Human qualities are only developed in human society by means of interaction with others. Since a child is born, he/she sees, hears, touches, and tastes things. That means visual and aural stimuli are natural for human beings and these stimuli are also present on videos. Perhaps, this is the reason why videos have a huge impact on society. An evidence of the popularity of videos growing in society can be observed in the large volume of videos uploaded onto YouTube or the number of videos posted on Facebook. Besides, the rise of smartphones has increased the number of users that not only watch but also produce videos. However, what happens to people who cannot access those contents because they have disabilities or some temporary illness. To avoid excluding people from understanding video content, it is important to provide a video with accessibility. Thus, about 23.9% of the Brazil population who declared themselves with disabilities will benefit from accessible videos. Standards, laws and regulations to promote video accessibility have been developed. Research studies about accessible video players, improving captioning, resources about sign language, and implementation of the content enrichment have also been developed. In spite of the video production process being well defined, current research and market practices do not take accessibility into account as part of its stages. They do not explain how amateur authors can create alternative content following guidelines or how to incorporate accessibility guidelines to the video production process. This thesis proposes a method, called Video4All, for alternative content authoring as part of an accessible video production process. Video4All is composed by a set of activities, including alternative content guidelines, and alternative content evaluation. A case study was conducted to verify the effectiveness of applying the proposed method by amateur authors, evaluating their generated alternative content. In order to describe the process, was incorporated accessibility in all stages and the case studies reported the difficulties which users had during the interaction with an accessible video player. Additionally, the proposal involved the development of an alternative content evaluation method as a means to provide a quality measure, enabling authors to better understand the accessibility level of the alternative content they create. The accessible video production process can be used by any amateur author to improve the accessibility of their videos. Moreover, Video4All helps the authoring and evaluation of alternative content. / As qualidades humanas somente são desenvolvidas na sociedade através da interação com os outros. Desde que a criança nasce, ela vê, ouve, toca, e sente as coisas. Portanto, estímulos visuais e auditivos são naturais para o homem, e estes estímulos também estão presentes em vídeos. Pode ser que seja esse o motivo pelo qual os vídeos causam grande impacto na sociedade. Uma evidência da popularidade e do crescimento de vídeos na sociedade é a grande quantidade de vídeos carregados no YouTube ou o grande número de vídeos postados no Facebook. Além disso, o surgimento dos smartphones tem aumentado a quantidade de usuários que não só assistem vídeos, mas também fazem vídeos. Mas o quê acontece com as pessoas que não podem acessar estes conteúdos por terem alguma deficiência ou doença temporária? Para evitar que pessoas não compreendam o conteúdo do vídeo, é importante fornecer um vídeo com acessibilidade, assim, por exemplo, cerca de 23,9% do total da população de Brasil, declaradas com deficiência, serão beneficiadas. Diretrizes e leis para promover a acessibilidade para vídeos foram desenvolvidas. Existem também pesquisas sobre reprodutores de vídeo acessíveis, melhoramento da legenda, recursos sobre a língua de sinais e implementações para enriquecer conteúdos. Apesar do processo de produção de vídeo estar bem definido, as práticas e pesquisas atuais não consideram acessibilidade em seus estágios. Não se explica como autores amadores podem criar conteúdo alternativo considerando as diretrizes ou como incorporar essas diretrizes de acessibilidade no processo de produção de vídeo. Esta tese propõe um método, chamado Video4All, para a autoria de conteúdo alternativo dentro de um processo de produção de vídeo acessível. O Video4All é composto por um conjunto de atividades, incluindo diretrizes para conteúdo alternativo e avaliação desse conteúdo. Estudos de caso foram realizados para verificar a eficácia da aplicação do método proposto por autores amadores, avaliando o seu conteúdo alternativo criado. Assim, ao processo foi incorporada acessibilidade em todos os estágios, considerando-se estudos de caso que relataram as dificuldades que os usuários têm durante a interação com um reprodutor de vídeo acessível. Adicionalmente, foi desenvolvido um método de avaliação do conteúdo alternativo para obter uma medida de qualidade, de forma que os autores entendam melhor o nível de acessibilidade do conteúdo alternativo. O processo de produção de vídeo acessível pode ser utilizado por qualquer autor amador para melhorar a acessibilidade nos seus vídeos. O Video4All também auxilia na criação e avaliação de conteúdo alternativo.

