narrative virtual environment for children

Judy Robertson

Judith Good

ICCS

OLIT

School of Informatics

College of Education

University of Edinburgh

University of New Mexico

2 Buccleuch Place

106 Education Office Building

Edinburgh EH8 9LW

Albuquerque, NM 87131-1231

In a recent report by the UK Teachers Evaluating Educational Multimedia (TEEM) project, teachers and parents recognize that children develop conversation, discussion and thinking skills by playing and collaborating around computer games [1] . As an indication that this recognition is becoming more widespread, two conferences were held in the UK last year in conjunction with the Game On museum exhibition, which brought together educators and games designers. Although teacher attendees were enthusiastic about the potential of computer games, there was much debate about how to include games. into an already crowded curriculum . While representatives of the computer games companies acknowledged that their technology could have educational value, they confirmed that their main focus is on developing entertainment applications.

ABSTRACT

Children find computer games extremely motivating and are often prepared to devote large amounts of leisure time to playing them . UK educational policy makers and practitioners have recently started to explore the educational potential of computer games and to consider how their motivational features can be harnessed within the curriculum . This paper describes a fully implemented virtual role-playing environment, Ghostwriter, designed for educational drama development and writing instruction . Ghostwriter was developed using the commercial game engine Unreal and therefore has the same high quality graphics and audio which children are accustomed to playing with at home . Two separate field studies with Ghostwriter have shown the educational value of the system and have confirmed that children are extremely motivated by it Keywords Narrative, virtual environments, computer educational drama, design guidelines

The TEEM report states that there is currently a mismatch between the UK curriculum and game content. This problem could be addressed by developing games which specifically meet educational needs. This paper describes Ghostwriter, a computer game developed using commercial games technology . Ghostwriter was designed to develop writing skills as well as foster personal and social development and ethical decision making . Furthermore, it was designed in accordance with the Scottish National Curriculum guidelines, and results of a field study with Ghostwriter demonstrate that it has benefits for those story writing skills deemed important by the guidelines .

games,

INTRODUCTION

Computer games are extremely popular with children, as evidenced by the fact that they devote considerable amounts of their free time to playing them (for a review of children's game playing habits see [1]) . Some types of games, such as simulations and real-time strategy games, require complex problem solving; while others require fast reactions and co-ordination . Some adventure games or first person shooters involve players as participants in an interactive story. Computer games can be absorbing and engaging - which suggests that they could be fertile grounds for learning . Although there has been negative press coverage of computer games in the past, the results of studies in the area do not confirm concerns relating to violence and anti-social behaviour [2] [3]. In fact, research based on in-depth interviews of UK teenagers found that the interviewees generally had healthy attitudes to computer games, and often used gaming as a social activity [4].

The Ghostwriter game is described in the next section, followed by a description of key design guidelines used in the project . Children's reactions to the system are recounted, along with a summary of the educational evaluation in the CHILDREN'S EXPERIENCES WITH GHOSTWRITER section. The paper ends with conclusions drawn from the Ghostwriter project and a summary of ongoing related work . GHOSTWRITER OVERVIEW

Ghostwriter was adapted from Unreal, the commercial first person shooter game, at the University of Edinburgh. Unreal, published by Epic Megagames in 1998, is shipped free with the editor (UnrealEd), scripting language (Unrealscript), and the game engine (the Unreal Engine), which were used to create the game . The Unreal engine is considered to be one of the best first-person

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(c) ACM 2003 .ISBN 1-58113-732-X/03/07 . .$5.00.

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and record sound samples for key plot points . For' example animations and sounds, as well as a more complete description of the environment, see [9] .

shooter engines available (along with the Quake 3 engine) because of its superior graphics and powerful scripting language . It has been licensed by other games developers for games such as Wheel of Time, Duke Nukem Forever and Deus Ex . Unreal is currently very inexpensive at E5 per copy (although the next version Unreal 2 is £40 per copy)

