TY - GEN

T1 - Fiabot!

T2 - Design and evaluation of a mobile storytelling application for schools

AU - Rubegni, E.

AU - Landoni, M.

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about how digital technology can be integrated into the formal education system. Within a longitudinal research study, which lasted four years, we conducted an investigation on how mobile technology can support educational activities as defined by a school curriculum. Among the topics included in the school curriculum, we focused on the literary field and developed a Digital StoryTelling (DST) application, Fiabot!, to support this activity. Here, we describe the design of the application and how we evaluated its impact on educational activities. The application was designed and evaluated in two primary schools. The study had the objectives of exploring whether Fiabot! supports children in achieving educational objectives defined by the curriculum, how this effectively supports teachers, and to what extent children like using it for the creation and sharing of their stories. Our findings show that the application has a positive impact on curriculum enactment and effectively supports the related educational activities. Overall, Fiabot! was demonstrated to be very effective in stimulating children's discussion of a story's plot and characters. Thus, Fiabot! supported children not only in being creative but also in organizing their work and exploring a digital media opportunity. This resulted in the development of new skills and the better grounding of previously acquired knowledge, while teachers also had the opportunity to expand their teaching skills and get a taste of ICT's potential in education. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

AB - This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about how digital technology can be integrated into the formal education system. Within a longitudinal research study, which lasted four years, we conducted an investigation on how mobile technology can support educational activities as defined by a school curriculum. Among the topics included in the school curriculum, we focused on the literary field and developed a Digital StoryTelling (DST) application, Fiabot!, to support this activity. Here, we describe the design of the application and how we evaluated its impact on educational activities. The application was designed and evaluated in two primary schools. The study had the objectives of exploring whether Fiabot! supports children in achieving educational objectives defined by the curriculum, how this effectively supports teachers, and to what extent children like using it for the creation and sharing of their stories. Our findings show that the application has a positive impact on curriculum enactment and effectively supports the related educational activities. Overall, Fiabot! was demonstrated to be very effective in stimulating children's discussion of a story's plot and characters. Thus, Fiabot! supported children not only in being creative but also in organizing their work and exploring a digital media opportunity. This resulted in the development of new skills and the better grounding of previously acquired knowledge, while teachers also had the opportunity to expand their teaching skills and get a taste of ICT's potential in education. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

KW - Child-computer interaction

KW - Digital storytelling

KW - Formal learning

KW - Mobile learning

KW - Digital storage

KW - Teaching

KW - Child-computer interactions

KW - Design and evaluations

KW - Educational activities

KW - Educational objectives

KW - Longitudinal research

KW - Mobile Learning

KW - Curricula

U2 - 10.1145/2593968.2593979

DO - 10.1145/2593968.2593979

M3 - Conference contribution/Paper

SN - 9781450322720

SP - 165

EP - 174

BT - IDC '14 Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Interaction design and children

PB - ACM

ER -