Nesta Futurelab ran a Design Challenge in 2005. This was an opportunity for teachers to work with computer programmers to develop prototype software to support ‘difficult to teach’ areas of learning.
Our team Imagine were winners of this competition, in which we designed a package to support and develop children’s creative writing. It was during this project that I began to develop my ideas regarding the use of digital technologies to develop opportunites for collaborative story telling.
Team: Imagine
• Nicholas Wood: Final year multimedia student
• Robert Simmons: Final year multimedia student
• Vicky Welsh: Multimedia student
• Angela Colvert: Primary teacher
• Stuart Fryd: Primary teacher
Twistin Tales
Product Details Overview (Taken from the Project Report, 2005)
Twistin’ Tales is an innovative authoring tool with many exciting features. The package is comprised of three interdependent, yet complimentary elements: Board Game, software and website.
To maximise the children’s creative potential, teachers may wish to use these three elements in conjunction with each other in the classroom:
• The board game is designed to prompt playful discussion and problem solving before the children write their ideas on the computer.
• The software extends the creative progress by offering a variety of ways to record, textually, visually and orally.
• The web site enables children to share and showcase their work with a world wide audience.
Both the software and the web site offer the children a stimulating new way to write collaboratively by adapting the work of peers from in-school and around the world.
The prototype was developed in Macromedia Flash MX 2004, E-Rain Swift v4 and Adobe Photoshop.
The Software
The software included the following elements:
Map of Fairy Tale Settings
• Select from a variety of fairy tale settings.
• Zoom in to write a story based in that area.
Simple Visual Menus
• Be inspired by the profiles of characters that children have previously created
• Write a new story based in one of the many setting
• Read or adapt another child’s story.
Collaborative Writing
• Children’s original stories are archived alongside collaborative developments that other’s may have made.
• A child can develop the story of another child by changing the beginning, ending and character’s etc..
• Children are informed of the new developments to their stories via the Twistin’ Tales web-site and text message and can register their responses in the online forum.
Composition Page
• Stimulating graphics with which to construct the characters.
• 3d areas designed to spark the imagination with the option to select a screen shot for their story.
• A variety of speech bubbles and the text boxes.
• Audio recording option to give the children the opportunity to retain the excitement of oral story telling fostered by the accompanying board game.
Helpful Mr Wolf
• Suggests many ways to develop characters, plot, setting, language and story conventions.
