The procedural nature of interactive digital narratives and early literacy

Abstract

Interactive digital narrative (IDN) has characteristics that challenge the traditional assumptions about narratives, in this sense IDN is defined as composed of system, process, and product, in a model which highlights the procedural nature of IDN as a reactive and generative system. In this paper, we argue that educational applications of IDN can be enhanced by placing the emphasis on the procedural nature of IDN given by the specific framework. We present an authoring tool for IDN to support early literacy practices in pre- and primary school children and discuss how the preliminary findings benefit from an analysis oriented by the Specific Theory for IDN. We propose that the inclusion of system, process, and product in the analysis and the pedagogical use of IDN bring up two crucial aspects of young children’s language development: embodied cognition (specially supported by the system) and interaction (specially benefited by the process). Finally, we argue that the procedural nature of IDN can provide a learning opportunity in educational applications of IDN, whereby we highlight the prominent role of the user within the proposed IDN framework.