the Move!

Team Members: Ghalya Al-Mannei, Hayfa Jarrah, Hamda Al-Bariki, Noura Al Dhaheri

University Name: College of Information Technology, UAE University

Project Summary:

Learn wherever you are; in the car, in the bus or in the train! Today's mobile generation is learning on the move! The learning addressed in this project occurs whenever there is a break in the flow of routine daily performances to reclaim wasted time while being on the move to address a problem or to gain an understanding. There has been widespread discussion of the need to widen access to learning resources, particularly the worldwide web. Far less consideration has been given to providing mobile learners with technology to help them learn when and wherever they choose and to support their personal learning throughout a lifetime, progressing towards their educational objectives in a constructive manner.

Additional Documentation:

United Kingdom

Team Name: The Seedlings

Project Name: My First Programming Language

Team Members: Matt Steeples, James Alexander, and Matt Steels

University Name: University of Hull

Project Summary: There is a technology crisis looking in the UK. Currently, the UK Knowledge Economy contributes over 40% of GDP, and there are an estimated 150,000 new IT jobs being created each year. However, this is set against a year-on-year decline in the number of students attending IT-related courses in University, and most critically Computer Science.

In the formative years of education, little emphasis is placed on engaging students in activities that will promote the development of computational thinking – a skill identified as key to a successful contribution to today’s knowledge-based economies.

My First Programming Language (myFPL) has been conceived to address this by providing an engaging and vibrant application for young students, designed to teach and develop problem solving skills through teaching simple programming concepts. Simple step-by-step feedback given to students as they learn to write code by interacting with simple characters and objects makes this product unique, and offers an engaging and non-threatening way to learn the fundamentals of programming.

myFPL offers a flexible workspace, which can be extended to target a range of educational tasks within a specific subject area, all aimed at developing problem solving and computational thinking skills. myFPL aims to develop interest in programming; allowing users to step up to more sophisticated programming languages and environments with greater confidence. However, at a basic level, users of myFPL should come away from the package having improved their problem solving, reasoning and learning skills, which will be of great benefit throughout their lives.

Additional Documentation: