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

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

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)

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

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 by European Union grant under i 3 Experimental Schools Environment

Story Elaboration/Recall Goals Participants Methods Results

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

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

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

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

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

Frog Where are You? Example pictures from the story

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

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

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

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

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. dissertation ftp://ftp.cs.umd.edu/pub/hcil/Reports-Abstracts- Bibliography/ html/ html ftp://ftp.cs.umd.edu/pub/hcil/Reports-Abstracts- Bibliography/ html/ htm