The Conference of the Birds: A Collaborative Storytelling Environment for Literacy Development

Abstract

Sociocultural theories of learning regard oral storytelling as a fundamental step towards literacy development. Collaborative play can lead to richer and sustained stories among children of young age. We describe an interactive learning environment called The Conference of the Birds (CoB). By allowing two users to interact with the interface at the same time, the CoB allows children separated by physical or cultural distances to collaborate by creating narratives together. Through the CoB, children connect, cooperate and create joint stories, fostering the development of literacy, as well as collaboration and authorship skills. In this paper we describe the principles, theories and design decisions that supported the creation of the CoB, and briefly discuss how kids can collaboratively create stories in a digital environment.