Story Time: Creations and Re-inventions Through the Computer

Story Time
Creations and Re-inventions Through the Computer

Patricia Martínez
Catherine McElroy
DGSCA-UNAM
In this paper we present the experience that we have carried out with a group of "street children" about the development of stories through the computer
Three years ago we collaborated with the association Alternativa Callejera, an alternative house that develops an attention program for street children and child labourers, between the ages of 7 and 20, in Mexico City.
Alternativa Callejera has tried to offer the children distinct classes that allow them to develop their individual potential. Classes such as painting, clay modeling, engraving and computation have been opened to achieve this goal. The truely surprising works that the children create in these classes achieve a double function. One of these is that they obtain fixed results that have a great beauty in themselves. In addition, the works that the children create serve as an expression of their fears and sentiments, and they are expressed in a natural form without them knowing it. This gives the educators the elements they need to offer the children the necessary psycological attention.
This paper will focus on one of the activities we have carried out in the computer class - the creation of stories. This activity has been a great success in spite of the two obstacles we have facing us:

Some of the children barely know the letters.
The ones that do know how to read do it with great difficulty, without a sense of their own initiative and therefore in a manner so mechanical that the effort to decode the symbols makes one lose the sense of the text.

How do we help the children to discover the communicative tools of reading and writing ? As Ferreiro (1996) points out, in order for children to understand the value of the written language while they explore its symbolic properties, they need the mediation of an interpreter, that will guide them in the appreciation of writing and expose them to a new type of communication.
The interpreter informs the child that these marks on the paper, the writing, have a special significance, which the child will learn with more exposure to and practice in reading. The role of the interpreter who reads, for example, a story to someone else, is to use his or her voice to bring life to the text. What is said is not said in his or her own voice, but rather that of the phantom (dwarf, animal, noise etc..). Through the magic of the act of reading, the words come to represent a presence in front of the marks on the page, defining in that way, the link between what is said and what is written: the written is a representation of what is said. Afterwards, when the children themselves begin to write, they will learn little by little the rules that govern this system.
The problem for many children, and perhaps even more for street children, is precisely that they have not found an interpreter in their development. Instead, in the majority of cases, they have found a teacher that decodes the symbols in rules and phrases without sence, which destroys the linguistic sign. For this reason, we have assumed the roll of the interpreter, to bring our students towards the act of reading.
The Start

In each computer class, we bring a collection of books (books for little children, for big children, books with a lot of or few images, books with words only...). The children select one of them and from there they mark the destiny of the class.
Sometimes, starting from a selected book, we read a story. At the beginning, few may be interested in listening to it, but various ones "keep their ears open" to know what the story is about. The ideas and images that the story provokes in the children constitute the material for initiating a project in the computer.
The package that we use for the children to realize their stories is called animator. The part that corresponds to the drawing is made up of tools and an assortment of colours and with a simple explanation, it is easy to realize various drawings. As for the part of the program that corresponds to the animation, the teachers orient the process to help the children create the movements that they would like.
The projects that the children carry out are of various types. Sometimes a child may be satisfied with a drawing that he has created in the computer. Other times they use the initial drawing to construct an animated story that may or may not be accompanied by a text. The children may also chose to reproduce and reconstruct a story that they like.
In general terms the children develop their ideas under the following modalities:
To Start, Just an Image

When a child arrives at the computer class for the first time, a teacher or another student shows him how to draw using the computer. The magic of drawing on the screen quickly acts upon him and awakes in him ideas that he will produce in the computer.
Those that have attended the class for a longer period of time and that have a good understanding of the program, become the interpreters, and help the smaller children in the process of deciding what to do, how to start to interact with the computer, how to save the drawing, etc., and in addition they help them when they have doubts.
A very popular theme is animals. When the children look at the books for the first time, they almost always select an animal in order to learn to draw with the mouse. The stories come afterwards. Let us look at two examples.
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The first drawings are isolated elements on the screen, like the beluga whale that Israel made. In other ocasions the children add other elements, as in the case of Javier. Javier coppied the image of a donkey from a book, but added various shapes and figures around the donkey and filled it in with different colours. Once a child becomes more familiar with the tools of the program and gets a chance to see what the others have done, he may begin to create a story of his own
A Story of Their Own. Playing With the Movements

