User study of a new smart toy for children's storytelling

This article introduces StoryTech, a smart storytelling toy that offers children a mixed reality environment in which to tell imaginative stories. During usability testing, an empirical study was carried out with 90 child participants. The findings indicated that StoryTech creates a rich storytelling experience, especially for ages five and six.     

Ventriloquism as early literacy practice: making meaning in pretend play

This article discusses how children in New Zealand make meaning in their spontaneous pretend play from kindergarten (four years old) through to their first year of primary school (five years old). The findings discussed here are taken from a wider project investigating children’s storytelling where 12 child participants were video recorded during their everyday storytelling experiences over a three-year period. This article reveals how children’s engagement in pretend play often involves playing out an impromptu storyline where ventriloquism is used to talk objects into life through paralinguistic features such as gesture, gaze and voice prosody. These findings suggest that through the act of ventriloquism in pretend play children learn to engage in complex meaning making activities in playful ways, orally formulating characters and building coherent and systematic storylines that can be identified as early literacy practices.     

基于RFID技术智能玩具的开发与应用

为了满足玩具产业结合信息发展的变化,提出了一种基于RFID技术的新型嵌入式智能玩具开发系统。该系统利用S3C2440微控制器实时信息处理能力和TI公司为RFID生产的专用芯片S6700具有的收发功能,搭建了一套RFID应用开发平台,平台具有的RFID读写功能和完善的外围扩展电路模块。将该系统的创新性应用在智能互动玩具的开发中,增强了玩具产业的多样化。同时,该系统具有结构简单,价格低廉,灵活性好,并且可靠性高等特点。     

StoryTech: Exploring the Use of a Narrative Technique for Training Career Counselors

This article describes the use of a narrative technique, StoryTech, in a career counseling class. Student evaluations, comments, and recommendations for the use of StoryTech in a career counseling class are included.     

增强现实技术在移动学习中的应用初探

增强现实技术是在虚拟现实技术基础上发展起来的一种新技术,智能手机的迅速发展又推动了增强现实技术的实际应用。文章在阐述增强现实概念的基础上介绍了增强现实技术在智能手机上的应用以及支持智能手机增强现实系统的核心技术,并论证了增强现实技术在移动学习中应用的前景。     

基于蓝牙技术遥控小车的设计与实现

基于手机平台,借助于蓝牙技术,设计和实现了一种无线遥控小车新的解决方案。设计以手机控制平台、蓝牙通讯模块、电机驱动模块等硬件模块组成的遥控小车。实现小车的前进、后退、前左转弯、前右转弯、后左转弯、后右转弯等实时控制功能。为遥控玩具小车的设计提出了一种新的思路,同时可以为将来智能家居的遥控设计提供一定的参考意义。     

Family literacy as a third space between home and school: some case studies of practice

In this article, the relationship between literacy practices and spatiality is explored in the context of family literacy. The article draws on fieldwork in family literacy classrooms as part of two evaluations in Croydon and Derbyshire of family learning provision. Methods of evaluation included classroom observations in rural and suburban locations. In addition, teachers and parents were interviewed. In this instance, family learning included literacy and language activities with parents and children in school and nursery settings. These were learning spaces where parents and children collaborated on joint projects including book making, storytelling, the making of visual artefacts and reading and writing activities. The research revealed how family literacy classrooms could be understood as ‘third spaces’, between home and school, offering parents and children discursive opportunities drawing on both domains.     

论网络虚拟财产的权利定位

频繁出现的网络虚拟财产权利纠纷引发了一系列的社会问题,也对传统的法律制度带来了挑战。但目前我国法律的相关规定却是一片空白,对网络虚拟财产的界定也模糊不清。文章认为,网络虚拟财产具有财产的属性,是虚拟性和现实性相结合,具有对时间、空间和技术的依赖性;并将网络虚拟财产分为三类,提出了网络虚拟财产是具有物权和债权双重特性的权利定位。     

The psychosocial benefits of oral storytelling in school: developing identity and empathy through narrative

