Project members: Colleen Kehoe, Shaunna MacLeod, Traci O'Day, Lucia
Mascorro, Luis Sanchez, Francis Allende, Monica Soto, Isabel Arias
Students: Mimi Perez, Lauren Smylie, Cynthia Bailey, Jairo Gonzalez,
Vienna Moreno Ribail, Karin Ocampo
 Long before
children receive formal instruction in reading and writing,
they participate in a world filled with language. Research in emergent literacy emphasizes the
importance of these early experiences with oral and written language as
a foundation for later literacy. Other research in emergent literacy
indicates that peer collaboration during oral language
play such as storytelling is key to literacy development.
A Story Listening System (SLS) is a computer system that is consistent
with these ideas from emergent literacy and engages children in
creative storytelling play with real or "virtual" peers. The goal of
this research was to evaluate a particular Story Listening System to
understand its effectiveness in promoting emergent literacy activities
and ultimately, literacy skills. We were especially interested in how
the system could be used in a school-based context and over an extended
period of time.
The SLS we evaluated was called "Sam" and was developed by Cassell and
her students at MIT's Media Lab and Northwestern University. Sam is a
virtual child whom children (ages 4-7) interact with by telling stories
and playing with real toys. The Sam system has two components: a
life-sized child named Sam, who is projected on a screen and a toy
house with an array of toys for children to use. Sam can both tell
stories, using a recorded voice, and listen to the real child's
stories, responding with appropriate feedback and short comments.
Sam
and the child take turns telling and listening to each other's stories.
Sam and the child can pass the figurines back and forth between their
worlds by way of a magic room in the house (the attic).
Storytelling play presents a unique venue
for the development of
certain language skills because it requires the storyteller to create a
world in language that goes beyond the "here and now." In other words,
the language becomes decontextualized--not
dependent on the shared context for its meaning. Children often develop
these skills first in oral language. Research has suggested that
skilled
use of decontextualized oral language provides a bridge to the
acquisition of
reading and writing skills later on.
There are a
variety of forms of decontextualized language but this work is
concerned
with those most critical to telling coherent stories--language that
relates
actions and events that are removed in time and space from the
speaker. Temporal expressions
are words or phrases that give the listener clues about the timeline of
the
story or the manner in which events take place relative to the passing
of time.
Spatial expressions are words or
phrases that describe motion through space or the relative locations of
people,
places, and objects in the story.
The UIC team worked with the Sam system in 9 different classrooms
covering a wide range of scenarios (Pre-K- 2nd grades, public and
private schools, urban and suburban locations, in-class and separate
room set-ups). Early work focused on technical and logistical issues of
fitting into the context of the classroom and school. Later work
focused on promoting sustained engagement with the system past the
intial novelty and on examining the children's decontextualized
language for changes attributable to their interactions with Sam. The
last phase of work began to examine how cultural and linguistic factors
might play a role in children's interactions with the system and
perceptions of Sam as a peer.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science
Foundation under Grant No. 0403037. Any opinions, findings and
conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of
the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National
Science Foundation.
For additional information about activities related to Sam at
Northwestern University, see:
http://articulab.northwestern.edu/projects/samcollab/
http://articulab.northwestern.edu/projects/samalex/
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