As well as being suitable for commercial games projects, Unreal is an excellent virtual environment research vehicle because it abstracts the high level aspects of the game, such as character control, from the low level graphics and audio implementation . This allows the researcher to concentrate on the high level research agenda without devoting extensive development time to creating a 3D world from scratch. Unreal is currently being used in a number of research projects . For example, the Liquid Narrative Group at North Carolina State University are working on an interactive version of Beowulf, the VRND project have created a 90% accurate architectural model of Notre Dame cathedral; and Sykes [5] has used Unreal for the development of software tools to assist users in,finding their way around virtual worlds . Other academic _projects which have attempted to create their own 3D virtual environments have encountered technological problems which have detracted from the research itself. For example, Teatrix [6] is a 3D virtual environment designed for children's dramatic role-play. Teatrix was created by an academic research team using Java 313, and the graphics and interaction style are less immersive due to the constraints of the technology . Given that theories of presence in virtual environments predict that users are more likely to subjectively feel as if they are "really there" when the audio-visual fidelity of the environment is high ; and given that pupils are more likely to emotionally invest in drama when they feel that they are "really there" in the drama world, the use of high quality commercial games technology seems particularly important in the domain of drama [9] .

Figure 1 A scene from Ghostwriter: Fred and his dog. In the scenario currently implemented in Ghostwriter, the children play the roles of a brother and sister named Jenny and Daniel . They have been asked by their Grandmother to find her old friend Fred, who lives in the castle on Kirkmystery Hill . When the children enter the virtual castle, they meet Fred, but discover that he cannot leave the castle because he is protecting it from an evil force. Lady Searle, an evil sorceress, is trying to take over the castle . Unbeknownst to Fred, Lady Searle has already infiltrated the castle, disguised as a book (note that both Fred and Lady Searle are played by the role play leader) . In an interesting twist to the plot, Jenny and Daniel are separated almost immediately after entering the castle . Jenny encounters Fred, a good, but initially gruff, character, while Daniel meets Lady Searle in her book disguise .

In a Ghostwriter session, pairs of children engage in computer-mediated role-play, with each child taking on the role of a character in the story. A (human) role-play leader plays the part of the other story characters and, in role, encourages the children to become emotionally involved in the story and discuss difficult decisions with each other.

Brother and sister eventually meet, and need then to make sense of their contradictory experiences . Jenny will know that Lady Searle can disguise herself, however Daniel will not know the book's true identity, and may have grown to trust Lady Searle . Further conflict will be injected into this situation by Lady Searle's efforts to convince Daniel to believe her over his sister. Ultimately, the children must decide whether to kill Lady Searle to prevent her taking control ~of the castle .

The role-players can control their characters' movements in the virtual world, allowing them to run, swim and jump . In this version, characters can communicate with the other characters by sending and receiving typed messages. Pilot work has also been carried out on a version in which the children communicate using walkie talkies. A scene from Ghostwriter is shown in Figure l . The models for the games characters were acquired from a company called Geometricks. These models were then animated using motion capture data from children (for the Jenny and Daniel characters) and from professional actors (for Fred and Lady Searle). The advantage of using motion capture is that the animations can portray emotion, and the personality of the characters, yet still be created relatively quickly. The actors also helped to script

The interactivity in the Ghostwriter environment comes from the flexibility of the human role-play leader, who can creatively adapt the plot to suit what the children do and say. The leader knows the bones of the plot, and the characters of Fred and Lady Searle, and improvises around those basic ingredients . Most of the time the children react to the situation and characters in fairly predictable ways ; that is, most of them like Fred, and dislike Lady Searle when they discover her evil ways . The role-play leader's task is then to encourage the children to express these feelings and think about their course of action, using language and vocabulary

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appropriate to the children's own language . If the children do or say something which is unusual in light of the role-play leader's previous experiences in the game with other children, she will have to rapidly come up with a response which fits the technical constraints of the environment as well as the character and plot constraints .

As the goals and personalities of these characters conflict, the story ingredients have the potential for interesting clashes which require resolution by the players.

THE DESIGN OF GHOSTWRITER

It would be disorienting for a user to find herself roleplaying a character she knows nothing about, or to gradually discover who the character is from clues in the game . For a focused, dramatic role-playing session, the role-player should know beforehand why her character is in the game situation, and what the character wants to achieve during the game . That way, the user will start playing the game with some knowledge about her character and this should help her assume the role .