The oral re-telling of traditional tales, modelled by a storyteller and taught to children in school, can be understood as ‘non-instrumental’ practice in speaking and listening that emphasises oral language over the reading and writing of stories. While oral storytelling has significant benefits to children’s education and development, it is under-utilised within Primary Education in the UK. This interview and library-based study explores participant perceptions of oral storytelling in relation to its psychosocial effects and benefits. In addition, observation of an oral storytelling initiative provides a research context through which such perceptions are understood. The findings highlight the benefits of oral storytelling to children in relation to a complex of processes tied to the opportunities afforded by oral storytelling for self-expression, identification with story characters, empathic understanding of self and others and bi-directional communication. It is suggested that the oral retelling of pre-existing stories offers children a parsimonious yet psycho-socially complex form of Speaking and Listening practice which is as rare within the classroom as it is native to human thought and interaction. It is upon the basis of the importance of talk to learning and development that its use within education needs to be viewed, to allow more opportunities for oral language practice that supports the psychosocial development of young people in school to be encouraged and actively pursued.     

The Relation Between Toy Gun Play and Children's Aggressive Behavior

To assess the relation between toy gun play and aggression, thirty-six 3- to 5-year-olds were observed in free play in their daycare center and coded for amount of real aggression, pretend aggression, rough-and-tumble play (R & T), and nonaggressive pretend play. Based on a questionnaire completed by the parents, the children were also coded for the amount they played with toy guns in the home, the rated aggressive level of their preferred television programs, the rated aggressive level of their most preferred toys, and amount of parents' physical punishment of the children. Of all children, 56% played with toy guns in the home, most of whom were boys. Multiple regression analyses indicated that amount of parents' punishment strongly predicted real aggression in both boys and girls, and amount of toy gun play strongly predicted real aggression in boys. However, when it came to pretend aggression, aggressive level of children's preferred toys was the strongest predictor, while toy gun play negatively predicted pretend aggression. Toy gun play did not predict nonaggressive pretend play, but parents' punishment negatively predicted nonaggressive pretend play. These results indicate that toy gun play and parental punishment are positively associated with a higher level of real aggression but not pretend aggression. This pattern is discussed in terms of a cuing effect theory versus a cathartic effect theory. It also argues for distinguishing between real and pretend aggression and other forms of play in future studies.     

The Relation Between Toy Gun Play and Children's Aggressive Behavior

To assess the relation between toy gun play and aggression, thirty-six 3- to 5-year-olds were observed in free play in their daycare center and coded for amount of real aggression, pretend aggression, rough-and-tumble play (R & T), and nonaggressive pretend play. Based on a questionnaire completed by the parents, the children were also coded for the amount they played with toy guns in the home, the rated aggressive level of their preferred television programs, the rated aggressive level of their most preferred toys, and amount of parents' physical punishment of the children. Of all children, 56% played with toy guns in the home, most of whom were boys. Multiple regression analyses indicated that amount of parents' punishment strongly predicted real aggression in both boys and girls, and amount of toy gun play strongly predicted real aggression in boys. However, when it came to pretend aggression, aggressive level of children's preferred toys was the strongest predictor, while toy gun play negatively predicted pretend aggression. Toy gun play did not predict nonaggressive pretend play, but parents' punishment negatively predicted nonaggressive pretend play. These results indicate that toy gun play and parental punishment are positively associated with a higher level of real aggression but not pretend aggression. This pattern is discussed in terms of a cuing effect theory versus a cathartic effect theory. It also argues for distinguishing between real and pretend aggression and other forms of play in future studies.     

