Fay B. Kaigler Children\u27s Book Festival

The program for the forty-fifth annual Fay B. Kaigler Children\u27s Book Festival held on the campus of The University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in 2012.https://aquila.usm.edu/kaiglergallery/1050/thumbnail.jp

Your Tactile Story Tray: Collaborative Tactile Images to Share with Blind and Visually Impaired People

Sharing a picture book can be a valuable social and educational activity for young children. However, blind and visually impaired people cannot fully participate because of their physical barrier. Tactile picture books are available, but are expensive and have limited options. To address this, this project investigates using 3D printed magnetized shapes with a metal tray as an alternative way to create a versatile and user-focused storytelling experience. The objective of this research is to develop a tactile system of representation of characters and their environment to empower blind and sighted family members to share in the creation of narrative. Our results show that this approach has the potential to help them share their stories and imagination through tactile images. The prototypes created form the basis for further investigation of new methods of making tactile picture books for the blind and visually-impaired

Raconteur : intelligent assistance for conversational storytelling with media libraries

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-103).People who are not professional storytellers sometimes have difficulty putting together a coherent and engaging story, even when it is about their own experiences. However, consider putting the same person in a conversation with a sympathetic, interested and questioning listener, suddenly the story comes alive. There's something about the situation of being in a conversation that encourages people to stay on topic, make coherent points, and make the story interesting for a listener. Raconteur is a system for conversational storytelling between a storyteller and a viewer. It provides intelligent assistance in illustrating a life story with photos and videos from a personal media library. Raconteur performs natural language processing on a text chat between two users and recommends appropriate media items from the annotated library, each file with one or a few sentences in unrestricted English. A large commonsense knowledge base and a novel commonsense inference technique are used to understand event relations and determine narration similarity using concept vector computation that goes beyond keyword matching or word co-occurrence based techniques. Furthermore, by identifying larger scale story patterns such as problem and resolution or expectation violation, it assists users in continuing the chatted story coherently. A small user study shows that people find Raconteur's suggestions helpful in real-time storytelling and its interaction design engaging to explore stories together.by Pei-Yu (Peggy) Chi.S.M

Utilizing Improvement Science to Advance a Stem Improvement Effort: Increase the Number of Underserved and Underrepresented Students Who Pursue A Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematic Education by Building Collective Capacity

The primary purpose of this dissertation in practice is to provide educational leaders with a roadmap for investigating barriers that prevent underserved and underrepresented (USUR) students from entering STEM careers in order to strategically plan their local STEM improvement effort. It offers the educational leader seven guiding principles, along with descriptions and illustrations of Improvement Science tools that include an improvement map, driver diagrams, and examples of one leader\u27s efforts to address his district\u27s unique needs. These Improvement Science tools will enable educational leaders to begin their STEM improvement effort. Improvement Science uses the theory of Profound Knowledge, which combines research with practical knowledge. The methods and approaches can and should be adjusted to local needs and provide a framework to reduce barriers through collaborative and focused efforts

Labels in Learning: An Exploration of the Effects of Cognitive, Intellectual, and Social Labels on Connections in the Classroom

This paper is a testament to the negative impacts that cognitive, intellectual, and social labels have on connections in the classroom, both by way of students’ identities as learners and access to education. Labels pervade schools and exclude children from exploring, wondering, and making due to students’ identities and educators’ perceptions of their social interactions and academic performance. Whether intentional or not, giving students labels based on their cognitive, intellectual, and social abilities and performance creates separation and allows for maltreatment of students based on who does and does not have certain labels. As educators it is essential that we move away from these harmful labels and work towards seeing students as whole children so that we can support them in learning and obtaining tools for future successes

Expert views about missing AI narratives: is there an AI story crisis?

Stories are an important indicator of our vision of the future. In the case of artificial intelligence (AI), dominant stories are polarized between notions of threat and myopic solutionism. The central storytellers-big tech, popular media, and authors of science fiction-represent particular demographics and motivations. Many stories, and storytellers, are missing. This paper details the accounts of missing AI narratives by leading scholars from a range of disciplines interested in AI Futures. Participants focused on the gaps between dominant narratives and the untold stories of the capabilities, issues, and everyday realities of the technology. One participant proposed a "story crisis" in which these narratives compete to shape the public discourse on AI. Our findings indicate that dominant narratives distract and mislead public understandings and conceptions of AI. This suggests a need to pay closer attention to missing AI narratives. It is not simply about telling new stories, it is about listening to existing stories and asking what is wanted from AI. We call for realistic, nuanced, and inclusive stories, working with and for diverse voices, which consider (1) story-teller; (2) genre, and (3) communicative purpose. Such stories can then inspire the next generation of thinkers, technologists, and storytellers

