Serious applications of technology in games and health. Claudia Zúñiga

       Introduction

      This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on E-Learning and Games, Edutainment 2019, and the Workshop on Computing and Technology in Health (CoTH) 2019, held within the same conference. Edutainment was held in Cali, Colombia on august 15-17, hosted by Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Cali and supported by Hangzhou Normal University, Xi’an University of Technology and Tianjin University of Technology in China; Bournemouth University and Liverpool John Moores University in UK; National Polytechnic Institute, México; Divsar, Argentina; Universidad Libre Seccional Cali; Universidad del Cauca, Popayán; Universidad Santiago de Cali and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Bogotá in Colombia. Edutainment 2019 has become a major international event which combines education and entertainment, covering not only the research issues of game-based learning but also the issues of learning experiences which may be gained from entertainment.

      At first, when we talk about serious applications of technology in games and health, we are referring to serious games or games in which the objective goes beyond mere entertainment, which in Edutainment 2019 refer to education. Additionally, we decided to use the term “serious” to refer to the use of technology in applications that search to contribute to the solution of relevant social problems, in this case health. We did not want to limit the scope of the workshop to serious games applied to health or edutainment in health; indeed, we wanted to hear about new ideas related to the applications of technology to health.

      The papers were organized in one prologue and four sections; because the focus of the main conference is Edutainment, the prologue was written by the founder, chair of the steering committee of the Edutainment conferences. The first section includes one extended paper from one of the keynote presenters; the second, contains the nine papers submitted to the CoTH; the third section includes three papers chosen 12 Edutainment’s poster paper candidates; and the fourth encompasses one abstract from a Colombian student representative from International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and five abstracts chosen at the Expoposter 2019-1 in Universidad Central del Valle to be presented at Edutainment 2019, which have not been previously published.

      The Edutainment Conference had 41 submissions: