DEVELOPMENT AND PILOTING OF KIDSPACE


Figure 1: Kidspace Title Screen


The second phase of the "Multimedia and Literature Teaching and Learning" project focused on the development of prototypical tools and applications that provided explicit on-line support for student construction, reflection, and discourse around texts (Meskilll & Swan, in press a). The first of these, Kidspace (Figure 1) was designed for students in grades one through six. It was developed by a design team of five graduate students of education and the project directors. It evolved from a set of simple, stand-alone ToolBook applications which were individually tested in the laboratory with child volunteers, formatively evaluated by the design team, and recursively developed into the four "spaces" available to students in the current version of the application.


Figure 2: Kidspace Universe

Kidspace was designed around the metaphor of a universe populated by individual students' worlds (Figure 2). Students can "visit" each other's worlds as readers, but they can only create (author) in their own. Each world supports a variety of personal spaces in which students are encouraged to recursively construct, explore, write, reflect, and otherwise express their feelings about their own and others' work. The application also provides a public area for collaborative reflection and discourse.
The spaces in Kidspace are accessed through each student's control panel (Figure 3). From this panel, one can move to any one of the five spaces provided -- Cricket Village , the Y Dimension , and the Exploratory Mission are personal constructive spaces; Communications and the Captain's Log are public and private reflective spaces, respectively. Each of these five spaces is described in greater detail below:


Figure 3: Kidspace Control Panel

Cricket Village (Figures 4 and 5) was designed as a space for students to explore dialog and narrative. It consists of nine colorful woodland scenes which are intricately detailed and populated by whimsical creatures. Students choose scenes and give them meaning by adding narrative text and dialog (in cartoon-like bubbles which students can position within a scene). Students can develop several such scenes to produce extended narratives. In addition, both reflective spaces (Communications and the Captain's Log ) are always available so that students (and teachers) can publicly and/or privately comment on both their own and others' Cricket Village creations.


Figure 4: Opening Screen of Cricket Village


Figure 5: Mushroom Glen in Cricket Village

The Y Dimension was designed as a space for students to explore character, dialog, and plot development. It provided children with tools for creating their own stories by cutting and pasting cartoon characters against a black background to create scenes, and writing dialog (in bubbles) for the characters and narrative (in a text box) to tell their story. As in Cricket Village , Communications and the Captain's Log were ubiquitously available within the Y-Dimension so that stories thusly created could be publicly and privately commented on. Serious technical problems, however, developed around this space during the early classroom trials, and it has been eliminated from the current version of Kidspace.
Of the three constructive spaces, the Exploratory Mission (Figure 6) is the most open-ended. It provides students with a writing space in which they can develop a poem, story, report, or commentary. In one of the current versions of Kidspace , students are also provided with two sets of pictures from which they can choose to illustrate their writings. In the other version, students use standard ToolBook authoring tools to develop graphics and animations of their own. The Exploratory Mission was designed as a space where students could explore their own writing and/or develop reflections on their off-line reading (and other) experiences. Communications and the Captain's Log are always additionally available so that students (and teachers) can comment on both their own and others' Exploratory Mission writings.


Figure 6: Exploratory Mission Page

Much like a bulletin board, Communication s (Figure 7) is a public space where students can carry on conversations and comment on work done in the other public spaces (all spaces except the Captain's Log ). It can be accessed at any time from any of the Kidspace spaces, as well as from the control panel. Communications was designed to support on-line discourse among students (and teachers) about particular works. It can also be used by a teacher to elicit discourse about a particular work or topic.


Figure 7: Communications

The Captain's Log (Figure 8) is a private response space for recording reflections about one's own or others' work. Each student has their own private Captain's Log which they can access from any point in Kidspace to record such responses without worrying about other students seeing them. It is thus designed to function like an on-line response journal. Reflections recorded in the Captain's Log can be copied into Communications if and when a student wants to make them public.


Figure 8: the Captain's Log

Table 7
Kidspace Spaces in Relationship to Response-Based Criteria
What counts as knowledgeRole of the textRole of the studentsRole of the teacher
Cricket VillageKnowledge is discovered and created through story telling; visual elements are used to elicit students' explorations.Students generate text around pictures; connections between these writings and other experiences can be made and elaborated.Students are the discoverers and creators of meanings in pictures and texts.The teacher can value and facilitate students' creative processes through on-line and off-line conversations.
The Y DimensionKnowledge is discovered and created through students' story telling; visual elements are combined to create and explore meanings.Students generate stories by combining graphics and text; connections between these and other experiences can be made and elaborated.Students are the discoverers and creators of meanings in pictures and texts.The teacher can value and facilitate students' creative processes through on-line and off-line conversations.
Exploratory
Mission		 Students represent their personal knowledge and understandings through creatively combining mediaTexts and graphics are generated amd responded to by students; these, in turn, can be responded to both online and off.Students are the discoverers and creators of meanings in pictures and texts.The teacher can value and facilitate students' creative processes through on-line and off-line conversations.
Communications Knowledge about student works is collaboratively constructed thorugh on-line discourse Students reflectively respond to texts, whixch are cast in the role of catalysts around which conversation can build.Students are encouraged to respond to texts and to develop and defend their own interpretations in reflective discourse. Teachers are cast as collaborators and facilitators in the processes of meaning making through reflective, on-line discourse.
Captain's Log Personal knowledge is developed through reflection on student works.Text is the vehicle through which personal meanings are developed and explored. Students are encouraged to respond to texts and to develop and defend their own interpretations. Teachers are cast asfacilitators of student reflections.
In general, then, Kidspace was designed to emphasize the personal knowledge, reflection, and construction of texts and the personal and social construction of meanings around them that we found virtually disregarded by commercial multimedia/hypermedia applications. In short, it was designed to instantiate response-based criteria concerning knowledge, the role of the text, the role of the student, and the role of the teacher. How each of these criteria were accommodated and complemented by each of the spaces within the Kidspace application is outlined in Table 7. Table 8 summarizes the response-based features instantiated in the various Kidspace spaces. It shows that all the features identified as supportive of response-based practice, except the presentation of background knowledge, can be found somewhere in Kidspace , and the latter could be developed in the Communications or Exploratory Mission spaces by interested teachers and/or students.

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Table 8
Response-Based Features Found in Kidspace Spaces
Cricket Village
Y Dimension
Exploratory Mission
Communications
Captain's Log
transparent format
*
*
*
*
*
intertextuality & juxtapostion
*
*
*
*
*
facility to share responses
-
-
-
*
-
support for non-text responses
-
-
*
-
-
facility to make links
-
-
-
*
*
support for envisionment
*
*
*
*
*
access to multiple perspectives
*
*
*
*
-
support for discourse
-
-
-
*
-
support for student ownership
*
*
*
*
*
provis. of background knowledge
-
-
-
-
-
facility to share author's craft
*
*
*
-
-

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