Guideline 2: Users should have some background to the story before entering the environment.

Ghostwriter is based on educational drama theory, and was designed in collaboration with teachers, actors and professional storytellers . Pilot testing with the intended user group took place before carrying out two field studies . The design of the plot was evaluated after the first field study as a result of an analysis of the game log files and discussion of the game with users (see [7]) . This led to the redesign and refocusing of some features of the game before the second field study.

In commercial games, the introduction to the story often takes the form of a movie sequence. The user watches a movie scene unfold between games characters, which motivates the user's goal in the game . Cut scenes are occasionally- also used to develop a story line after the user has completed a section of the game . There is a curious metaphysical glitch in this style of plotting in that the hero is alternatively controlled by the user and the producer of the movie clips. The transfer from user control to a movie clip and back is often jarring. For this reason, the pupils should consistently control the same character for the duration of the game .

This section describes some general guidelines which were used for the design of the Ghostwriter content. The guidelines were derived from study of educational drama techniques, in particular those used in story drama [8] . Techniques used by the successful children's author JK Rowling were also considered . Guideline 1 : Story ingredients should be built into the environment.

Building a story into the environment places structure on the role-players' interactions, and gives purpose to their exploration . Once their initial infatuation with the computer game has waned, children will need concrete goals for a role playing session. They will need to know about the character they are playing, why the character is in the environment, and the goal of the character, otherwise the role-playing will be unfocused and less effective.

This guideline is also based on educational approaches to teaching creative skills . Both drama and writing teachers design exercises to structure creative tasks in order to simplify them . In story drama, basing a role play session on a book or story is very common [8]. The teacher may tell the class part of a story and stop at an exciting part. He then would lead a role paying session to improvise what might happen next . The children would assume the roles of characters (or groups of characters) from the story and, based on what they understood about the characters and situation so far, would act out an appropriate scenario . This exercise would help the children become more intimate with the characters and achieve a better understanding of them . Although the teacher might finish reading or telling the original story, he would show the children that stories may have many endings and that, if the ending they created is true to the characters, then it is as valid as the author's ending .

The environment should contain the raw ingredients of a story: setting, characters and enough conflict between the characters to form a plot . Characters in the environment should have personalities, motives, and histories. Some of these characters will be role-played by participants, while others will be computer controlled . As the roleplayers encounter conflicts, they will be forced to make decisions in role, which in turn increases their involvement and helps them to define the personality of their character. The role-players' attempts to resolve the conflicts they encounter will create a story. The outcome of the story should be largely determined by the interactions of the role players. On entering the virtual environment, the role-players might encounter an exciting and unstable situation which is caused by a conflict in the desires of some of the characters . What the player chooses to do should have an impact on the plot that develops . One set of story ingredients can be the basis of many different plots depending on who the role-players are, the characters they assume and the decisions they make .

Before playing Ghostwriter, the pupils are told that they will play the parts of Jenny and Daniel, who are brother and sister, and that they will have an adventure in a castle . They then listen to a recording of a message from the character's grandmother, who asks them to find her friend Fred within the castle . Granny also alerts them to the fact that something mysterious might be going on at the castle . Guideline 3: The user should be faced with difficult moral choices. "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities" [10]

In Ghostwriter, the story ingredients are the characters Fred and Lady Searle who are played by the role-play leader, and Fred's dog, who is computer controlled . The personalities of the characters were created and portrayed by pre-recordings of sound samples for key plot points .

Computer games are not renowned for their morality . Often the whole point of a computer game is to commit

87

virtual acts which would be considered immoral in real life . In contrast, one aspect of educational drama work is ethics . Drama can be used to help children explore difficult ethical problems through simulation . A fictional moral dilemma, when treated thoughtfully with the help of a teacher, can help children to arrive at a value system of their own. An important point here is that the later stages of moral development are usually seen to involve autonomy . A morally well developed person will have considered, individual opinions on what is right and wrong, and these may or may not correspond to the teachings of organisations such as the Church or the opinions of other people [11] . There are many morally ambiguous circumstances to which there is not a clear cut "correct" solution, and it is important to help children to think about these cases carefully and come to their own conclusions .

