Chapter 7 Modeling Experiences:

Capturing and Indexing Stories

Presented by:    Cassondra Bailey        Marlon Espinar            Amelia Villanueva

Analyzing Stories

In any culture, stories are often told as a way of understanding human action, intentions, and events in history. Stories help to articulate our identity.

Stories • can serve as a substitute for human experience.• are a primary medium for learning• can remind others of their own stories 

 Cased-based reasoning (CBR) is a method for representing what people know (Schank, 1990).  CBR Claims that what people know is stored in memory as stories.  People retrieve  the lessons that are told from the stories of others.

Modeling Experiences in Databases• Students can engage in conceptual change by 

modeling people's experiences or stories.

• As we collect stories, we must decide what point they teach us. Indexing tries to explain the point people make in their stories.

•  Indexes should include the themes, goals, plans, results, and lessons from the story.

o themes are the subjects o goals motivate the experienceo plans are personal approaches to reaching goalso  results describe the outcomeo the lesson is the moral of the story.

Modeling Experiences in Databases

• After determining the indexes for stories, students find excerpts in the stories that represent each index.

• When students analyze stories to understand issues, they understand complexities of any cultural perspectives.

• Jonassen and associates constructed a case library (KITE) where 1000 teachers' technology-related stories were indexed and databased.

• Stories may be retrieved so that newer teachers can learn about ways to use technology in the classroom.

• Databases enable learners to search any field to locate similar cases.

Learning by Indexing    

• Students assume the role of a researcher and index problem-solving sessions

 • Students thus learn how to solve problems by

analyzing how other people solved them. • So how does indexing work?

Learning by Indexing: How it Works  • Researching students were given the transcripts of

sessions where other students were working in pairs to design a product.

• The students working on the designs were asked to think aloud as they worked through problems with their designs.

 • The researching students would then classify the

purpose of each message according to the following categories

Learning by Indexing: How it Works  o Identify need for solving problemo identify problem, constraints, criteriao Gather information beyond that provided in the

problem statemento Generate ideas for solutionso Develop a model of the problemso Determine feasibility of solutionso Evaluate alternative solutionso Make a decisiono Communicate decision and instructions to otherso Implement solution and draw implications

Learning by Indexing: Conclusion 

• Students indexing the transcripts were learning about design by analyzing the experiences rather than the principles or theories

 • Indexing helps students become better problem

solvers.

Hypermedia Models: Biography   

• Biography - telling stories about people • Creating a hypermedia story of a famous person is a

great collaborative and interdisciplinary tool. Students can gather multimedia artifacts on: 

o the person's lifeo photographs and paintings o the time period they lived ino their cultureo their geographic location, etc. 

Hypermedia Models: Biography  

• Students can choose to present the information in many creative ways.o Diary of daily lifeo Home movies roll played and created by the

studentso Narratives o The sky is the limit!

 • Once the students have gathered the information,

added their own narratives, and placed their own creative twists on the project, they are ready for a program that will link it all together

Hypermedia Models: Biography   

• StorySpace is a hypermidia program students can use to create their biographies.o "StorySpace focuses on the process of writing,

making it easy and pleasant to link, revise, and reorganize." 

 

Hypermedia Models: Biography   

• "The level of student involvement in these biographical projects was increadible. Students came to school early and stayed late. They worked during their free periods and lunch periods. When they showed their projects to other students, teachers, and parents, their sense of ownership of the projects was overwhelming."

(Jonassen, p. 77)

Hypermedia Models:Ethnography                                               •  Enthology is the study of the customs, habits, and

social behaviors of races and peoples. 

o Students work together to investigate socially relevant problems

o They collect evidence about  those problems (ex: interviews)

o They then analyze the information and make constellations of information

o Other students can review and add their own stars of information to the main constellation group

o Students can also design and film their own narratives

Summary                                                "Stories represent the oldest and most commonly used forms of sense-making"

Stories are a part of every culture and help us understand historical events and human experiences.

Indexing stories for storage in a database is a learning experience that help students become problem solvers.

Stories are not  meant to replace forms of representation such as biographies, only supplement them.