Author: Benjamin

Lecturer: Stefan Riegl
Fields: Architecture

I would like to give a hands-on workshop on how to create a custom space in Gather Town. Afterwards you should have a good grasp of how the parts of a Gather Town space work and you should have built a custom space for yourself.

The workshop will start on Tuesday, 18:30 CEST in the lecture hall of the VIK space.

Please note: This will be an IK-internal event. If you have questions in that regard (or if you cannot make it), feel free to get in contact with me and we can discuss details.

What is it all about

Some people have asked me questions like:

— How difficult is it to create a map or space in Gather Town?
— How long does it take to create a map like [cool map]?
— Can I integrate [cool content] in Gather Town?
— and so on

The workshop is my long-winded answer, such that you can answer those questions yourself afterwards. Based on your own experience. Because you built something. With hands. Your hands. It will be great.

What to expect

The workshop will probably have the following structure:

Part I: The basics
1) How a space works, the Map Maker, how to break things, good practises
2) Creating a map, method 1: Gather Town’s Map Maker
Part II: Advanced methods
3) Creating a map, method 2: external tools, esp. Tiled Map Editor
4) Automating recurring tasks
Part III: Do it yourself
a) Hands-on: Build your own space!
b) Questions and (hopefully) answers

Part II, which requires a bit more technical understanding, builds on Part I, which should be easy to follow along just like that. I intend to make it such that people can sit back and relax _or_ get their hands dirty, but are not forced to do both at the same time. Part III should really be about you creating universes and me shutting up and only talk when being asked questions. (Let’s see how that goes.)

Each Part is supposed to be as short as possible and between parts there will be short breaks. Not sure how to estimate times, but I’ll try to fit Part I and II into 25min each, give or take. Very specific needs and more complicated questions might be postponed and addressed in Part III.

Here’s the cool thing

Come for whatever Part matches your interest and drop out into working on your own space, when you’ve got enough of the talking.

Not interested in tech mumbo jumbo? Just listen in on Part I. You already worked with the Map Maker? Join for Part II. You wonder whether a certain idea could be realised for your specific classroom teaching needs? Shoot your questions at me in Part III.

For those interested I’m happy to build a “space hub” and connect it with all the spaces created on that evening. That’s cool because it invites people to explore and discover, without requesting links or sending emails. Showcasing work on the VIK’s Bunter Abend is an option, but details are to be discussed at the workshop.

Who’s talking

I’m not getting paid by Gather Town for advertisement (dang) and there might be smarter ways than how I do it to achieve the same results. Gather Town certainly is not the ultimate answer. However, I see great potential in this incarnation of virtual environments. I want to share the lessons I learned in the past months to empower people, if possible, such that you can use widely available, modern technology to improve e.g. social well-being or education, especially in the times we have. The stuff you need to get into a space is not rocket science, but imagination. (And your hands.)

I leave it to the reader to judge whether I’m qualified to talk about Gather Town space building. In my defence: I was not insignificantly involved in creating the space for the Virtual IK.

If you have any questions left, please le me know. A response will be be shorter than this email, most probably.

Lecturer: Ronald Sladky
Fields: Cooknitive Science

We will meet on Thu, 8. April, 20:00 at the cafeteria buffet in the VIK space.

A list of required materials and resources can be found below the abstract.

Abstract

Current archaeological consensus suggests that Hominini (H. erectus, H. sapiens) invented cooking at least 500,000 years ago (Pollard, 2015) and there is also evidence for cooking behavior in present-day chimpanzees (P. troglodytes) (Warneken & Rosati, 2015). Several studies have suggested that food consumption appears to have partial relevance for survival, i.e., for maintaining autopoiesis (Maturana & Varela, 1972) in order to consistently counteract the second law of thermodynamics (Schrödinger, 1944), most likely by minimizing (variational) free energy (Friston, 2010). Beyond that, it is known that consuming food is associated with reward and, depending on cultural and geographical factors, mostly positive affectivity, a phenomenon that we will call cooked meal consumption pleasure (CMCP). An important aspect of CMCP is that subjective experience is not entirely stimulus-driven, resulting in a significant inter-subjective variability (e.g., different dietary preferences and requirements, previous experiences), variability depending on socio-cultural and environmental contexts, and multi-modal sensory integration (Auvray & Spence, 2008). If CMCP (or anything else) exists it must be a dynamical system (Jaeger, 2021) apparently implemented by hierarchical Markov blankets (Friston, Wiese, and Hobson, 2020).

Instances of successful CMCP are known to allow for foodborne mental space-time traveling (fMSTT). E.g., subjects reported previously that the smell and taste combination of Langos, cotton candy,  pickles, and ice cream always reactivates childhood memories of trips to the fairground (Any Wiener et al., 1993). By using an optimized CMCP preparation method, we aim at eliciting the same form of fMSTT, i.e., mentally taking subjects back to Günne. The vehicle used in this study is one of IK’s most iconic dishes, i.e., Pizza Soup (PS) that is served as a first meal. Typical reactions by the participants span the full valence spectrum from ‘Oh ja, lecker.’, to ‘What the %$#@ is this?!’. Here we will ensure that reactions will be mostly positive by updating the PS base recipe and modularizing the components to allow for different dietary preferences (e.g., omnivore, herbivore, people with intolerances). This optimized processing workflow results in a deconstructed PS (dPS) (Derrida, 1967). Note, in this context,  optimized is not used as a testable proposition but as a declarative speech act (Searle & Vanderveken, 1985). dPS will implement PS’ main goals, yet entail different sensory experiences and, in so doing, improving overall CMCP while still allowing for fully-embellied fMSTT.

Required and recommended materials

Soup

• 2 cans tomatoes (whole and peeled)
• 1/8 liter olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 2-4 slices good white bread (Ciabatta)
• Salt, black pepper
• Optional modifiers: Bay leaf, chili, soy sauce, sugar, baking soda

Toppings

• Good white bread (Ciabatta)
• for carnivores: salami, Jalapeno chilis, grated cheese
• for omnivores: pine nuts, basil, mozarella
• for herbivores: roasted tomatoes, olives

Lecturer: Tobias Wüstefeld
Fields: Design / Psychology

Content

New Tools are revolutionizing the way designers work in 3D. And no tool can be neutral. With this new ways of working, new ways of seeing and new styles will emerge. With VR (Virtual Reality), a new way of experimental approach comes into the workflow of designers.

Lecturer

Based in the German city of Hamburg, Tobias Wüstefeld is an illustrator who loves creating miniature worlds. Each has its own look, emotion and general atmosphere, and is full of detail for the viewer to inspect and engage with. He has done several Coverdesigns for Nature Magazine (Nature Methods, Nature Microbiology, Nature Cell Biology). For influences he looks well beyond the realms of art and illustration.

Affiliation: –
Homepage: tobiaswuestefeld.de

Lecturer: Terry Stewart
Fields: Computational Neuroscience

Content

The Neural Engineering Framework provides a general method for programming with neurons. This can be useful both for constructing models of particular biological systems, or for taking advantage of the energy-efficient computation in neuromorphic hardware. In this course, we\’ll introduce the basic ideas of the NEF, but the emphasis will be on hands-on modelling work using the Python software package Nengo. Nengo lets you quickly build and interact with these sorts of neuron models, and was used to construct Spaun, the first (and so far only) large-scale functional brain model capable of performing multiple tasks.

After the initial part of this course where we introduce the tools and methodology, the course will transition to become more project-based, where we can work together to try building models, based on the particular interests of the participants.

Literature

• Eliasmith et al., 2012. A large-scale model of the functioning brain. Science, 338:1202-1205. 10.1126/science.1225266
• https://www.nengo.ai/

Lecturer

Terry is an Associate Research Officer at National Research Council Canada. Before that, he was a post-doctoral research associate working with Chris Eliasmith at the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience at the University of Waterloo. His first degree was in engineering, then his masters involved applying experimental psychology on simulated robots, and his Ph.D. was on cognitive modelling. So he self-identifies as a cognitive scientist. He is also a co-founder of Applied Brain Research, a research-based start-up company based around using low-power hardware (neuromorphic computer chips) and adaptive neural algorithms.