While including a moral element in an educational roleplaying environment is a reasonable goal in its own right, it can also make the adventure more exciting. As in story drama, the participants will be more engaged in the stories if their decisions have significant potential to affect the outcome of the plot . So much the better if they are decisions which affect the welfare of the other roleplayers and characters . Having said that, children may be tempted to choose the easiest option so that they can rush on and finish the game . The environment should be designed in such a way that the outcomes require equal amounts of effort to achieve. It is the job of the role-play leader to coax the role-players into making creative decisions rather than quick, stock decisions.

There is no reason to restrict the role-players to a safe, comforting or unchallenging environment . It should have enough psychological conflict to make it interesting and involving. The Harry Potter books depict a series of battles in the war of good against evil . Harry's life is endangered on more than one occasion, but always as a major plot event, and this will usually be of considerable importance to the reader . Part of the excitement of the books comes from the reader's attachment and concern for the characters - we really care when characters come to harm, and are compelled to read on to discover what happens to them . In a similar vein, the role-players should have the option to take part in any battles which concern them . Roleplayers should have opportunities to defend themselves from their enemies, although there should perhaps also be a safety net of other good characters who can help them out of difficult situations . In the Harry Potter books, there is a general theme of Harry's own efforts saving himself and other people . The Ghostwriter environment is designed so that the child characters can't be fatally injured, although they can be menaced by frightening looking monsters . They have the means to defend themselves against the dangers they encounter, and in the end, their actions. save the castle and Fred from the threat of Lady Searle . Pupils seemed to enjoy this aspect of the game - one girl commented that she felt like a hero when she saved the castle . The goal of encouraging pupils to value the virtual lives of the game characters seemed to succeed in that even although most opted to kill Lady Searle, they were able to give reasons for doing so (see [7] for a full account and analysis).

A particularly captivating example of an ethical dilemma from the children's story "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" [I2] occurs when Harry has to decide whether to let his friends to kill a character who was instrumental in the death of his parents. In the end, he decides that he doesn't want his friends to have the villain's blood on their hands, so he is merciful . This is an example of a morally ambiguous situation which requires serious thought .

Guideline 5: Virtual objects should be personally meaningful to characters .

If objects are to be included in the environment, they should be important to the plot as well as meaningful to characters . An annoying first person shooter game cliche described by O'Neil and Ocampo [13] is the number of irrelevant objects which litter the environment . Veterans of "Doom" are bound to recall the peculiar ease with which they came across new weapons, and the mysterious appearance of medical kits in random locations . Even the less violent adventure games have an emphasis on collecting material objects. An anecdotal illustration of standard gaming expectations arose when testing navigation in Unreal . After a few minutes, one user said (in disgust) "Are there no guns here?" . When assured there were no guns, he said "Well what do I have to collect, then?" . It is hard to escape from the view that games revolve around the collection, trading and use of objects, but this view detracts from characters and relationships . Plot should be driven by the desires of the characters, rather than a meaningless harvest of magical objects.

In Ghostwriter, the main plot point at which the role-play leader encourages the pupils to make an ethical decision comes at the end of the adventure. At this point, the roleplayers have to decide on the fate of Lady Searle, specifically, whether they should kill her to prevent her from taking over the castle . The role-players are encouraged to discuss their reasons with each other before taking drastic action .

Guideline 4: Virtual lives should have value. This guideline follows from the previous one. Naturally, any game which intends to promote moral growth in its users should value the lives of the game characters . The game should make clear the realistic consequences of violent actions. There has been a noticeable trend towards less killing in games recently : squad based, first person shooters such as Rainbow Six penalize players for killing innocent bystanders, and Black and White has a guardian angel character who tries to convince the player to be kind to game characters .

