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Programming & storytelling: opportunities for learning about coding & composition

Published: 09 June 2010 Publication History

Abstract

The focus of this paper is to investigate how writing computer programs can help children develop their storytelling and creative writing abilities. The process of writing a program---coding---has long been considered only in terms of computer science, but such coding is also reflective of the imaginative and narrative elements of fiction writing workshops. Writing to program can also serve as programming to write, in which a child learns the importance of sequence, structure, and clarity of expression---three aspects characteristic of effective coding and good storytelling alike. While there have been efforts examining how learning to write code can be facilitated by storytelling, there has been little exploration as to how such creative coding can also be directed to teach students about the narrative and storytelling process. Using the introductory programming language Scratch, this paper explores the potential of having children create their own digital stories with the software and how the narrative structure of these stories offers kids the opportunity to better understand the process of expanding an idea into the arc of a story.

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    IDC '10: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
    June 2010
    389 pages
    ISBN:9781605589510
    DOI:10.1145/1810543
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 09 June 2010

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    1. computers & writing
    2. digital storytelling

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    • (2024)Engaging Young People in the Expressive Opportunities of Digital Fabrication Through Craft-Oriented CAM-Based DesignProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3660693(1162-1176)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
    • (2024)The Wicked Problem of DropoutsExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3637129(1-8)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)Exploring the impacts of semi-automated storytelling on programmers’ comprehension of software histories2024 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00025(148-162)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2024
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