O Governo Brasileiro, juntamente com outros órgãos públicos e representantes do terceiro setor, criou um grande número de projetos que tentam disseminar o uso das tecnologias e promover a inclusão digital. Esses projetos são consequência da importância dada à inclusão digital e à capacitação do cidadão como ser autônomo e crítico no uso das tecnologias e na construção do seu conhecimento. Entretanto, a escola, que deveria ser considerada a principal responsável pelo futuro cidadão, ainda não consegue acompanhar o avanço das tecnologias e da sociedade fora dos seus muros, vivendo um momento de grandes questionamentos. As tecnologias já fazem parte do cotidiano da escola, mas não provocaram mudanças significativas nos processos de ensino e aprendizado como as que se observam fora dos muros da escola. Nossos alunos vivem hoje uma realidade fora da escola muito diferente da que a escola lhes oferece, o que prejudica a relação da escola com o aluno e com a sociedade. As mídias, poderosos recursos para a produção de conteúdos educacionais, estão presentes no cotidiano desses usuários, ávidos em consumirem desenhos animados, filmes e jogos eletrônicos. Entretanto, os usuários ainda são tratados como meros espectadores, que não passam de passivos consumidores que recebem todas as informações prontas, continuando reféns de uma parcela da sociedade que possui o poder de produzir e manipular estas informações. Este trabalho apresenta um estudo sobre interfaces naturais em sistemas de autoria para filmes de animação, bem como a concepção, desenvolvimento e resultados de testes de dois protótipos de sistemas. Apresenta também considerações e subsídios para o desenvolvimento de sistemas de autoria que estimulem a produção de filmes de animação de maneira fácil e intuitiva a partir de interfaces naturais com foco no processo de produção do usuário. Em vivência, os protótipos desenvolvidos se mostraram de fácil e rápida apropriação por crianças de diferentes faixas etárias, que se mostraram interessadas em explorar e construir suas animações. Os resultados obtidos mostram a viabilidade da proposta do trabalho e fornecem subsídios para o desenvolvimento de novos sistemas. / The Brazilian Government, along with other public agencies and representatives of the third sector, has created a large number of projects that try to spread the use of technologies and promote digital inclusion. These projects are the result of the importance given to digital inclusion and empowerment of the citizen as an autonomous being and critical user of technology as well as autonomous in his knowledge construction. However, the school, which should be considered the main responsible for the citizens\' future, still can not keep pace with advancing technology and society outside its walls, living a moment of great questions, since the technologies are already part of its daily but caused no significant changes in the teaching and learning as occurring outside the school walls. Today, student\'s reality outside school is very different from what school offers them, which undermines the school\'s relationship with the student and society. The digital media, with powerful resources for content production, are present in daily lives of the users, eager to consume cartoons, movies and computer games. However, users are still treated as simple spectators who are merely passive consumers and receive all the information ready, still hostage to a portion of the society that has the power to manipulate and produce this information. This work presents a study on natural interfaces to authoring systems for animation films, as well as presents the design, development and results of tests of two prototypes. It also presents considerations and subsidies for the development of authoring systems that encourage production of animated films in an easy and intuitive way, using natural interfaces and focusing on the production process and user evolution. In preliminary experiments, the prototypes proved to be easy and quickly learned, which matches the goals of this project to attract users in different age groups who had shown interest in exploring and building their own animations. The results and contributions obtained show the feasibility of the proposed work and can also provide subsidies for the development of new systems.