Interactive Technologies and Games Conference 2014: Report
The 2014 Interactive Technologies and Games Conference was held in Nottingham on October 16 and 17.
The seventh annual Interactive Technologies and Games (ITAG) Conference was held at The Council House in Nottingham, the UK on October 16 and 17. The conference brought together health practitioners, researchers and academics working with interactive technologies to discuss a variety of topics related to health, education, and disability. The event provided participants with an opportunity to connect with researchers and user communities and obtain valuable insights into best practices, tools, implementation, and new approaches to development, that could benefit their projects and businesses.
The 2014 ITAG Conference focused on the impact that interactive games and technologies have on health, compulsory and post-compulsory education, and physical, cognitive and sensory impairment. The event highlighted the practical applications of new technologies in these fields and provided participants with information on the tools and training resources currently available to them.
The conference hosted several workshops to explore different games and interactive technologies, and their benefits and applications. The workshops covered a broad range of topics, from mobile gaming, augmented reality, and the use of robotics in gaming to immersive gaming, pervasive games for health and sociability, and interactive games used in rehabilitation and physical therapy. An exhibition was held at the event to demonstrate various applications of health games in the fields of assistive technologies, health and education. Participants had a chance to learn more about the social aspects of interactive technologies, interactive learning tools, the use of game controllers in rehabilitation and of virtual enviroments in the treatment of phobias and disorders.
Attendees also had an opportunity to work together to create an application for an educational environment or to improve accessibility to a specific group of users, at the gaming 'Hackathon.' Teams of developers and special education trainers competed against each other to create the better solution in only two days.
The keynotes at the conference were delivered by Sue Cobb, one of the co-founders of the Virtual Reality Applications Research Team (VIRART) at the University of Nottingham, now part of the Human Factors Research Group, and Mick Donegan, the CEO of SpecialEffect, a UK-based charity dedicated to enabling access to popular videogames for users of all ages and abilities.
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