CreaTable Content and Tangible Interaction in Aphasia

Multimedia digital content (combining pictures, text and music) is ubiquitous. The process of creating such content using existing tools typically requires complex, language-laden interactions which pose a challenge for users with aphasia (a language impairment following brain injury). Tangible interactions offer a potential means to address this challenge, however, there has been little work exploring their potential for this purpose. In this paper, we present CreaTable – a platform that enables us to explore tangible interaction as a means of supporting digital content creation for people with aphasia. We report details of the co-design of CreaTable and findings from a digital creativity workshop. Workshop findings indicated that CreaTable enabled people with aphasia to create something they would not otherwise have been able to. We report how users’ aphasia profiles affected their experience, describe tensions in collaborative content creation and provide insight into more accessible content creation using tangibles

Technology-Supported Storytelling (TSST) Strategy in Virtual World for Multicultural Education

Learning culture through stories is an effective way for multicultural education, since stories are one of the most powerful and personal ways that we learn about the world. Storytelling, the process of telling stories, is a form of communication and a universal expression of culture. With the development of technology, storytelling emerges out of diverse ways. This study explores the storytelling in virtual worlds for multicultural education, and devises a Technology-Supported storytelling (TSST) strategy by examining and considering the characteristics of virtual worlds which could be incorporated into the storytelling, and then uses this strategy to teach Korean culture to students with different culture background. With this innovative TSST strategy in virtual world, this study expects to provide a guide to practice for teaching multicultural in digital era

Virtual Peers As Partners In Storytelling And Literacy Learning

Literacy learning --- learning how to read and write --- begins long before children enter school. One of the key skills to reading and writing is the ability to represent thoughts symbolically and share them in language with an audience who may not necessarily share the same temporal and spatial context. Children learn and practice these important language skills everyday, telling stories with the peers and adults around them. In particular, storytelling in the context of peer collaboration provides a key environment for children to learn language skills important for literacy. In light of this, an embodied conversational agent, Sam, who tells stories collaboratively with children was designed. Sam looks like a peer for pre-school children, but tells stories in a developmentally advanced way, modelling narrative skills important for literacy. Results demonstrated that children who played with the virtual peer told stories that more closely resembled the virtual peer's linguistically advanced stories: using more quoted speech and temporal and spatial expressions. In addition, children listened to Sam's stories carefully, assisting her and suggesting improvements. The potential benefits of having technology play a social role in young children's literacy learning is discussed