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:17:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao_capa_resumo_indice_victoremm.pdf: 122687 bytes, checksum: 26318df16cecbdfe740cba1f87184dff (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005-05-09 / The present inquiry presents a proposal of analyzes of the interactive structures in games carried through in digital environments and its possible reuse in new communication processes in cooperation with the computer sciences and the hypermedia. It currently analyzes the processes of authoring of games of the historical, conceptual point of view and the perspectives of interdisciplinary concept gifts inside of the research carried through in the academy in that it says respect the matrices of the language and thought. The referencial model multi-player (Counter-Strike) studied involves strategies of complex reuses and interactive. The research identified as basic elements of the process the work in qualified teams, either in the planning, same development and in the conduction of the practical ones of use to the user level. The used concept of team is of interdisciplinary concept, what it becomes the interesting research for the contexts of the entertainment and education. The reuses concept if becomes operative when it is developed by the current inquiries on the interactive, which is presented from the research in semiotics and hypermedia, leaving the open possibility of its extension for the area of the education. / A presente investigação de mestrado apresenta uma proposta de análise das estruturas interativas em jogos realizados em ambientes digitais, e sua possível reutilização em novos processos comunicacionais em cooperação com as ciências da computação e a hipermídia. Analisa os processos de autoria de games do ponto de vista histórico, conceitual e as perspectivas interdisciplinares presentes atualmente, dentro das pesquisas realizadas na academia, no que diz respeito às matrizes da linguagem e pensamento. O modelo referencial multi-jogador (Counter-Strike) estudado envolve estratégias de reutilização e interatividade complexas. A pesquisa identificou como elementos fundamentais do processo o trabalho em equipes qualificadas, seja no planejamento, desenvolvimento e mesmo na condução das práticas de utilização ao nível de usuário. O conceito de equipe utilizado é o de interdisciplinaridade, o que torna a pesquisa interessante para os contextos do entretenimento e educação. O conceito de reutilização se torna operativo quando é incrementado pelas investigações atuais sobre a interatividade, a qual é apresentada a partir das pesquisas em semiótica e hipermídia, deixando a possibilidade aberta de sua extensão para a área da educação.

In more than two decades of research and practical experiments in interactive digital narrative (IDN), much insight about the relationship of narrative and digital media has been gained and many successful experiments have been undertaken, as a survey of the field illustrates. However, current approaches also limit the scope of experimentation and constrain theory in interactive narrative forms original to digital media. After reviewing the "interactivisation" of legacy theory (neo-Aristotelian poetics for interactive drama, poststructuralism for hyperfiction, 20th century narratology for interactive fiction and as a general theory for IDN), the thesis introduces a theoretical framework that changes the focus from the product-centered view of legacy media towards system and the process of instantiation. The terms protostory describing the overall space of potential narratives in an IDN system, narrative design for the concrete assemblage of elements and narrative vectors as substructures that enable authorial control are introduced to supersede legacy terms like story and plot. On the practical side, the thesis identifies limitations of existing approaches (e.g. legacy metaphors like the timeline, and authoring tools that support only particular traditions) To overcome these limitations a software toolset built on the principles of robustness, modularity, and extensibility is introduced and some early results are evaluated. Finally, the thesis proposes an inclusive, open-ended iterative process as a structure for future IDN research in which practical implementations and research co-exist in a tightly coupled mutual relationship that allows changes on one side to be integrated on the other.