The "Harry Potter" books again give an example of how things could be . Rowling has resisted the temptation to pepper her stories with serendipitous, but meaningless magical devices. The most important magical plot devices are also of personal significance to Harry . The

88

best -example is his father's invisibility cloak, which as well as being extremely useful for creeping around the school at night, is one of the only links Harry has with his dead parents . There are three magical objects which the role-players encounter in Ghostwriter - a book, a purple forcefield and a blue orb . The book, which seems nice at first, turns out to be Lady Searle in disguise, an important plot point (also adapted from the Harry Potter stories) . The purple forcefield can be used to trap Lady Searle, while the blue orb can be used to kill her. These objects are given to the role-players by Fred, who impresses on the role-players that they must take them very seriously.

Guideline 6: The role-play leader should be human . In story drama, the role-play leader plays a key role . The aim of the leader is to challenge the role-players' attitudes at every turn in an attempt to get them to think deeply about the situation from their characters' point of view . The role-play leader must be inventive, responsive and wily as he thinks up new obstacles to place in the way of the participants . His use of language may elevate the language of the participants ; his portrayal of a character may move them to sympathy . The leader is there to coax the very best from the participants . Computer-mediated role-play currently has disadvantages for the role-play leader, including loss of facial expression, both in reading from the children's expressions and showing emotion through his own, and loss of voice tone . However, it has one great advantage the players cannot tell who the teacher is playing. This is also useful when the teacher switches role, as frequently happens in story drama. It is probably easier to dissociate the persona of the teacher from the persona of the character when visual and auditory cues are lost. Characters have the potential to be more believable .

Given the qualities of the role-play leader outlined above, it seems reasonable to assume that this role should be taken on by a human, rather than be computer controlled . This issue in discussed further in the CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK section.

another go at the game, and some asked if it were for sale . All of the class teachers, a learning support teacher and the head teacher tried the game, and some of them watched the children playing it . All of the teachers could see the benefit to the children . To establish the features of the game which appealed most to the children, and discover any features which they disliked, we questioned as many of the children as time permitted (twenty-nine in total) . The reasons the children had for liking Ghostwriter fell into four main categories (see Table 1) . Sending Finding Navigation Objects Other messages a character Number Of

comments

15

8

6

3

Table 1: The children's reasons for liking the game The most frequent reason for liking the game was sending messages . For example "It was really good when you had to write things to your sister.", "I liked speaking to the witch woman and sending back sarcastic messages .", "You can contact your partner." There were fifteen unsolicited comments about typing messages in twenty-nine interviews . That is, these comments were made before participants were specifically asked what they thought about sending messages . This suggests that children enjoy games which involve communication. It is encouraging that none stated that they would prefer the more traditional, violent style of game instead.

The second most frequent reason cited for liking the game was the goal of finding either Fred or the other role-player. Eight of the twenty-nine participants mentioned this e.g . "Going about looking for Fred", "You have to go and find all the people", "Looking for Fred and Daniel". Another frequent set of reasons for enjoying the game was associated with navigation around the environment . Six out of twenty-nine participants commented on navigation . Some of these comments related to the computer controlled guide characters - "The computer tells you where to go", "A book told me where to go".

In Ghostwriter, the human role-play leader plays the parts of Fred and Lady Searle . In the field study described in the next section, one of the researchers was the role-play leader. CHILDREN'S EXPERIENCES WITH GHOSTWRITER

The children also enjoyed collecting and using the limited number of objects in the game . Three people mentioned that they liked objects such as the purple forcefield . This was also a popular reason for liking commercial games.

This section describes children's opinions of Ghostwriter, and their evaluation of the features they enjoyed in it . Forty two of the sixty children who took part in the first Ghostwriter field study were interviewed in pairs after playing the game . The field study took place in a state funded primary school in the town of Kirkcaldy, Scotland . The children were between ten and twelve years old . During the interview, the researchers asked a subset of the children about their opinions on Ghostwriter, and their reflections on the game characters and events .

Other enjoyable parts of the game were : killing the witch, the graphics, the lack of gore, deciding what to do, swimming and riding in the boat . We also asked each pupil what they disliked about Ghostwriter . The comments are summarised in Table 2.

All of the children enjoyed playing the game . They thought it was "fun", "brilliant", "excellent", "really good", "great" and "cool" . Several of them asked for

No dislikes

89

Bug related

Typing Other

Number of comments

17

2

the role-play sessions and interviews afterwards confirmed that the pupils were engaged in the drama activity, empathized with the game characters, and were able to reflect on the decisions they made during the game [9] .

