HAND IN HAND

Maths and Storytelling together in an Educational Game

Isabel Machado Alexandre

, David Jardim

and Pedro Faria Lopes

Instituto de Telecomunicações & Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL)

Av. Forças Armadas, 1646-026 Lisboa, Portugal

Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) & ADETTI-IUL, Av. Forças Armadas, 1646-026 Lisboa, Portugal

Keywords: Maths, Interactive storytelling, Education environment, Games for children, Agents.

Abstract: In this paper, we describe a novel approach to teaching early mathematical concepts to young children. The

approach aims to merge storytelling and Maths. Evidence show that through dramatic games and role-

playing activities young children (aging from 5-7 years old) learn to master new knowledge, to fit in a new

school setting and to socially relate with their peers. So taking this evidence into account, it is possible to

devise an innovative learning scenario that teaches early mathematical concepts by telling and creating

stories. To explore this idea, we first started by developing an application that provides children from 5 to 7

years old to learn simple maths concepts by interacting and playing in a game. Then, we take this project a

step forward and explore the introduction of storytelling by devising an engaging approach of presenting the

maths concepts through the use of a story.

1 MOTIVATION

Stories have always been part of human culture, and

although civilization has passed through several

changes (cultural, evolutionary, etc.), they remain

inside and around us. Each of us is capable of telling

a story about his/her own life, each of us stores in

his/her memory what happens in the world in the

format of stories, and each of us uses stories to

understand not only what surrounds us, but also

what our role is in such a big play.

Young children start to construct their first

stories by imitating their parents' daily routines and

actions. Under such conditions, children introduce

variations in the flow of their imaginative play (i.e.,

introducing new elements or situations in their

plays) and through this, they acquire knowledge

about the external and mysterious world that

surrounds them.

In their early childhood (2-6 years old), children

tend to use fantasy activities to explore the

differences between right and wrong; develop their

communication skills; and, develop their

imagination and capacity to play. At middle

childhood (7-12 years old), children start attending

school - This period is dependent to the age children

start attending school.- and are first exposed to

formal forms of knowledge (such as reading, maths,

etc.) and to the discipline of being a student.

Nevertheless, new forms of make-believe and

fantasy take place in their lives: video games,

computer games, television cartoons and the

opportunity to participate in dramatic games and

theatre performances at school. There is evidence

that through these games children at these ages learn

to master all the new knowledge, to fit in the new

school setting and to socially relate with their peers.

Further, dramatic play promotes social

competence, emotional development, or general

well-being of the child, by enhancing each child’s

capacities of imagery and developing overt social

and behavioural skills. Additionally, children have

become capable of using their capacity for

operational thought in the ordering and sequencing

performances necessary to play rule-based games.

Based on these finding, it is clear that drama

education is an excellence medium to convey

learning and knowledge acquisition.

From another perspective, there is also the fact

that the digital games industry increasingly exerts

considerable influence in the lives of children and

teens, emerging the opportunity to use the games to

create learning experiences that are interesting and

enable them to acquire or strengthen knowledge by

335

Machado Alexandre I., Jardim D. and Faria Lopes P..

HAND IN HAND - Maths and Storytelling together in an Educational Game.

DOI: 10.5220/0003744303350338

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Agents and Artiﬁcial Intelligence (ICAART-2012), pages 335-338

ISBN: 978-989-8425-96-6

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

enjoying themselves (Prensky, 2007).

Taking all these findings in consideration, it is

possible to envision the application of such methods

in a Mathematical learning environment. The

research projects developed in the field of

educational storytelling have as their main goal to

portray educational material in an interactive format

that aims to provide a higher level of engagement of

learners. Learners no longer have a passive role in

their learning process, but they take part now in

interactive and appealing situations, in which their

actions matter. The knowledge acquisition processes

itself in a more implicit and natural way, since it is

now mainly achieved by a direct exploration and

intervention of the learner of different learning

situations.