The realization of a story is very rarely planned in its totality from the beginning. Sometimes a landscape is created (for example, a landscape, or outter space) and after that, it is decided that an animated character will enter. Other times a character will be created first and will acquire life in some context thought of afterwards.
At this time, the teachers try to help the children to use their isolated creations as a part of a more extensive story. Through questions such as: what could that whale do?, where does this animal live? and how would you like your animal to move? we help them to transform their drawings into stories.
The stories that the children create are diverse. Some are very simple, such that in seeing their drawing in movement, the context is simpified to the maximum. For example, Guillermo made a beluga whale. In order for the whale to move in the sea, the only thing that he did was paint the screen blue. (The blue screen made up the ocean background. The animation consisted of the whale moving from one side of the screen to the other.)

Another example is that of Gilberto. When he arrived at the class for the first time, he started out by creating undefined lines and designs apparently without sense, while getting to know the different tools of the program. Little by little these "free lines" were converted into an animation of outer space where different constellations move about the screen.

Sometimes the simple projects, that have only one character that moves linearly, will be more fully completed in a number of classes. For example, Rufino made an orca whale moving in the sea (which consisted of a blue background) and in another class he made a shark that was going to be hunted by the whale. The complete story consists in a persuit that ends in an explosion of blood when the orca reaches the shark.

Other children plan their story from the start, considering various aspects. For example, they make characters that move parts of their bodies while they move accross the screen. Miguel created a story in which a wolf is chasing after a donkey. He considered the movement of the legs in both animals, so that their movement accross the screen would have a more lifelike appearance.

Raul carried out, in approximately two months, an animation project of a spaceship that lands on the moon. The animated movements of the fire in the take off and the landing were done frame by frame.

The Stories Also are Written

The bridge of collective reading and of the creation of animated stories, to the script is not that easy. In addition to the writing itself, it is important that the children find in their written work a communicative intention for a specific receptor. (Larios, 1996)
Why is a tale written about a story? Some children say that in the animation itself one can see what one wants. This is true in a certain sence, but we also want them to share their stories with the others.
What do I write? I don’t know what to put. How do you write? These are questions that are asked by some children before deciding what to do. It is the intention of communicationg a story to the others that motivates them to start. It is important to us that the children communicate their ideas in the way that they are able. For this reason punctuation marks and accents are not demanded nor corrected.
As Emilia Ferreiro says, " A vision too systematic of orthography ...( )... can inhibit more that help its potential users. Live writing is writing that expresses one’s ideas, at the risk of being transformed or even deformed during its use. For that reason it is important to think of strategies to increase the producers of diverse text and in this way multiply the occasions of production. (Ferreiro, 1995, p.47)
The production of animated stories, using the computer as support, has been one of the situations that we believe can impulse in another manner the generation of texts written by the children. Let us look at two examples.
Juan Ramon worked with a book of animals and decided to invent a story about tarantulas. His story talks about the life of a tarantula who lives under a rock.

Uriel began his story by making a house. Afterwards he decided that the house was a cabin in the woods and added grass, trees and birds to his drawing. Later he included a squirrel that moved around in the woods and climbed the roof of the cabin. Finally, after talking to him about his animation, he decided to write a story about it. The following, is a part of his text.

Here is a clip in English from his text which is titled ‘The Cabana and the Squirrel’:
A long time ago a family named Garcia lived in an old cabin which used to be called "the Garcia’s". It happened one day that they left their cabin to go on vacation and when they returned they found their cabin full of animals like squirrels, crocodiles, deer, monkeys and more animals. One of the sons noticed one of the little animals which was called, squirrel...

