Storytelling Systems: Constructing the Innerface of the Interface

Although recent years have seen an explosion in educational technology, there is still a lack of computational tools specifically designed to encourage exploration of identity and communication issues. Storytelling is a good medium for this type of exploration as it enables reflection about the inner world. This paper presents a new approach to interactive storytelling: SAGE (Storytelling Agent Generation Environment), a construction kit that supports children’s creation of their own wise storytellers to interact with. In this system, programming is a vehicle for the transformation of ways of thinking about communication as well as for constructing knowledge about technology. In order to encourage children's emotional engagement in the SAGE environment, the storytellers are embodied in an interactive stuffed animal — a soft interface — which is also programmable by the children. This paper presents some technical aspects of SAGE's design and implementation and focuses on empirical results from research with children using SAGE.