3

Table 2 : Reasons for disliking Ghostwriter. Seventeen of the twenty-nine children we interviewed said that they liked everything about the game . Two participants said that they disliked problems with the game that arose from bugs . Two people suggested that the typing could be simpler, and one said that she couldn't keep up with the typing . Other dislikes of the game were "I kept getting scared", "I didn't like waiting around", "I missed the boat", "I didn't like the thought of Fred as an alien thing", "I would have liked to see myself (as in `Tomb Raider')"', and "It was freaky when the witch showed up and interrupted our conversation ." .

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

The positive educational and user evaluations of Ghostwriter illustrate the benefits of' using commercial computer games technology to create educational virtual environments which are tailored to a curriculum . By using the development tools released free with relatively low cost commercial computer game such as the Unreal Editor, researchers and educational games designers can exploit the high quality audio-visual properties of current games. This allows designers to focus on the educational aspects of the system without spending time perfecting low level technical details . The result, as exemplified by Ghostwriter, can be an immersive, engaging learning environment comparable to the games which children play in their free time . Thus, although the system is designed to develop key skills in an educational curriculum, the motivational impact of the games technology is preserved.

It can be seen that most of these dislikes are fairly minor, and most could be addressed by fixing various bugs and improving the interface for typing .

The user evaluation shows that the children enjoyed playing Ghostwriter. All the children were very enthusiastic and focused while playing the game and during the interview. They enjoyed sending and receiving messages and looking for Fred and Daniel . These character oriented activities are not common in commercially available games; however, although the Ghostwriter interaction style was unfamiliar, the children enjoyed it. Furthermore, not even the children whose favourite games were extremely violent mentioned that they would prefer more gore or violence . Ghostwriter thus compares well to commercially available games. The character based game activities were at least as appealing as activities commonly found in commercial games such as shooting, dodging obstacles and collecting items.

There a number of aspects of this work which require further research . Firstly, different modes of in-game communication merit investigation. In order to do so, we recently carried out a pilot study in which pupils communicate with each other and the role-play leader via walkie-talkies [15] . We observed that the pupils appeared to become extremely involved in the role-play and seemed to have more emotional investment in the outcome of the drama than the pupils in the text-based field study described in the previous section. This may be because the pupils found it easier to express themselves and interpret each other's feelings when they could use their voices . On the other hand, communicating through typing may make the role-players more forthcoming as an effect of lowered inhibitions resulting from the anonymous nature of this form of mediated communication [9]. We intend to investigate the differences between text-based and voice-based communication in a comparative field study in the near future .

In addition to the results discussed above, which focus on the pupils' opinions of the game ; evaluations of the educational effectiveness of the game were also carried out. A primary educational aim of the system was to help pupils prepare for story writing activities by role-playing in Ghostwriter and then writing an adventure based on their experiences . In the study reported above, it was found that pupils who used their experiences during the Ghostwriter adventure as a basis for writing a story produced stories with significantly more descriptions of relationships between characters and dialogue in comparison to stories written after a normal classroom writing lesson [14] .The stories written after Ghostwriter sessions were not simply copies of the dialogue and plot lines from the role-play. Instead, pupils transformed the plot ideas and language from the role-play [7]. Language transformation is an important aspect of creative writing so the pupils' tendency to retell their experiences in their own style is beneficial to them . Analysis of log files from

Another interesting facet of the work is the use of a human role-play leader, one of the design principles mentioned in the previous section. In educational drama, the quality of the input from the drama teacher is very important, however, having a teacher work with only two pupils at a time would make Ghostwriter impractical for use in classrooms . One approach to solving this problem is to train older or more able peers to play the parts of the role-play leader . Another is to develop an automated role-play leader using techniques from artificial intelligence in education . This is an extremely difficult problem because it not only requires the development of computer controlled believable characters, but also pedagogical knowledge about which facilitation technique would be most appropriate at particular points in the role-play session. Our first step towards solving this challenging engineering problem has been to analyse the facilitation techniques used by the human role-play

' Le . She would prefer third person view to first person view . First person view caused some confusion at first because the user cannot see herself represented in the game world . In fact, it is possible to switch between first and third person in Unreal .

