KidStory: The Impact of Zooming Technologies on Children’s Storytelling

1. KidStory: The Impact of Zooming Technologies on Children’s Storytelling Allison Druin, Angela Boltman Benjamin Bederson, Juan Pablo Hourcade, Allison Farber University of Maryland HCIL Open House and Symposium May 2002

2. “I can tell you a good story…” -Olsa, age 7, Sweden

3. Research has shown storytelling can benefit children in multiple ways… • Language development (e.g., NCTE Committee on Storytelling, 1998; Cass, 1967; Ellis & Brewster, 1998) • Reading and comprehension (e.g., George & Schaer, 1986; Alex, 1988; Malkina, 1995) • Sense of self and others (e.g., Kerby, 1991; Schank, 1995; Liberg, 1997) • Creative and artistic expression (e.g., Bryant, 1910; Cather, 1919; Labov & Waletsky, 1987)

4. But what effect can technology have on children’s storytelling?

5. KidPad(Boltman et al., 2002; Hourcade et al., 2002; Druin, 2001; Stanton et al., 2001; Benford et al., 2000; Druin et al., 1997) • A collaborative zooming storytelling tool • Developed by 106 children & 24 adults from Sweden, England, & the U.S. from education, computer science, psychology, & art • KidStory supported from 1998-2001 by European Union grant under i3 Experimental Schools Environment

6. Story Elaboration/Recall • Goals • Participants • Methods • Results

7. Goals • To investigate children’s ability to elaborate and recall a visual story in different presentation media • To understand how children’s ability can differ in story content and story structure

8. Participants • 72 children, 6-7 years old, 24 in each condition • Randomly selected, 36 in England, 36 in Sweden • Approx. 50/50 male/female, low/middle income • Little or no experience with KidPad

9. Methods • Controlled study with three conditions: • Picture book • Computer with no zooming • Computer with zooming

10. Methods • The child was asked… • To look through the story by themselves either on the computer or in a book • To tell the story to the researcher while looking at the story on the computer or in the book • To retell the story without any media

11. Methods • The story: Frog Where are You? (Mayer, 1969) • Previously used in Germany (Bamberg, 1987), Israel (Berman, 1988), & U.S. (Trabasso et al., 1992)

12. Frog Where are You? Example pictures from the story

13. Methods: Coding Schemes to Analyze Data on Both Elaboration and Recall Stories Told • Narrative Structure (Berman, 1988) • Verb tense, text length, connectivity markers, references to plot-advancing events • Content (Trabasso et al., 1992) • Relationship of characters to objects, change in story, actions carried out attainment of goals

14. Methods: Data Analysis • 2 X 2 X 2 MANOVA • Condition x Gender x Language • On children’s storytelling for both elaboration and recall

15. Results • Notable differences in story elaboration/recall between the book and both computer conditions • In the zooming condition, highest frequency in certain story elaboration codes in content and structure • The non-zooming computer condition was never significantly higher than zooming but outcomes were the same in recall

16. Results • No significant gender differences found • No significant differences found recounting story content vs. structure • Multilingual children were found to recount more complex stories than monolingual children

17. Conclusions • Zooming helped children’s discussion of story connections/plot when viewing the story but was less helpful in recalling content/structure • If teaching with technology– Try zooming for elaboration experiences • If developing storytelling technology– Consider the purpose: recall? elaboration? • Boltman, Ph.D. dissertationftp://ftp.cs.umd.edu/pub/hcil/Reports-Abstracts-Bibliography/2001-24html/2001-24.html