Affiliation: National Research Council Canada
Homepage: http://terrystewart.ca/

Lecturer: Jutta Kretzberg
Fields: Games

Content

“Nomic is a game in which changing the rules is a move. In that respect it differs from almost every other game. The primary activity of Nomic is proposing changes in the rules, debating the wisdom of changing them in that way, voting on the changes, deciding what can and cannot be done afterwards, and doing it. Even this core of the game, of course, can be changed.“
— Peter Suber, The Paradox of Self-Amendment, 1990

Since the philosopher Peter Suber invented Nomic and published the first ruleset in 1982 (see http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/nomic.htm), many different face-to-face and online versions of Nomic were played – some just for a couple of hours, some for many years.
The VIK Nomic game will start with a simplified version of the original ruleset that regulates turn-based suggestions for rule changes and democratic votes if these suggestions are adopted or not. There is a point system for wining, but the real challenge is to win the game by creating a contradiction that prevents a player from finishing their turn.
From this starting point, the ruleset can develop in any direction: any strategy for winning the game, any political system, or any phantasy world – depending on the creativity and interaction of the group of players.

Technical hints:
– We will play in four sessions, every Tuesday 20:00 – 23:00 (CET) in the basement. It would be nice if all participants could play with camera and microphone to come as close as possible to a face-to-face group atmosphere. The number of players is limited to 20.
– Each of the three later sessions will start with the ruleset that developed in the previous session. Players can join just one or several sessions, but are asked to arrive punctually and familiarize themselves with the current ruleset prior to joining the game (the current rules will be reviewed only very briefly at the beginning of each session).

Literature

• Wikipedia description: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic The original rule set (by Peter Suber): http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/nomic.htm Suber, Peter (1990). The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A Study of Law, Logic, Omnipotence, and Change. Peter Lang Publishing. p. 362. ISBN 0-8204-1212-0.

Lecturer

Jutta Kretzberg studied computer science and biology at University of Bielefeld, Germany, lived for three years in San Diego, California, and is now a professor for computational neuroscience at University of Oldenburg. Some people claim that she only became the head of the master’s program neuroscience to have enough students for playing werewolves and similar group games… For her scientific CV, please refer to her talk ‘Minimal neural encoding of space’ on Friday, March 12.

Lecturer: Katharina Krämer & Annekatrin Vetter
Fields: Psychology, Psychotherapy

Content

How do I experience myself and the world around me? How do I feel? What influences my decisions and actions in everyday life? If you are curious to answer these questions, we invite you to come to our course. During the course we will focus on the broad field of self-experience. We are going to introduce you to different exercises and tools for exploring self-awareness, mindfulness, body perception, biography reflection and interpersonal and intrapersonal communication. A curios mind is the only requirement to join our experiential-group.

There will be two independent sessions, each with a limit of 15 participants.

Lecturer

Katharina Krämer is a psychologist and analytic psychotherapist. She works as a professor for psychology at the RFH Köln, University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, Germany, and as a psychotherapist in private practice. In 2014, Katharina Krämer received her doctoral degree from the University of Cologne, Germany, on a thesis investigating the perception of dynamic nonverbal cues in cross-cultural psychology and high-functioning autism. She works with patients with different mental disorders, focusing on adult patients with autism. Her research interests include the application of Mentalization-Based Group-Therapy with patients with autism and the vocational integration of patients with autism.

Annekatrin Vetter is a clinical psychologist and analytic psychotherapist. As a psychotherapist, she treats patients with different mental disorders in private practice. Additionally, she works as a lecturer for clinical psychology and cognitive psychology at the RFH Köln, University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, Germany, and as a trainer for Coaches at Inscape – Coaching & Counselling, Cologne, Germany. Currently, she is doing her PhD on treatment integrity in Mentalization-Based Group-Therapy.