Using Baymax Movie to Improve Young Learners’ Storytelling Skill

To support and to improve young learners’ communicative skill, there should be a good strategy that helped the teacher in teaching by using an interesting teaching media. Storytelling is the activity to share the idea or plot summary of the story. The activity of storytelling skill plays an important role for young learners’. They comprehend the story then recount it to others based on their understanding of characters, problems, settings, and solutions. This study aims to design and develop a Baymax movie to improve the storytelling ability of level junior high school students. The subjects were 17 of the third grade Darul Ulum students in academic year 2018/2019. Data collection techniques employed storytelling tests (pretest and posttest scores) and closed-ended questionnaire. Quantitative data analysis was used to examine the scores obtained from the pre and post-tests. The aspects of the storytelling rubric are known the story, voice, acting, duration, audience contact, and pacing. The writer has got the test results by using statistical descriptive. Thus, the finding of the study indicated that the implementation of the technique improve the students’ storytelling skill from the pre-test score were 792 and the post test were 1.209. The score of t-test 5.09 is higher than t-table 2.13 score. Supporting the students’ score, there were the conclusion from the questionnaire. The students could understand the story of Baymax movie easily. Baymax movie was increased their learning motivation. This technique allowed students to actively participate in the learning process. A baymax movie which has been tested for its effectiveness, efficiency, uses, and practicality in improving student’s storytelling skill

Reflections on Co-creating Nature-Based Virtual Reality Experiences for Adults Living With Severe COPD

This dissertation focused on studying the lived experience of working with and for people living with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to co-create a personalized nature-based virtual reality (VR) experience. People with severe COPD have issues with being able to breathe clearly and deeply, which then influences their ability to visit outdoor places. Outdoor places have been shown to have many positive effects on multi-dimensional health outcomes. Severe COPD can also make traveling to faraway destinations and even visiting nearby outdoor spaces difficult. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation was to develop personalized nature-based VR experiences as an alternative to physically visiting outdoor spaces for four upstate South Carolina residents with severe COPD. This transdisciplinary research was exploratory and utilized literature and methods from nature, virtual reality, nursing, health narratives and storytelling, and co-creation. Mixed methods were utilized including physiological measures, surveys, semi-structured interviews, and researcher’s voice recordings for data collection with four participants. Based on the research design, Chapter 1 introduced the bodies of literature, background information, and the goal of the dissertation. Chapter 2 measured the effects of co-creating a personalized nature-based VR experience for people with severe COPD, particularly the effects on psychological well-being. Chapter 3 examined the narratives people with severe COPD convey. Chapter 4 explored how cocreating a VR experience with a participant during his end-of-life process and death influenced the researcher (me). Results showed co-creating personalized nature-based VR experiences appeared to increase psychological well-being. Additionally, participants iii offered three counternarratives to society’s assumptions of severe COPD or the “wounded body” narrative: the “teaching body”, the “comedic body”, and the “empowered body”. Chapter 4 reflected on how a participant’s death changed how I viewed the relationship between researcher and participant and the language that was used when discussing research. Chapter 5 discussed research takeaways, limitations, and future directions, such as the value of transdisciplinary teams to yield impactful applied research, the importance of using language in research that is inclusive, and how cocreation can facilitate positive researcher/participant relationships. This dissertation helped people experience outdoor spaces again and share counternarratives to society’s assumptions of severe COPD

Fostering Transformative Points of Connection: An Examination of the Role of Personal Storytelling in Two Undergraduate Social Diversity Courses

People in the United States are becoming increasingly isolated and separated, and this disconnection has been amplified by the use of new technologies in which face-to-face interactions and connection are becoming an anomaly (Putnam, 2000; Turkle, 2011). These changes are paralleled by marked racial and ethnic demographic shifts and increasing racial and economic re-segregation nationwide (Passel & Cohn, 2008). A critical challenge facing higher education is fostering educational opportunities for college students to interact, connect with, and learn from diverse peers about issues of social identity, difference, and inequality, while imagining possibilities for socially-just action (Gurin, 1999; Tatum, 2007). This qualitative study explores the role of personal storytelling about social identity-based experiences in two undergraduate diversity courses informed by social justice education pedagogies with a focus on race/ethnicity and racism. Three bodies of literature inform this study: storytelling, social justice education, and personal storytelling in social justice education practice. Using grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006), the researcher analyzed secondary data sources from 32 participants in two undergraduate diversity courses at two Northeast universities. Study A examined final papers from a racially diverse group of 16 students in a social diversity and oppression course. Study B examined interviews with a racially diverse group of participants in two race/ethnicity intergroup dialogue courses. Findings suggest that listening to personal stories about social identity-related experiences is a powerful accelerator of learning about social justice issues and demonstrates that students across identities value storytelling, describing it as engaging, enjoyable, and integral to their learning. Storytelling fosters connection among students and encourages empathy within social groups and across social group differences. Listening to stories allows students to connect to the course material cognitively and affectively and helps information become “real” to participants. This connection facilitates critical thinking and a host of learning outcomes. Findings build on existing knowledge illustrating the benefits of diversity and intergroup dialogue courses (Bowman, 2011; Gurin, 1999; Gurin, Nagda, & Zúñiga, 2013), underscoring the value and impact of face-to-face, synchronous learning as a valid, transformative, and critical educational method in diversity courses. Additional implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are also discussed