{"id":11025,"date":"2024-09-18T18:56:32","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T18:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/devtech\/?page_id=11025"},"modified":"2024-10-02T18:01:05","modified_gmt":"2024-10-02T18:01:05","slug":"sage","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/devtech\/beit-midrash\/sage\/","title":{"rendered":"SAGE: StoryTelling Agent Generation Environment\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Storytelling is an ancient art that allows us to share experiences, thoughts and values. In the oral tradition, stories were told in a conversational way by the elders in order to give indirect advice and communicate morals. Each culture or community has its repertoire of inspirational stories or “literature of the spirit” (Campbell, 1988) that serves similar pedagogical functions as myths. The power of this kind of storytelling lies in enabling the listeners to learn more about themselves by constructing personal meaning and interpretation. SAGE (Storytelling Agent Generation Environment), allows children to design their own sage storyteller agents, create their own data-bases of inspirational stories, and interact with them.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Rabbi” and “Tao” are two examples of sage storyteller agents built with SAGE. “Rabbi” simulates an old rabbi that always has a Hasidic story at hand related to a user’s problems. He uses Yiddish words, signals the turn-taking with “Nu” and uses traditional Jewish ways to avoid answering precise questions. For example, by presenting himself as an old rabbi who is becoming deaf, he maintains the suspension of disbelief when the parser fails to parse user’s personal story. Both “Rabbi” and “Tao” construct their “persona” through the different conversational turns in order to set a socio-cultural context without limiting the interaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here, the SAGE storytellers were embedded in a robotic toy rabbit. By wearing a specific hat, the unique storyteller persona was called upon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Project Example<\/summary>
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“Rabbi Grois” is an example of a SAGE storyteller built by children. He constructs his “personae” through the different conversational turns in order to set a socio-cultural context without limiting the interaction and breaking expectations. It uses Ydische words and a language that presents himself as a Hasidic Rabbi and gives to the user contextual information about his family story, his age, his actual job. For example, as presenting himself as an old rabbi who is becoming deaf, he maintains the suspension of disbelief when the parser fails to parse user’s input.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To construct a believable Rabbi, as a part of her MA thesis at the MIT Media Lab, Dr. Bers revisited her experience in the Jewish community in Argentina and interviewed Rabbi Posner, from Boston, and an expert on Jewish storytelling, Rabbi Moshe Waldoks. The computational model behing SAGE follows the seven phases of the interaction between a rabbi and a disciple. However, it does not represent the exact model of the sequence followed in the “Yehidut” (interview between Rebbe and Hasid -discipule-) but respects the spirit of the encounter and the characteristics that are universal to other counseling through storytelling experiences. For a detailed study on Hasidism, see “Spiritual Intimacy. A study of Counseling in Hasidism”<\/em> by Zalman Meshullam Schachter-Shalomi. The Hasidic Stories used by the system have been taken from: Epstein, Lawrence J. A treasury of Jewish Inspirational Stories. New Jersay, Jason Aronson Inc., 1993 and Newman, Louis I. Hasidic Anthology. New York, Schocken Books, 1963.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/details><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Related Papers<\/summary>
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Bers, M. & Cassell, J. (2000). Children as Designers of Interactive Storytellers: Let Me Tell You a Story about Myself.<\/a> In Dautenhahn, K. (Ed.) Human Cognition and Social Agent Technology <\/em>(pp. 61-83). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bers, M. (1999). Narrative Construction Kits: Who am I? Who are you? What are we?<\/a>: Proceedings of Narrative Intelligence Fall Symposium,<\/em> (pp. 44-51).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bers, M. & Cassell, J. (1999). Interactive Storytelling Systems for children: using technology to explore language and identity.<\/a> Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 9<\/em>(2), 603-609.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bers, M. (1998). A constructionist approach to values through on-line narrative tools<\/a>: Proceedings of International Conference for the Learning Sciences,<\/em> (pp. 49-55).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Umaschi, M. (1996). Rabbi: exploring the inner world through stories. <\/a>Proceedings of AAAI \u201996<\/em>, (p. 1413). Student Abstracts, Volume II, MIT Press (ps format).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Umaschi, M. & Cassell, J. (1997). Storytelling Systems: Constructing the Innerface of the Interface:<\/a> Proceedings of Cognitive Technologies<\/em> (pp. 98-108). IEEE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Umaschi, M. (1997). Soft Toys with Computer Hearts: Building Personal Storytelling Environments<\/a>: Proceedings of CHI\u201997<\/em>, (pp. 20-21). ACM, (HTML format).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Glos, J. & Umaschi, M. (1997). Once Upon an Object: Computationally-augmented Toys for Storytelling:<\/a> Proceedings of ICCIMA \u201997 (pp. 245-249). Gold Coast, Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Umaschi, M. (1996). SAGE Storytellers: Learning about Identity, Language and Technology:<\/a> Proceedings of ICLS \u201996 <\/em>(pp. 526-531). AACE.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/details><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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