2 THE IDEA

The idea of portraying Mathematics into a make-

believe environment emerges from the success of

several research projects which used a narrative

approach for attaining educational and edutainment

objectives. For example, the Networked Interactive

Media In Schools (NIMIS) project – in particular

Teatrix application (Machado and Paiva, 2002), the

POGO project (Rizzo et al., 2003), Adventure

Author (Good and Robertson, 2003), etc.

The envisaged environment not only promotes

the acquisition and development of mathematical

concepts and structures, but also the integration of

the needed reflection for the understanding of

mathematical reasoning process.

Many psychologists and educators have studied

and investigated the influence of narratives and

stories during child development phases. It is now

very clear that narrative can be an important vehicle

to structure the knowledge and to help in the process

of meaning making (Mott et al., 1990). From

Malone’s perspective (Malone, 1984) narrative plays

a central role in memory by providing an organising

structure for the knowledge.

Other educators complement such ideas by

arguing that imagination is a crucial and central

factor to promote an effective learning process. The

use of narrative to convey such an important

knowledge as Mathematics can be seen as quite

relevant and appropriate. In fantasy and make-

believe contexts, children allow to explore new

situations, since they know that in such contexts they

are in a safe environment. Additionally, make-

believe activities are repetitive by nature so it is

possible for a child to practice multiple times the

same situation before achieving a proficiency level

on a new concept.

Our aim is to develop such an intelligent learning

environment for young children aging from 5-7

years old (pre-schoolers and 1

graders) who are

challenged with new situations as: acquiring new

knowledge, finding their places in a new school

environment with more rules and to social relate

with their teachers and colleagues.

By experiencing new and varied situations and

by sharing multiple points of view, children can

develop new skills that might help them to face the

real life problems. Also, by adding fantasy and

imagination to a learning environment, we reach the

concept of drama education (Bolton, 1998).

3 THE ENVIRONMENT –

MATHS4KIDS

The environment was design in such a way that

children interact with it and have the chance to

strengthen their Maths concepts, by gaining

knowledge about the geometry, the numbers and the

numerical relations through the use of the

technology. Besides the maths concepts, we tried to

instil the concept of mass/weight of an object

associated with its numerical value.

The project was developed with a participatory

design approach (Schuler and Namioka, 1993)

through several meetings were promoted with

Preschool Educators. Their role was basically to

choose the pedagogical content of the application

and to validate the interaction forms used. The

content chosen was:

 Discovering the numbers:

o Identify the number and the counting

system;

o Quantify objects and express the

cardinality;

o Develop numerical capacities.

 Numerical Relations:

o Relations between numbers;

o Develop arithmetic skills.

 Identify/Categorise objects

 Temporal and Logical Sequencing

 Concept of mass/weight of objects.

Fifteen children participated in intermediate and

final usability tests – aged from 5 to 7 years old.

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336

3.1 Mini-games

Six mini-games were developed which include

counting units and tens, ordering by size or age:

arithmetic calculations by taking into account the

weight of the objects – using a virtual scale -,

construction of object sequences and grouping

objects based on categories and number of the

objects. For global coherence of the application, the

interface, interaction and reinforcing mechanisms

were maintained the same in the main menu and

mini-games. In case of needing help, a video is

always available.

In Figure 1, the mini-game joins the concepts of

counting and association by comparison. It consists

in putting the right number of a specific vegetable in

the bag. It is possible to break the bag - if the

necessary strength is applied in it. In this case the

bag breaks and the vegetables fall and the child

player receives less points. The bag breaks in a non-

deterministic way, and it is possible to break in

multiple points due to the dynamics imposed to the

bag. Although not trivial this discovery (usually only

the youngest discover it spontaneously) it is an

amusing feature of the application.

Figure 1: Counting and Grouping.

