Ana Carla Amaro

Conceptually anchored in theoretical references that demonstrate the fundamental role of the narrative and ubiquity of the products of narrative schemes in the various domains of human life, as well as the importance of the development of adequate narrative competences as a determining process for the construction of literacy, this study sought to understand the processes of structuring and the structure of stories told by primary education children, from a morphological approach grounded on Vladimir Propp’s theory and model, so as to conceive and prototype a multimedia application to support the construction of stories.
The empirical studies conducted, of a comparative and exploratory nature, allowed children to adopt the role of storytellers and informants, offering us the corpus and the contents for morphological and content analysis, especially of a qualitative nature and fundamentally with descriptive goals. The results of the study supported the conception of guidelines for the development of the conceptual model and functional requirements of a multimedia application to support storytelling of an educational nature that came to me named Curucucu©, Conto eu ou contas tu?.
The prototyping process of the multimedia application followed an iterative and learner-centred approach in the conceptualisation, design, implementation and testing of the tool and having as a central concern the development of interfaces, adequate both to the children, the objectives and contexts of its usage, integrating children and primary education teachers as well as other informants (in the quality of experts) at specific times in the process.
Besides reference to the limitations of the present study, suggestions for future research are put forward.

Curucucu©, Conto eu ou contas tu? is a multimedia tool designed to support the learning of narrative structuring by 8 to 10 years old children, whose conceptualization was based on guidelines sketched from the results of empirical studies conducted with primary school children. We worked with a total of 32 children, conducting two interviews per children, in the context of which we asked for the narration of a story, with and without resorting to different artifact’s manipulation. The approach to narrative structuring processes and to the structure of the stories children told was based in Vladimir Propp’s theory and analysis model, also used to Curucucu’s structural modeling. In this paper we focus our attention on the key results of the studies, with emphasis on their implications for the conceptualization and specification of Curucucu, describing the prototype and prototyping process. We also present the main results of Curucucu’s usability tests, as well as the strategies used to solve some of the identified issues. We conclude with some final considerations and suggestions for future developments and studies.

Este artigo descreve o trabalho de investigação para doutoramento
Quando as crianças contam histórias: compreensão dos processos de estruturação das histórias contadas por crianças do 1.o CEB para a conceptualização e especificação de uma aplicação multimédia interactiva de suporte ao conto de histórias1, cujos resultados vieram a permitir conceptualizar, especificar e desenvolver uma ferramenta tecnológica de suporte ao conto de histórias, dirigida a crianças dos 8 aos 10 anos de idade - Curucucu©, conto eu ou contas tu?. Após um texto introdutório, apresentam-se os objectivos da investigação, as opções metodológicas, os resultados e as suas implicações para o estabelecimento de linhas orientadoras da especificação funcional e desenvolvimento do modelo conceptual do Curucucu©. Em seguida, descrevem-se as fases de desenvolvimento do projecto Curucucu© e conclui-se, apresentando-se perspectivas e propostas de investigação e desenvolvimentos futuros.

This paper describes a set of navigation and interaction and information visualization models, whose conceptualization and development is a research work of the Master in Multimedia Communications held in an enterprise context (PT Inovação), taking into account augmented reality scenarios in tablet devices with a large set of possible applications. Starting with a brief introduction on theoretical issues underlying the research, the paper advances with a description and illustration of each model. It is also discussed a case-study, where a prototype has been developed, operationalizing some of the navigation and interaction models conceptualized, as well the stage of testing and validation of the prototype and used modals. The paper ends with some concluding remarks.

This paper describes an interactive multimedia application designed to support the construction of stories by 8 to 10 years old children – Curucucu©, Conto eu ou contas tu? – as well as the study conducted to inform the design of the application. We start with a brief incursion into the conceptual framework of the study, demonstrating the fundamental role that narrative plays in human life and the importance of the development of adequate narrative skills and arguing that these skills, along with general communication and expression skills, are still crucial in the technological world in which we live: children’s capacity to express their ideas and needs successfully, in multiple ways and for multiple audiences integrate an essential part of what is called multimodal literacies (Ferrão Tavares & Barbeiro, 2008). The paper proceeds with a description of how the study was designed, according to what is suggested by Hanna et al. (1999) for Human-Computer Interaction researches, namely how we sought to understand the activities to be technologically supported, how we considered the children’s prior knowledge, skills and expectations and how the technological tool was conceived, prototyped and validated, following a learner-centered (Soloway, Guzdial & Hay, 1994) and iterative approach (Hanna et al., 1999; Preece, Rogers & Sharp, 2002). For this purpose, we first present how the study addressed the processes of structuring and the structure of stories told by primary education children and the morphological approach adopted, grounded on Vladimir Propp’s (1992) theory and model, also demonstrating their adequacy, since they have already been used in other studies with related research goals (Rodari, 1996; Carlsson, 1999; Charles, 2006) and also as the basis for modeling technological storytelling tools (Prada, Machado & Paiva, 2000; Hammond, 2011). We then clarify the nature of the adopted methodologies and how the empirical studies were conducted, allowing children to adopt the role of storytellers and informants, offering us the corpus and the contents for the morphological and content analysis. After presenting the main results of the empirical studies, from which we were able to sketch and extract general guidelines for conceiving the storytelling tool, we briefly describe the prototyping process, emphasizing the ways children and primary education teachers, as well as other informants (in the quality of experts), were integrated at specific times in the process, as suggested by the Informant Design approach proposed by Scaife & Rogers (1999). Finally, we present the storytelling application prototyped and the main results of the validation tests with real users, concluding with some final considerations and suggestions for future studies.