Experimenting with Visual Storytelling in Students' Portfolios: Narratives of Visual Pedagogy for Pre‐Service Teacher Education

This article interprets the repercussions of visual storytelling for art education and arts‐based narrative research and, particularly, it approaches visual storytelling as a critical tool for pre‐service teacher education. After reinterpreting storytelling from the perspective of visual critical pedagogy, I will narratively reconstruct the use of visual storytelling in three learning stories taking the form of students' portfolios. As a visual narrative researcher, I will examine the tactics for writing and reading that these students have developed in creating visual stories: the first narrative analyses the role of art during the reconstruction of the learning process by incorporating autobiography and reflexivity (Tanit's portfolio); the second narrative reflects on deconstruction and intertextuality in a multimedia portfolio, which mainly interrelates opera and cinema (Eulàlia's portfolio); and the third narrative introduces virtual storytelling and connects self‐awareness/meta‐awareness with multi‐literacy in narrative learning (Sonia's portfolios). This article also views improvisations, attempts, drafts and interactions in the process of writing and reading portfolios as part of visual experimentation to fabricate learning stories, in order to analyse the opportunities that visual storytelling offers for visual narrative pedagogy.     

让儿童拥有一个自由空间

本文从当今教育中儿童生存的物理空间和精神空间的成人化出发,阐述了给儿童一个自由发挥的空间的重要,并提出了几条建设性的建议。     

The researcher as teacher: constructing one's place in the story of events of preschoolers

This article focuses on the author's work as a researcher‐teacher, examining storytelling activities of preschool children in her own classroom. By examining ways in which one university‐based researcher dealt with the demands of being both teacher and researcher, this paper proposes that university‐based researchers who take on the role of teacher both construct and define an enactment‐of‐self in the classroom. In a Janus‐faced kind of interplay, the researcher draws on teacher skills, and the teacher draws on the research perspective and continuously walks the line between the moment‐to‐moment demands of each role.     

智能时代学习空间的融合样态与融合路径

智能时代,随着大数据、云计算、智能技术等新兴技术在教育领域的应用,衍生出泛在学习、无缝学习、智慧学习等新型学习方式,学习空间作为学习发生的场所也发生着重大改变,其中一个重要的变革趋势是学习空间走向融合。学习空间融合可为学习者构建虚拟和现实无缝融合的环境,使学习者能够轻松、有效和投入地开展正式和非正式学习。文章立足时代背景,对学习空间的主要形态及空间融合的本质内涵进行阐释,指出空间融合具有"教学设计的贯一性"和"学习链条的连续性"两大核心特征,同时指出学习空间存在三种典型的融合样态,分别是物理空间之间的融合、信息空间之间的融合以及物理与信息空间之间的融合。最后,从教与学要素的角度出发提出了目标融合、内容融合、活动融合、场景融合和评价融合五条融合路径,以期为实现学习空间的有效融合提供指导和借鉴。     

It's story time!: exploring the potential of multimodality in oral storytelling to support children's vocabulary learning

Although many studies have been done on the benefits of parent/teacher‐child interactions during shared storybook reading or read‐aloud sessions, very few have examined the potential of professional storytellers' oral discourse to support children's vocabulary learning. In those storytelling sessions conducted by professional storytellers, the process of telling a story is typically not accompanied by a book, but only by the teller's well‐coordinated gestures, facial expressions and voice modulations. In this study, I perform a multimodal analysis of storytellers' oral discourse recorded during two storytelling sessions for four‐to‐five‐year‐old children. The study aims to (1) find out the specific types of vocal and visual features accompanying the spoken words which were unlikely to be known by the children but used by the storytellers for representations of events and characters, and (2) explore the potential of these multimodal features in oral storytelling to support children's inferring of word meanings. The study offers insights into multimodality in oral storytelling and implications for exploring the potential of multimodal features in this form of literacy practice to support children's vocabulary learning.     

From actors to agents to persons: the development of character representation in young children's narratives

This study addressed a puzzling discrepancy in existing research about when children achieve and manifest a mentalistic conception of the person. Narrative research suggests that children do not represent characters as mental agents until middle childhood, whereas social cognition research places this understanding at around 4 years. Using a theoretically informed typology, 617 stories were analyzed composed by 30 children participating in a storytelling and story-acting practice integrated into their preschool curriculum. Results indicated that children's representation of characters shifted from almost exclusively physical and external portrayals of "actors" at 3 to increasing inclusion of "agents" with rudimentary mental states at 4 and of "persons" with mental representational capacities by 5. The developmental trajectories of boys and girls differed somewhat.