Affiliation: Rheinische Fachhochschule Köln, University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, Germany
Homepage: https://www.rfh-koeln.de/studium/studiengaenge/wirtschaft-recht/wirtschaftspsychologie/dozenteninnen/katharina_kraemer/index_ger.html

Lecturer: Nicole Flindt
Fields: Neurodidactics, online education, educational technology

Content

Do you sometimes wonder how your students can actually remember and transfer the content you teach in your (online) university class? Due to the COVID-19 crisis schools and universities all around the world were forced to use digital learning methods. But even assuming a seamless transition to digital platforms, good Online Learning tools do not imply good content and a good presentation of the content. The way we learn (online and offline) is actually a field where neuroscience meets education – or should meet, in my opinion. My research field is neurodidactics – a relatively young research discipline in which neuro and educational science as well as psychological findings are interlocked. University lecturers, trainers, and learners can benefit from the transfer of neuroscientific findings on neuroplastic changes in the brain and the resulting opportunities for teaching and learning.

The workshop edition invites all IK participants who attended „RC2 – Neurodidactics“ and wants to get new perspectives on some of their own online courses…to pimp them with neurodidactical thinking!

Literature

• Flindt, N., Magarian, M. & Hohl, G. (2021). The creation of brain-stimulating online learning content for a youth migrant and refugee project. In: Muallim Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, April 2021 (Vol 5 Issue 2). (accepted)
• Steinmeier, J. & Flindt, N. (2021). Digitale Resilienz in der Hochschule und Schule (Digital resilience in universities and schools). In: Lehre und Lernen. (angenommen, in process)
• Kassymova, G., Bekalaeva, A., Yershimanova, D., Flindt, N., Gadirova, T. & Duisenbayeva, Sh. (2020). E-Learning Environments and Their Connection to the Human Brain. In: International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology, Vol. 29 No. 9s (2020), pp. 947-954 (also Open Access available: http://sersc.org/journals/index.php/IJAST/article/view/13359)

Lecturer

Dr. Nicole Flindt, M.A., studied law and education at the Universities of Heidelberg and Mannheim. Her research area is connected to online education, educational technology, and neurodidactics. She did her thesis on „e-learning“ in cooperation with the software company SAS GmbH Germany. She is the managing director of the research department and head of the Graduate School for Young Researchers at Heidelberg University of Education. Since 2020 she is an Advisory Board Member of the non-profit organization Teachsurfing.org and part of their IT based youth migrant EU project.

Affiliation: Heidelberg University of Education
Homepage: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicole_Flindt

Lecturer: Thomas Chen
Fields: Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning

Content

Artificial intelligence, including machine learning and deep learning, have been increasingly utilized for humanitarian applications, from combating climate change to assessing car accidents. AI has been utilized to combat human trafficking, break language barriers, support human rights protections, conserve wildlife, solve for poverty, track and prevent pandemics, detect terrorist attacks, and more. Techniques range anywhere from linear regression to convolutional neural networks, generative adversarial networks, and beyond. In this talk, we explore work in this field tackling humanitarian problems from all angles. This also includes mechanisms for making AI technologies more widely available to underserved communities. Interdisciplinary contributions are especially emphasized. AI for humanitarian good is a burgeoning area of work that will continue to produce novel results. Because the results we obtain are in many cases unattainable with conventional methods (computational or not), this field is one to keep an eye on in the near future.

Literature

• Chen, T. 2020. Interpretability in Convolutional Neural Networks for Building Damage Classification in Satellite Imagery. In AI for Earth Sciences Workshop at Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS). URL https://ai4earthscience.github.io/neurips-2020-workshop/papers/ai4earth_neurips_2020_25.pdf
• Jobin, Anna, Marcello Ienca, and Effy Vayena. “The global landscape of AI ethics guidelines.” Nature Machine Intelligence 1.9 (2019): 389-399.
• Taddeo, Mariarosaria, and Luciano Floridi. “How AI can be a force for good.” Science 361.6404 (2018): 751-752.

