Game-based Learning (Interactive Demo)

What does the lesson “Finding Citations,” the game “Trivial Pursuit,” and the mechanic “Bluffing” all have in common? In this bootcamp brainstorm facilitated by a CUNY professor, attendees are broken up into design teams whose job it is to enhance a traditional lesson with the mechanics of popular board games in only 20 minutes. Whether you have to teach the rules of citation or the rules of interviewing, there is usually a game plan that can help. This game teaches you how to integrate educational games into your classroom, while providing a fun introduction to the principles of game-based learning.

Interactive Lightning Session: Game-based Learning in Higher Education

Games are known for leveraging enthusiasm, engagement, energy, knowledge, and passion on gamers; areas that are fundamentally important in higher education. Our panelists will share their perspectives on how Higher Education can take advantage of the potential of game based learning to create a more engaging student learning experien

From Smart Meters To Smart Decisions: Web-Based Support For The Water Efficient Household

Smart water metering technologies for residential buildings offer, in principle, great opportunities for sustainable urban water management. However, much of this potential is as yet unrealized. Despite that several ICT solutions have already been deployed aiming at optimum operations on the water utilities side (e.g. real time control for water networks, dynamic pump scheduling etc.), little work has been done to date on the consumer side. This paper presents a web-based platform targeting primarily the household end user. The platform enables consumers to monitor, on a real-time basis, the water demand of their household, providing feedback not only on the total water consumption and relevant costs but also on the efficiency (or otherwise) of specific indoor and outdoor uses. Targeting the reduction of consumption, the provided feedback is combined with notifications about possible leakages\bursts, and customised suggestions to improve the efficiency of existing household uses. It also enables various comparisons, with past consumption or even with that of similar households, aiming to motivate further the householder to become an active player in the water efficiency challenge. The issue of enhancing the platform’s functionality with energy timeseries is also discussed in view of recent advances in smart metering and the concept of “smart cities”. The paper presents a prototype of this web-based application and critically discusses first testing results and insights. It also presents the way in which the platform communicates with central databases, at the water utility level. It is suggested that such developments are closing the gap between technology availability and usefulness to end users and could help both the uptake of smart metering and awareness raising leading, potentially, to significant reductions of urban water consumption. The work has received funding from the European Union FP7 Programme through the iWIDGET Project, under grant agreement no318272.