Costly props, complicated authoring technologies, and limited access to space are among the many reasons why children can rarely enjoy the experience of authoring room-sized interactive stories. Typically in these kinds of environments, children are restricted to being story participants, rather than story authors. Therefore, we have begun the development of "StoryRooms," room-sized immersive storytelling experiences for children. With the use of low-tech and high-tech storytelling elements, children can author physical storytelling experiences to share with other children. In the paper that follows, we will describe our design philosophy, design process with children, the current technology implementation and example StoryRooms.

Children enjoy interactive museum experiences, tim houses, and amusement parks, but children are not the authors of these immersive storytelling experiences. They are merely the audience or participants in an environment built by adults. We believe an important educational opportunity is being overlooked. Therefore, we have developed what we call a StoryKit that enables children to be authors, builders, and artists of their own StoryRooms, room-sized immersive experiences. Funware, hardware, and physical software are the three components that make up the StoryKit. In this paper and accompanying video, we describe the StoryKit technologies, our most recent advances in the technology, and how children create a StoryRoom by using the StoryKit.

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