CASTOR: learning to create context-sensitive and emotionally engaging narrations in-situ

This paper describes the design and the experimentation of a tablet-based authoring system for supporting the creation of stories in-situ, in the context of a learning path that has led 19 children aged 7 of the second class of a Primary School to learn how to build stories using different techniques, ranging from the traditional writing techniques exercised in class to the in-situ authoring with the tablet application. The project was characterized by a strong involvement of the teachers, that modeled a substantial part of the ordinary classroom work for embedding the in-situ experimentation and designing a smooth learning path. To our knowledge CASTOR is one of the first authoring systems allowing the direct creation of structured stories in-situ, rather than the simple gathering of material. Its architecture is based on a story model presented in previous works and characterized by the use of the environmental and social context for augmenting the emotional engagement of the story listeners. All the components of the architecture have been designed for complying with the learning needs and the skills of a class of young children. The final part of the paper will present the results of the experimentation, that gave interesting insights not only on the use of the authoring interface itself, but also on its effects on the children learning process.