Computer games are an increasingly popular application for Artificial Intelligence (AI) research, and conversely AI is an increasingly popular selling point for commercial digital games. AI for non playing characters (NPC) in computer games tends to come from people with computing skills well beyond the average user. The prime reason behind the lack of involvement of novice users in creating AI behaviors for NPC's in computer games is that construction of high quality AI behaviors is a hard problem. There are two reasons for it. First, creating a set of AI behavior requires specialized skills in design and programming. The nature of the process restricts it to certain individuals who have a certain expertise in this area. There is little understanding of how the behavior authoring process can be simplified with easy-to-use authoring environments so that novice users (without programming and design experience) can carry out the behavior authoring task. Second, the constructed AI behaviors have problems and bugs in them which cause a break in player expe- rience when the problematic behaviors repeatedly fail. It is harder for novice users to identify, modify and correct problems with the authored behavior sets as they do not have the necessary debugging and design experience. The two issues give rise to a couple of interesting questions that need to be investigated: a) How can the AI behavior construction process be simplified so that a novice user (without program- ming and design experience) can easily conduct the authoring activity and b) How can the novice users be supported to help them identify and correct problems with the authored behavior sets? In this thesis, I explore the issues related to the problems highlighted and propose a solution to them within an application domain, named Second Mind(SM). In SM novice users who do not have expertise in computer programming employ an authoring interface to design behaviors for intelligent virtual characters performing a service in a virtual world. These services range from shopkeepers to museum hosts. The constructed behaviors are further repaired using an AI based approach. To evaluate the construction and repair approach, we conduct experiments with human subjects. Based on developing and evaluating the solution, I claim that a design solution with behavior timeline based interaction design approach for behavior construction supported by an understandable vocabulary and reduced feature representation for- malism enables novice users to author AI behaviors in an easy and understandable manner for NPCs performing a service in a virtual world. I further claim that an introspective reasoning approach based on comparison of successful and unsuccessful execution traces can be used as a means to successfully identify breaks in player ex- perience and modify the failures to improve the experience of the player interacting with NPCs performing a service in a virtual world. The work contributes in the following three ways by providing: 1) a novel introspective reasoning approach for successfully detecting and repairing failures in AI behaviors for NPCs performing a service in a virtual world.; 2) a novice user understandable authoring environment to help them create AI behaviors for NPCs performing a service in a virtual world in an easy and understandable manner; and 3) Design, debugging and testing scaffolding to help novice users modify their authored AI behaviors and achieve higher quality modified AI behaviors compared to their original unmodified behaviors.

近年來互動數位敘事(Interactive Digital Storytelling, IDS)的發展日漸被重視，有部分研究針對互動數位敘事開發故事腳本編輯工具，雖然這些編輯工具考慮了沒有互動數位敘事腳本編劇經驗的作者，但仍缺乏創作豐富度、工具易用性及共同創作功能。本研究目標為建立互動數位敘事之智慧型共同創作平台( Intelligent Collaborative Authoring Platform, iCAP )，透過將故事元素視覺化，故事內容設定參數化等，加上智慧型檢驗運算，讓故事編劇們能夠透過此平台編修互動故事腳本，並在舞台環境中呈現新的故事內容。我們以現有的互動數位敘事系統The Theater[1]為舞台呈現，透過iCAP整合其故事腳本及環境建置設定。我們建立了簡單易懂的操作介面、規劃故事腳本可修改範圍的限制、將故事動畫腳本設定參數化、建立的故事腳本的共同創作機制以及輔助創作的智慧型提示與結果運算，並設計一系列的任務式實驗以及評估問卷來評估系統，透過實驗結果驗證了本研究的智慧型共同創作平台的價值，能讓不同的腳本編劇在此平台上方便、快速的工作，而使得互動數位敘事之腳本編輯變得較簡易，修正演出效果時將更加有效率，故事內容也更豐富。 / Interactive Digital Storytelling (IDS) has become more popular these days. Some of the pre-vious researches about IDS have considered the design of story editor. Although they have designed the authoring tools for authors who may not have the editing experience of IDS sto-ries, they usually lack the features of enabling rich contents, easy-to-use, and collaboration among multiple users for IDS story editing. Our system, named iCAP, is an Intelligent Col-laborative Authoring Platform for IDS, using "The Theater" as the IDS animation platform. The iCAP system contains a graphical user interface for making the story editing process eas-ier and the storyline more readable. The iCAP system includes the collaborative features such as the settings of access rights, the parameterization of the scenario settings, the authoring logs of the collaborative process, and the intelligent error detecting tool that is used to detect the errors occurring in a story structure. We have conducted an experiment to verify the usa-bility and the collaborative features of iCAP. In addition, we have obtained feedbacks from the users about the advantages and disadvantages of iCAP and verified the value of the plat-form for IDS.

