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learner and gain self-esteem. Juan's case shows how Kaleidostories fostered a
social context that helped a teen change his sense of identity.
Lessons learned
Kaleidostories allowed young people to explore aspects of themselves such as
role models and values through sharing stories. At the same time it provided a
forum to share differences and similarities with others living in different parts
of the world but sharing a language. As an identity construction environment it
combined the power of computation to visualize community patterns and the
power of narrative to express feelings and thoughts. However, Kaleidostories
lacked the capability to include direct communication through real-time chat.
It also lacked the flexibility to express a more complex sense of self. One of the
most successful design features of Kaleidostories was the collaborative values
dictionary. However, it only supported the expression of values as narratives
and did not enable those values to be put to test through behaviors in the on-
line community.
In order to facilitate the passage from moral knowledge to moral action,
Kaleidostories' design was not enough. Although there was a sense of com-
munity, represented by the patterns of the kaleidoscope, the tools for self-
organization and forums for discussion were missing. This is essential to form
a responsible and just community (Kohlberg 1982) in which values are de-
veloped not only as narratives but also through action. Kaleidostories did not
exploit the full potential of computation, as it did of storytelling. It limited
computation to networking and visualization. On a different note, Kaleidos-
tories was not fun enough to engage children to use it on their own for a long
period of time. But issues of identity and values need a long time to be explored
in depth. A big effort from the teachers was needed in order to keep students on
track. The experiences with SAGE and Kaleidostories served me in designing a
third generation of identity construction environment.
Zora: A narrative-based virtual world
Zora is a 3D graphical multi-user environment that provides the tools for
young users to create a virtual city. As with the other identity construction en-
vironments mentioned before, Zora's design supports the exploration of iden-
tity and values through storytelling and programming. The name Zora was
inspired by one of the cities that Italo Calvino describes in his topic “Invisible