Clearly expressing oneself and improvement of structure are two things that we work on slowly. We feel that it is most important that the child be able to express his ideas. Once he feels confident in this, he can develop strategies to improve his text and to incorporate punctuation marks.
What we think, what we live. Another way of telling it.

Some children use the computer to express a life experience, like in the cases of Eduardo and Gilberto. Eduardo created an animated story in which a child throws a paper wad at his teacher, because he is tired of his rigidity. He decided to not write a tale about the animation, because it appears very clear what is being said.

Gilberto began a story about a child in the street, nevertheless, he did not have time to finish it.

Recreation of a story

Some of the stories that we read in class have attracted the attention of the children and they have recreated them in the computer, as in the case of Teseo and the Minotaur. In this story Teseo sets out to kill the minotaur who eats four young men from his village each year. Probably, some of the factors that determine the children’s enthusiasm for this story in particular are the spirit of the fight and the companionship of Teseo in the combat against the minotaur.
Four children made a team, where each one had to recreate some part of the story. Afterwards, the four parts would be united. Daniel made the scene of the minotaur waiting for the arrival of the young men that were to be his dinner. The minotaur was so fed up and impatient that he was pacing back and fourth.

Gilberto drew Teseo and his friends en route to the island where the minotaur was. In his animation the boat is tossed from side to side by the big waves of the ocean.

This is what he wrote:
Once upon a time there was a man named Teseo. He wanted to go and kill the minotaur so that his village would be left in peace. So he set sail in his boat and his friends accompanied him.

Rufino decided to recreate the battle between Teseo and the Minotaur. When Teseo arrives at the labyrinth, he ties a thread at the entrance so that he can retrace his steps to back to where he started. Rufino added a character (a mouse) that would guide Teseo to the place where he would find the minotaur, so that he would not be surprised by it in some part of the path. At the end of the story, Teseo falls in love with the princess of Creta. Marcos decided to make the marriage scene. In this animation there are fireworks and the couple run into eachothers arms.

The recreation of stories permits us to observe which are the scenes that have most strongly affected the children and what elements were added in the reconstruction. Also, the animation itself lets us see their imagination with respect to the story, especially in those which are not illustrated.

Final comments

We think that the role of the teacher is very important in helping the children to communicate their ideas. The teacher should promote a continuous interaction with books of different types, making sure that an interpreter is always present, ready to translate the signs that appear in the books. Sometimes the interpreters can be the children themselves, when they know how to read, and when they have listened to and read a story and know how to "act it out" for the younger children.
The most important thing that the teacher can do, however, is simply encourage the children to express their ideas. This can be done through drawings, orally, or through writing. In the latter case, if they have difficulty in expressing their ideas, they can work with the help of a teacher that captures the ideas they wish to communicate.
We consider that the computer is a useful tool of suport for these purposes in that it permits the child to create the graphic part of the story (which can be animated or made up of a single frame). Upon completing an animated sequence, the child can narrate the story, or write it dirrectly into the animation. In this way, the children of ALCA have been able to use the computer to express themselves through the invention and interpretation of stories that they create.

Bibliografía
Ferreiro, E. (1995) "La alfabetización en lenguas indígenas" En Básica, a. 11, núm. 8 p. 46-47
Ferreiro, E. (1996) "Escritura y conocimiento" Ponencia presentada en La epistemología genética y la ciencia contemporánea México, D. F. (24-26 de abril)
Larios, M.C. (1995) "El área de español en educación primaria. la comunicación y el lugar de los niños" En Básica, a. 11, núm. 6 p. 15-18
Martínez, P. T. Vázquez, J. Saucedo (1996) "Un pre-texto para comunicar lo que somos" Ponencia presentada en Encuentro latinoamericano sobre la biblioteca, la lectura y el niños callejero México, D. F. (24-28 de junio) y en Tercer congreso iberoamericano de informática educativa Barranquilla, Colombia (8-11 de julio)

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