Ανάπτυξη ενός μέτρου ανομοιότητας μεταξύ κατηγορικών δεδομένων και η εφαρμογή του για την ομαδοποίηση κειμένων και την λύση του προβλήματος αυθεντiκότητας κειμένων. / Developement of a similarity measure for categorical data and the application of the measure in text clustering and in the authoring attribution problem.

With current state-of-the-art approaches, development of a single mobile manipulation capability can be a labor-intensive process that presents an impediment to the creation of general purpose household robots. At the same time, we expect that involving a larger community of non-roboticists can accelerate the creation of new novel behaviors. We introduce the use of a software authoring environment called ROS Commander (ROSCo) allowing end-users to create, refine, and reuse robot behaviors with complexity similar to those currently created by roboticists. Akin to Photoshop, which provides end-users with interfaces for advanced computer vision algorithms, our environment provides interfaces to mobile manipulation algorithmic building blocks that can be combined and configured to suit the demands of new tasks and their variations. As our system can be more demanding of users than alternatives such as using kinesthetic guidance or learning from demonstration, we performed a user study with 11 able-bodied participants and one person with quadriplegia to determine whether computer literate non-roboticists will be able to learn to use our tool. In our study, all participants were able to successfully construct functional behaviors after being trained. Furthermore, participants were able to produce behaviors that demonstrated a variety of creative manipulation strategies, showing the power of enabling end-users to author robot behaviors. Additionally, we introduce how using autonomous robot learning, where the robot captures its own training data, can complement human authoring of behaviors by freeing users from the repetitive task of capturing data for learning. By taking advantage of the robot's embodiment, our method creates classifiers that predict using visual appearances 3D locations on home mechanisms where user constructed behaviors will succeed. With active learning, we show that such classifiers can be learned using a small number of examples. We also show that this learning system works with behaviors constructed by non-roboticists in our user study. As far as we know, this is the first instance of perception learning with behaviors not hand-crafted by roboticists.

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A interrelação entre os processos interativos de mediação e autoria desenvolvidas nos fóruns de discussão enquanto práticas curriculares foi o foco dessa pesquisa, tendo como pano de fundo uma reflexão sobre os processos cognitivos, a formação e o currículo no desenvolvimento de um curso de especialização lato sensu na modalidade de educação a distância (EaD). O objetivo geral dessa investigação foi - Compreender em que arquitetônica se consolida a interrelação entre processos de autoria e de mediação, nos fóruns de discussão enquanto práticas de currículo, que objetivam a construção do conhecimento na formação a distância no curso de ESPEAD, norteado pelo seguinte problema: Em que arquitetônica interrelacionam-se os processos de autoria e de mediação, em fóruns de discussão enquanto práticas de currículo, que objetivam a construção do conhecimento na formação a distância? Nessa investigação a colaboração se insere como dobra da tese, dando novo contorno à discussão de formação, currículo, mediação e autoria. Com um lastro fenomenológico e multirreferencial, a pesquisa foi desenvolvida com a orientação da abordagem qualitativa, utilizando princípios da análise do discurso franco-brasileira como bases para encaminhar a análise e interpretação dos discursos, além da orientação da análise contrastiva para revisitar os conceitos chaves desse trabalho e estabelecer relação com as informações do campo. O campo da pesquisa foi o Curso de Especialização em Educação a Distância, da Universidade do Estado da Bahia, ofertado no Projeto do Sistema da Universidade Aberta do Brasil na modalidade de educação a distância (EaD). Os sujeitos foram os cursistas, professores e tutora a distância implicados com o processo formativo em três disciplinas, das quais foram analisados três fóruns de discussão. Em relação à interrelação entre mediação e autoria, os sujeitos construíram conhecimento de forma colaborativa a partir do imbricamento entre mediação e autoria que se deu nas bases da interação crítica e argumentativa, da interpretação e da colaboração; na efetivação de práticas autoras, tendo como referência as bases estruturantes da formação e a concepção do currículo de formação construída e gestada pelos sujeitos no decorrer das discussões, além da atuação autônoma dos sujeitos dessa formação. A compreensão da arquitetônica