An Interactive Storytelling Software Model

Eman Rabiah Boumediene Belkhouche

College of Information Technology College of Information Technology
United Arab Emirates University United Arab Emirates University
Al Ain, UAE Al Ain, UAE
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract—We use a game-based approach to model story- In the following sections, we discuss the importance of
telling intended for children. The interactive story was built storytelling as a medium for preserving cultural heritage, com-
based on the storytelling concept, in which the child listens to a munication effectiveness, and learning (Section II). In section
storyteller and will be able to interact with the story environment
at the same time. The interactive story is intended to enhance III we overview storytelling in the current context and report
reading comprehension and listening skills, and to enrich the on research on using technologies that integrate storytelling
children vocabulary. To achieve the desired goals, we start by into physical and software environments to promote literacy
finding a story that is relevant to our culture, re-writing the story skills acquisition for children. We also contrast these emergent
in a way that is more appropriate for children, using appropriate literacy skills systems against the mostly commercial digitally-
vocabularies, and then we start to design the needed graphics and
programming the story to respond to the children interaction. cast stories, whereby the former are meant for children to
Then we discuss our approach and the steps we followed to invent their own stories, and the latter are intended to interac-
achieve our goals, and finally we present a simulation that shows tively recount stories to listeners.
the output of our approach.
Keywords— storytelling; cultural heritage; knowledge ac-
quisition; interactive learning; children vocabulary. II. M OTIVATIONS
I. I NTRODUCTION
From the dawn of time, fairy tales, fables, and magical If a picture is worth one thousand words, then a story is
stories have been a source of entertainment and education. worth one thousand pictures. The significance of the impact
Storytelling has been a staple of society’s cultural heritage, of stories is well-documented in the literature on emergent
where people would gather in the market place to enjoy stories literacy ([4], [5]) and on programming ([6], [7]). Experimen-
enacted by minstrels [1]. At home, children would snuggle tal results reported in [2] show that the use of storytelling
nightly around their grandparents and get immersed into the systems by children impacted positively their linguistic skills.
fantastical world of stories and lullabies that evoked heroics in Similarly, experimental results reported in [6] show that stu-
far away magical places, while transmitting wisdom, heritage, dents who used Storytelling Alice displayed higher levels
and values. At school, storytelling has been used to stimulate of engagement and motivation. As another example of the
imagination and creativity in order to develop the linguistic effectiveness of storytelling, it was shown in an experiment
skills of the students [2]. In any context, storytelling is used that storytelling was more effective at collecting donations [8]
to effectively touch the hearts and instill knowledge. than presentations using only quantitative facts. Moreover, the
Transmedia storytelling, whereby a story is cast on different use of stories impacts six regions of the brain, while telling
media (e.g., book, film, TV, DVD, game, Pokemon platforms), facts only affects two of its areas [9].
is constantly inventing new forms of expression [3]. Further- Socially, storytelling plays various important roles, such as
more, smart devices continue occupying and displacing more preservation of cultural heritage, wisdom transmission, and
and more of our customary spaces, among which is traditional knowledge acquisition. For children, it constitutes a playful
storytelling, effectively endangering its existence. Just like form of vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension.
reading, storytelling is a fundamental intellectual, cultural, and Based on a recent study, the reading rate in the Arab world
social activity that must preserved. is the lowest globally. It does not exceed a quarter of a one
Our main objective is to define a model for digital story- page per year, while an American reads at the rate of eleven
telling (DST) that preserves and sustains storytelling for the books a year, and a British reads an average of seven books
purpose of promoting cultural heritage and engaging children a year [10]. Consequently, as reported in [11], Arab pupils
into learning. Based on the storytelling concept and enriched scores on international tests suffer. Academic success cannot
with gameplay, DST provides an immersive environment in be achieved with deficient linguistic skills ([12], [13]). This
which the child becomes an integral player. Not only is the state constitutes a major motivating factor for our research to
DST entertaining, but it also enhances children’s linguistic use the engaging power of digital storytelling as an alternative
skills, such as reading comprehension, storytelling, and vo- and complementary resource to help Arab pupils acquire and
cabulary. strengthen their linguistic skills.
 Story Name Features
III. T RANSMEDIA S TORYTELLING AND L EARNING Male narrator
Self-reading
Even though storytelling transcends all ages, most of the Hansel and Gretel
Watch, play, learn, read
research on transmedia storytelling, and specifically digital Interactions
storytelling, focuses on providing physical and software en- Female narrator
vironments to support collaborative activities for children to Self-reading
Little Red Riding Hood Autoplay, read,settings
elaborate, listen, and tell stories in order to develop their Interactions
linguistic skills. In line with constructivism and construction- Scene selection
ism ([14], [15], [16]), such environments offer frameworks Similar to
Ali Baba
Hansel and Gretel
and processes allowing students to collaboratively construct, Female narrator
produce, and share their own stories. These applications can The Lion and the Mouse read to me
be categorized as: story listening systems ([2], [3]), digital Self-reading Interactions
Male narrator
storytelling systems ([6], [17], [18]), or robotic and virtual Self-reading
learning companions ([19], [20], [21]). Briefly, these systems The Elves and the Shoemaker
Spot differences
allow the child to interact with the computer or virtual peers Puzzle games
Male narrator
(software, toys, or robots) to elaborate a story. Simpler sys- Alice in Wonderland Autoplay
tems may support only story development, while the more read to me
sophisticated ones are capable in engaging in dialogs that are
TABLE I: Story Apps Synthesis
used to initiate more involvement from the child. Evaluations
of these systems show that they contribute to enhancing the
child’s literacy skills.
Rather than supporting storytelling by the students, our
approach focuses on modeling storytellers, that is, given a
story, express it in a multimedia form that enacts a virtual
storyteller. While a great number of familiar stories (e.g., The
Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, etc.) were cast
digitally as interactive stories available commercially as apps,
no explicit description on how these stories were modeled is
reported in the literature. Our task attempts to fill this void
by defining a model as well as the corresponding modeling
process.