90

leaders in Ghostwriter field studies . This information will be of use in designing a dialogue manager capable of facilitating role-players in the virtual environment. Although it may be technically possible to develop an automated role-play leader, careful thought must be given to the situations in which it is appropriate for pupils to role-play with a computer which has no real understanding of their emotions and ethical dilemmas . For example, we are currently designing a second virtual role-play environment for a target user group of teenage pupils who are educated outwith school . These teenagers are vulnerable, have emotional difficulties and behavioural problems, and are suffering from low self esteem . The nature of the user group makes it particularly important that they have positive, enriching interactions within the virtual world - something which only a sensitive, experienced human can facilitate.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Senga Munro, Mary Seymour, Arnout . Dalkman, and the pupils and teachers of Sinclairtown and St Columba's primary schools, Scotland . The Ghostwriter project was funded by EPSRC

REFERENCES

1 . McFarlane, A., Sparrowhawk, A. and Heald Y . (2002) . Report on the educational use of computer games . Teachers Evaluating Educational Multimedia report . 2. Surgeon General (2001) . Youth Violence : A report of from General. (Available the Surgeon ) .gov/library/youthviolence www .surgeongeneral 3. Gunter, B . (1998) . The Effects of Video Games on Children : The Myth Unmasked . Sheffield Academic Press. 4. McNamee, S. (1999) . Computer and video games: special objects or everyday artefacts in children's

worlds? Presented at European Sociological Association 1999 Will Europe Work Conference, Stream V.2 . - Sociology of Childhood.

5. Sykes, J. (2000) . A learner centred interface for the navigation of complex virtual environments . In Proceedings of HCI 2000 :volume 11, Sunderland, England, September 5th-8th 2000 .

6 . Paiva, A., Machado, I . Prada, R. (2001) . Heroes, Villains, Magicians, . . . : Dramatis Personae in a Virtual Story Creation Environment. Published in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, ACM Press. 7. Robertson, J. (2001) . The effectiveness of a virtual role-play environment as a story preparation activity PhD thesis, Edinburgh University .

8. Booth, D. (1994) . Story drama. Ontario : Pembroke Publishers . 9 . Robertson, J. & Oberlander, J. (2002) . Ghostwriter : drama in a virtual environment . Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 8(I) .

.Bowling, J.K . (1998) . Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Bloomsbury, London . II .Damon, W. (1999) . The Moral Development of Children . Scientific American, August 1999, pages 56-59 . 12 . Bowling, J.K . (1999) . Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Bloomsbury, London .

13 .0'Neil, W. and Ocampo, J . (1999) . Game Cliches That Just Won't Die. Available at Gamecenter .com . 14 . Robertson, J., & Good, J. (in press) . Using a Collaborative Virtual Role-Play Environment to Foster Characterisation in Stories. Journal of Interactive Learning Research 15 . Robertson, J . (2002) Computer games - for better or 32-34. magazine . 12, worse? i3 for

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A Virtual Switch Architecture for Hosting Virtual ...
Software router virtualization offers more flexibility, but the lack of performance [7] makes ... Moreover, this architecture allows customized packet scheduling per ...

Parallax: Virtual Disks for Virtual Machines
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Narrative Sign Restrictions for SVARs
Adding narrative sign restrictions based on a small ... In fact, adding narrative ...... in Econometrics - Time Series, Lecture 7: Structural VARs,” Cambridge, Mass.

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Feb 3, 2014 - Since September we have been preparing for our Ofsted visit. While this ... and consistently good teaching – we now need to turn to PBL, and how we are to ... need to improve. They don't need to know levels – C&M don't use levels fo

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ECHO for - Virtual Community for Collaborative Care
ECHO. Colorado faculty, staff and partners have dedicated themselves to de- monopolizing knowledge in order to expand access to best-practice care.

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Virtual environments for education
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Decentralized Workflow Execution for Virtual ...
Decentralized Workflow Execution for Virtual Enterprises in Grid. Environment. Wei Tan ... grid, to serve as the process management platform. We also stress that ...