Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 12.8
Automatically generated snapshots of a narrative
As the fairy alone is not strong enough to defeat the witch, the princess dies.
However children can use different strategies to change the plot, e.g. by placing an
extra character to help the fairy, placing a house for the princess to hide, removing
the princess or the witch from the platform or trying to hit the witch with the
caldron.
The design of the interface placed a “high priority on tinkerability”, stimulating
children to explore different possibilities, encouraging them “to try out multiple
alternatives, shift directions in the middle of the process, to take things apart and
create new versions” (Resnick et al.
2005
). The system, which was named TOK -
Touch, Organize, Create - allows children to change the scene, mix and remix the
characters, try out different solutions, shift direction and start all over again. Further,
as there is only visual feedback (except for the ambient sounds), children can
imagine and create their own spoken narratives.
To extend the interaction beyond the interface itself and share the storytelling
experience with others, pressing the Enter key in the computer keyboard (or an icon
on the tablet version) generates snapshots of the created narratives, saving them as
digital images (Fig.
12.8
), which are automatically sent to a blog and also stored in
a special folder in the computer. These representations, which look like a comic
topic, can be visualised together, printed and shared with family and friends, involv-
ing them into a collaborative storytelling experience.
12.3.6
Modelling the Story World
To defi ne the relations between the story elements and to achieve a certain degree of
unpredictability, the story world was modelled through behaviour trees (BTs). BTs
describe general actions of entities, thus each entity interacts with the environment
according to a set of predefi ned rules that defi ne its behaviour. Since the behaviour
triggered for each entity depends on the other entities that are also present in the
scene, and the properties of those entities, for instance, their level of health, there is
a certain degree of unpredictability in the outcome of a given situation.
The principle followed in the design of the BTs was to model a world that would
be understandable for young children, by creating a set of rules that they know from