IV. D IGITAL S TORYTELLING M ODELING

App stores offer a large number of digital stories for
children. These are well-known traditional stories cast on
digital media. In Table I we summarize major features of some
prototypical stories. Briefly, one can observe that there is a Fig. 1: Storytelling Functionality.
common pattern that they follow.
Figure 1 captures the major functions supported by the
storyteller. These include: reading the story, or hearing the • Object: it may be animate characters (e.g., human being,
story from the storyteller, or choose one of the games to play. animal, insect), or inanimate (e.g., tree, house). It is
represented in a cartoonish style.
Based on this review, we identified the main components of • Behavior: it is the set of actions associated with animate
digital stories and developed the abstract structure shown in characters. Their behavior is limited to some simple
Figure 2. These components are described below: physical actions, such as moving in a given direction.
• Teller: the story is read by a narrator, and when available, • Landscape: this is the background of the scene represent-

a mentor is used to guide and evaluate the listener. The ing the world in which the story happens.
narrator’s voice reads the part of the story corresponding • Sound: this may be either background music, or sounds

to a given scene. associated with events (e.g., explosion).

• Story: the story proper starts with a menu and continues • Event: events take place to unfold the story. Their occur-

with a sequence of scenes. rence triggers actions by the objects.

• Menu: it allows the listener to change settings and select • Text: the relevant text of the story is displayed with each

among the various options(listen, read, play). scene.

• Scene: the story progress from one scene to another. A To achieve the desired goals, we start by finding a story
scene is 2-D and consists of a static landscape, various that is relevant to our culture, re-writing the story in a way
objects, events, and sound. that is more appropriate for children, using appropriate vocab-
 primary level: In this step we have familiarized ourselves
with the Arabic language curriculum in UAE of the
primary level, with the aim of taking an initial idea of the
level of vocabularies that are used in the primary level.
In addition, we read the Arabic language certificate that
is approved by the Ministry of Education in UAE, which
describes what to give to the students within the Arabic
curriculum through every stage of their study [22].
3) Writing an initial version of the story: During this phase,
we started writing the initial version of the story based on
the curriculum and the document that we have reviewed,
so to some extent the vocabularies we used in the story
are appropriate to any student at the primary level.
4) Consulting specialists in Arabic language: In this phase,
Fig. 2: Abstract Structure of DST.
we arranged several meetings with teachers of Arabic
language (teaching the primary level), in order to ask
them about the initial version of the text we wrote, in
terms of the used vocabularies and the consistency of the
text.
5) Transforming the dry text into an interactive storytelling
environment At this stage, we have transformed the
dry text into an interactive storytelling environment by
following these steps:
• Defining the main characters in the story.
• Imagining the appearance of the characters and the
appropriate outfits during that time.
• Defining the environment and surrounding objects.
• Giving both of the characters and the objects the ability
to interact.
6) designing and programming: At this stage, we have de-
signed the storytelling environment by establishing three
main modes:
• Reading by myself: In this option, the child will see
the text of the story without hearing the voice of the
storyteller, and the child will rely on himself/herself in
order to read the text of the story.
• Read to me: In this option, the child will listen to the