4 EVALUATION

The tests were performed with a group composed by

15 children aging from 5 to 7 years old. The children

were arranged in groups of three to interact with the

application. The number of elements in a group was

imposed by the lack of time to conduct an individual

interaction with each child. The teacher was asked to

provide groups with mixed ages (children ages

varied from 5 to 7 years old) and also with mixed

personalities and development skills.

In this first prototype we assessed only the

acceptance of the different exercises by the children

and also a new interaction approach. In terms of

interaction the approach is quite challenging for the

children – and even for adults – since it is based on

Physics Laws. Both issues were successfully

evaluated by the children although the way of

interaction was more appropriated for the oldest

ones.

Sometimes, an interesting event occurred when

some children felt frustrated they started to amuse

themselves by moving the objects around and

watching the way they collide. In these cases, the

Preschool educator had to intervene and call their

attention to the main goal of mini-game. The oldest

children were able to solve the mini-games in a very

fast and spontaneous way.

From corporal signs, we were able to evaluate

the interest shown by the children, which were

always high due mostly to the engaging colours, to

the interaction of the objects between themselves,

and the sounds played for specific actions. When

children solved the problems correctly, they were

supported with a positive message and a sound. To

what concerns to negative feedback, the strategy was

to underline the incorrect results with red colour,

avoiding the use of negative messages.

By assessing the acceptance of each exercise we

wanted to guarantee that children are able to

recognise the mini-games that are presented and that

from this point forward we can enhance the

application with the narrative approach.

5 ADDING STORYTELLING

The main idea is that the mathematical concepts may

be introduced in the form of an interesting plot

where children play a specific role – by choosing a

character to control - and alone or collaboratively

with other children find the solution of a mystery or

a problem. For the creation of the story to be played

by the children there are also different possibilities

since it can be:

─ Scripted by the teacher: This mode is quite

interesting from a teachers’ perspective because it

allows them to define the concepts to be presented to

the children. From another perspective, this poses an

additional challenge for the development of the

Intelligent Learning Environment (ILE), since it

must accommodate the possibility of teachers –

usually without technical skills – to introduce

concepts and learning objectives in pre-defined story

templates.

─ Interactive: This mode poses also very

interesting challenges, since it allows the children to

HAND IN HAND - Maths and Storytelling together in an Educational Game

337

interact with an environment that covers a wide

range of mathematical topics but their progression

depends only on their own decisions/actions within

the environment. It is also possible to envision the

introduction of a tutor like character that guides the

children during the interaction.

In the following subsection, a small example of the

environment is going to be presented, with the aim

of clarifying how the application is going to be

developed.

5.1 An Example

Children gather together around the table enter

Maths4Kids: “Welcome, to the Mathematical land...

today, we will start with a story about our friends Mr.

Onion, Mr. Tomato and Miss Carrot. They decided to go

to the park but they need your help to get there!”

From

this piece of information, children should be

introduced to the story scenario and they should

discover what they have to do to compose a

sequence with the vegetables to reach the park. In

order to arrange the vegetables in the correct

sequence, children should pay attention to the piece

of the story that the vegetable is telling whenever it

is picked.

6 TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION

The development of this prototype was achieved by

using Microsoft´s XNA Framework and Microsoft´s

XNA Game Studio 3.1, which enables a way to

easily create video games for Xbox 360, Windows

and Zune by using the optimized cross-platform

libraries based on the .NET Framework in the C#

programming language.

7 CONCLUSIONS

This paper presents an application that portrays a set

of mini-games that cover initial Maths concepts, and

explores the idea of enhancing such application with

a storytelling approach. With this approach we argue

that it is possible to promote an engaging learning

environment where children are motivated to

explore new theoretical concepts just by interacting

within an already known environment/activity –

story creation or role playing. Some initial

evaluation tests were performed which guarantee us

a set of results that will allows in the future to

compare with the storytelling version of the

application.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank to TutorTime, in

particular to Sofia Valente for the availability and

collaboration provided during the project. Also a big

thank you to all the children involved that helped us

to achieve this preliminary prototype.

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