Lecturer

Thomas Y. Chen is a student from the United States (affiliation: Academy for Mathematics, Science, and Engineering). His research is focused in artificial intelligence and machine learning applications for social and humanitarian good. The two primary projects he is currently working on are developing machine learning models to predict sea ice drift velocity in the Arctic, and publishing a dataset for damage assessment objects in imagery (particularly for post-disaster analysis). His other interests include AI ethics and interpretability/transparency. He has delivered talks at a number of venues related to his work, including Applied Machine Learning Days (AMLD), workshops at NeurIPS, workshops at AAAI conference, European Geosciences Union, Japanese Geosciences Union, and much more.

Affiliation: Academy for Mathematics, Science, and Engineering
Homepage: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-chen-b701511b4/

Lecturer: Nicole Flindt
Fields: Neurodidactics, online education, educational technology

Content

Do you sometimes wonder how your students can actually remember and transfer the content you teach in your (online) university class? Due to the COVID-19 crisis schools and universities all around the world were forced to use digital learning methods. But even assuming a seamless transition to digital platforms, good Online Learning tools do not imply good content and a good presentation of the content. The way we learn (online and offline) is actually a field where neuroscience meets education – or should meet, in my opinion. My research field is neurodidactics – a relatively young research discipline in which neuro and educational science as well as psychological findings are interlocked. University lecturers, trainers, and learners can benefit from the transfer of neuroscientific findings on neuroplastic changes in the brain and the resulting opportunities for teaching and learning.

This rainbow course invites all IK participants to get an up-to-date summary of my research area – neurodidactics – and how to create brain-stimulating Online Content for students. I will also offer a more detailed overview of my current research entitled „Brain-stimulating Online Learning content for a youth migrant and refugee EU project“ and of my ongoing research on whether the roles and attitude of teachers and learners should change.

Literature

• Flindt, N., Magarian, M. & Hohl, G. (2021). The creation of brain-stimulating online learning content for a youth migrant and refugee project. In: Muallim Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, April 2021 (Vol 5 Issue 2). (accepted)
• Steinmeier, J. & Flindt, N. (2021). Digitale Resilienz in der Hochschule und Schule (Digital resilience in universities and schools). In: Lehre und Lernen. (angenommen, in process)
• Kassymova, G., Bekalaeva, A., Yershimanova, D., Flindt, N., Gadirova, T. & Duisenbayeva, Sh. (2020). E-Learning Environments and Their Connection to the Human Brain. In: International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology, Vol. 29 No. 9s (2020), pp. 947-954 (also Open Access available: http://sersc.org/journals/index.php/IJAST/article/view/13359)

Lecturer

Dr. Nicole Flindt, M.A., studied law and education at the Universities of Heidelberg and Mannheim. Her research area is connected to online education, educational technology, and neurodidactics. She did her thesis on „e-learning“ in cooperation with the software company SAS GmbH Germany. She is the managing director of the research department and head of the Graduate School for Young Researchers at Heidelberg University of Education. Since 2020 she is an Advisory Board Member of the non-profit organization Teachsurfing.org and part of their IT based youth migrant EU project.

Affiliation: Heidelberg University of Education
Homepage: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicole_Flindt

Lecturer: Chris Mathys
Fields: Cognitive neuroscience, computational modelling

Content

In this meeting, I will do a software demo (of the HGF Toolbox) which illustrates the theoretical points made in the main talk. There will also be time to answer questions and to continue discussions started after main talk.

Literature

• Mathys, C., Daunizeau, J., Friston, K. J., & Stephan, K. E. (2011). A Bayesian foundation for individual learning under uncertainty. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 5, 39. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2011.00039
• Iglesias, S., Mathys, C., Brodersen, K. H., Kasper, L., Piccirelli, M., den Ouden, H. E. M., & Stephan, K. E. (2013). Hierarchical Prediction Errors in Midbrain and Basal Forebrain during Sensory Learning. Neuron, 80(2), 519–530. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2013.09.009

Lecturer

Chris Mathys is Associate Professor of Cognitive Science at Aarhus University. He originally trained as a physicist and has a PhD in Information Technology from ETH Zurich.

Affiliation: Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University, Denmark
Homepage: https://chrismathys.com