Fig. 3: Design Stages. story from the storyteller.

• Games: the child will play many of games based on
the vocabularies that have already been used in the text
ularies, and then we start to design the needed graphics and of the story, these games will include the following:
programming the story to respond to the children interaction. – Lexicon antonyms: in which the child should
To design and implement the storyteller, we followed the choose the opposite word of the word that will
steps outlined in the figure above. These steps can be summa- be presented during the game. This game aims to
rized as follows: teach the child to connect the word to its opposite
1) Choosing a story from the Arab heritage: In this step we meaning.
searched for a story that is linked to our cultural heritage, – Matching the word to its image: through which
we selected the story of Aladdin, it is one of the Arabian the child should choose the word that is related
nights stories, the reason behind the choice of this story to one of the presented images. The main objective
was what it has of good values such as the idea of the of this game is to teach the child new vocabularies
victory of good over evil, as we also believe that we as by linking the image to its suitable word.
Arabs have to use this story for educational goals as it has – Puzzles: the child will be asked to arrange the
already been used by several large companies as ”Disney” pieces of the image correctly to get the full picture,
for the purposes of entertainment and educating children. through which the child will learn the ability to
2) Analyzing the Arabic language curriculum in UAE of the explore the correct order and resolve problems to
 win the game.
After the completion of the design of the game scenario
we used special software to help us to graphically
design the characters and the surrounding environment
and then we started the programming stage using a
special game engine.
V. EDUCATIONAL GOALS
The digital storyteller carries the following educational
objectives:
1) To strengthen both of the reading skills and listening
skills.
2) To enrich children’s vocabulary.
3) To encourage children to read and to make it as a daily
habit.
Fig. 4: Storytelling Scene.
4) To bridge the gap between the children and the reading
habit.
5) To approach the interactive learning through a fun and a
colorful context.
6) To strengthen children’s language by practicing on new
vocabularies out of the school curriculum.
7) The traditional way in education through which students
learn new vocabularies in the classroom but they do not
use them after that, but in our approach, the students learn
new vocabularies through the story and rehearse these
vocabularies through games.
8) To let the student learn through challenge: the games that
have been added to the storyteller generate a spirit of
challenge, in which the child will try more than once to
find the right solution to win the game, in addition the
difficulty of the games will be increased gradually.
9) To let the student learn through trial and error: the games
were designed in such a way when the student makes a Fig. 5: Storytelling Interface.
mistake, an error will appear and by this the child will
learn from his/her mistake
VI. S TORYTELLER M ODELING
In this section, we will display the main functions of the
storyteller, basic components, and some of the scenes of the
model that we have created. The storyteller is available for
children on (Android Google play).
The storyteller consists of the following basic components
(shown in the figure below): objects: which includes the basic
characters of the story and the surrounding objects. texts:
which includes the text of the story and the vocabularies used
in the games section. voices: which consists of the voice of
the storyteller and another set of sound effects. rooms: a suite
of rooms that contains characters, objects, sounds and texts.
Each room reflects a particular scene in the story.
The pictures below show some of the scenes of the digital Fig. 6: Storytelling Components.
storyteller that we have created, which illustrate the output of
our approach.
it was presented in a modern way through the creation of an
VII. C ONCLUSION interactive storytelling environment for educational purposes.
In this paper, we discussed how we contributed to recover a Then we offered our approach and the steps we followed to
part of our cultural heritage (the idea of storytelling) and how achieve the desired goals. And then we explained the major
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