Technologies for E-Learning and Digital Entertainment

With the widespread interest in digital entertainment and the advances in the tech- logies of computer graphics, multimedia and virtual reality technologies, a new area–– “Edutainment”––has been accepted as a union of education and computer entertainment. Edutainment is recognized as an effective way of learning through a medium, such as a computer, software, games or VR applications, that both educates and entertains. The Edutainment conference series was established and followed as a special event for the new interests in e-learning and digital entertainment. The main purpose of Edutainment conferences is the discussion, presentation, and information exchange of scientific and technological developments in the new community. The Edutainment conference series is a very interesting opportunity for researchers, engineers and graduate students who wish to communicate at these international annual events. The conference series includes plenary invited talks, workshops, tutorials, paper presen- tion tracks and panel discussions. The Edutainment conference series was initiated in Hangzhou, China in 2006. Following the success of the first event (Edutainment 2006 in Hangzhou, China) and the second one (Edutainment 2007 in Hong Kong, China), Edutainment 2008 was held June 25–27, 2007 in Nanjing, China. This year, we received 219 submissions from 26 different countries and regions, including United Arab Emirates, Canada, Thailand, New Zealand, Austria, Turkey, Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, Cuba, Australia, Hong Kong (China), Pakistan, M- ico, Czech Republic, USA, Malaysia, Italy, Spain, France, UK, The Netherlands, Taiwan (China), Japan, South Korea, and China.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on E-learning and Games, Edutainment 2008, held in Nanjing, China, in June 2008.

The 83 revised full papers presented together with the abstract of 5 keynote speeches were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 219 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on e-learning platforms and tools, e-learning system for education, application of e-learning systems, e-learning resource management, interaction in game and education, integration of game and education, game design and development, virtual characters, animation and navigation, graphics rendering and digital media, as well as geometric modeling in games and virtual reality.