dessa interrelação permitiu que encaminhássemos uma tese em torno do desenvolvimento de uma comunidade de prática no processo formativo, no sentido de fortalecer a interrelação entre autoria e mediação a partir da implicação, engajamento, responsabilidade dos sujeitos com o processo de construção do conhecimento em rede. / ABSTRACT Mediation and authoring are constant practices in the process of knowledge construction, mostly in learning management systems (LMS) during formation in distance education curriculum practices. The interrelation between interactive processes of mediation and authoring processes developed in the forums were the focus of this research. Its background was the reflection about cognitive processes, formation and curriculum in the development of a post graduation course in distance education. The main goal of this research is to understand the architectonics in which the interrelations between the processes of mediation and authoring consolidate themselves in the forums as practices of curriculum which are directed to knowledge construction in the distance education course, according to the following research problem: What is the architectonics in which the processes of authoring and mediation get interrelated in the forums as practices of curriculum which are directed to knowledge construction in the distance education course? In this research, collaboration gives a new meaning to the discussion about formation, curriculum mediation and authoring in this thesis. According to its phenomenological and mutirreferencial basis, this research has a qualitative approach, using principals from French-Brazilian discourse analysis school as basis to analyze and interpret the discourses, as long as contrastive analysis to revisit the key concepts of this work related to the empirical data. The locus was the Post Graduation Course on Distance Education of Bahia State University, under the Brazil Open University System, offered with distance education methodology. Teachers, tutors and students of three subjects were the subjects of the research and three forums were analyzed. Regarding the interrelation between mediation and authoring, the subjects built knowledge in collaboration merging mediation and authoring according to a critical and argumentative approach, interpretation and collaboration; they accomplished authoring practices in relation to the structuring basis of formation and the idea of a curriculum developed autonomously by the subjects in the process of formation. The comprehension of the architectonics of this interrelation allowed this thesis to be directed to the development of a community of practice in the formative process in order to strengthen the interrelation between authoring and mediation through implication, engagement, responsibility of the subjects with the network process of knowledge construction.

This thesis deals about the use of authoring tools in physics, especially in creating physical models and simulations, and their contribution to different areas of teaching. The use of authoring tools is in the thesis closely discussed in connection with the teaching theories of constructivism and pedagogical content knowledge. The specific content of these theories and the reasons for their links to reference topics are listed in the theoretical part. Here is the survey of the current state of ICT tools with regard to their potential application in the teaching of physics. These are some examples of the selected authoring tools and examples of their use. In the experimental part of the thesis are first formulated research questions and the research hypotheses. That will be tested in the research. The research question was: "Has the use of authoring tools significant improvement in pupils' understanding and application of the curriculum?". The reason for this formulation and relevant hypothesis are described in the paper. Based on the research hypotheses was chosen research approach and used method - in this case pedagogical experiment. In the research were involved in various schools and teachers. The content of testing the effect of authoring tools were also different curriculum in physical education. Individual experiments and their results are described in separate chapters. In each description is a didactic analysis and justification of the selected used simulation maded by authoring tool. For each experiment, the values are given statistical probability of confirming/rejecting the hypothesis. In conclusion, the overall evaluation experiments and on this basis are recommended ways to implement authoring tools into teaching. There were described some other suggestions to use authoring tools, going beyond the experiment, based on the author's personal experience and teaching practice. It is recommended to dedicate neglected issue of authoring tools in teaching more attention in other pedagogical research.