The Design and Use of StoryKit

An Intergenerational Mobile Storytelling App

Today's mobile devices are natively equipped with multimedia means for families to capture and share their daily experiences. However, designing authoring tools that effectively integrate the discrete media-capture components of mobile devices to enable rich expression remains a challenge. This presentation will provide a brief overview of collaborative technologies that support children's storytelling, with a focus on mobile applications. It will detail a 4-month study on the observed use of StoryKit, a mobile interface that integrates multimodal media-capture tools to support the creation of multimedia stories on an iPhone/iPod Touch. The primary objectives of the study were to explore the ways in which applications like StoryKit enable families to create and share stories; and to investigate how the created stories themselves might inform the design of, and learning potential for mobile storytelling applications. Its results suggest that StoryKit's relatively simple but well-integrated interface enables the creation of vibrant, varied narratives. Further, its portability supported the complementary co-construction and spontaneous, playful capture of stories by children and their trusted adults.

Speakers

Beth Bonsignore
Beth Bonsignore
Doctoral CandidateCollege of Information StudiesUniversity of MarylandPhD CandidateCollege of Information StudiesUniversity of Maryland

Beth Bonsignore is a Ph.D. student in the iSchool at the University of Maryland and a graduate research assistant on the ARG study team. Her research interests include the design and use of collaborative sense-making technologies that support lifelong literacy and learning, whether in formal education or informal contexts (museum, library, home). Specific work includes the empirical analysis of the use of mobile storytelling applications at home and in school (StoryKit), online communities for educators (Classroom2.0), social learning sites for children (National Park Services’ WebRangers), and the design of Alternate Reality Games as platforms for learning and collaborative-tool evaluation. As part of these efforts, she also works closely with Kidsteam, a participatory design research team at the Human-Computer Interaction Lab. Beth stumbled upon ARGs through her favorite type of leisure reading: children’s/young adult literature (and related fan-fiction). She started with transmedia works like the 39 Clues series and Skeleton Creek. ARG team member Kari Kraus introduced Beth to the Cathy’s Book series, the Amanda Project, and _Personal Effects:Dark Art, _and transmedia scholar/student Marc Ruppel shared MetaCortechs, an ARG based on the Matrix universe. She became interested in the educational potential for ARGs after helping Kari and other graduate students on a mini-re-creation of their UMD-history-based mobile scavenger hunt, and while investigating the 39 Clues with her two sons.