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TOWARDS DIGITAL STORYTELLING FOR CHILDREN

THE EVOLUTION OF STORYTELLING FROM THE MIDDLE AGES

1990'S: A DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT

TOWARDS DIGITAL STORYTELLING

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Orbis Sensualium Pictus

 

1600 - - Enjoyable Learning

In 1685, Johann Amos Comenius, Bishop of the Unity of Czech Brethren, wrote a landmark book, the first non-alphabet picture book meant to educate children, Orbis Sensualium Pictus or The Visible World; or, A Picture and Nomenclature of All the Chief Things That are in the World. As a teacher, Comenius wanted children to experience the world firsthand and he took them out into nature to do so. He also wanted to encourage the study of Latin. In the Orbis he wrote down what the children saw in simple sentences in both Latin and in their native language. He illustrated the descriptions and explanations. The book was so popular with children of all classes it was used for over 100 years. (Its popularity could be attributed to an increased complexity in content-- two languages as well as illustrations, and to its "firsthand" point of view, which brings it closer to the reader. There is a similarity here to the complexity of the learning packages available for the computer today.)

At about the same time, perhaps in counterpoint to the puritan ethic of the time, the philosopher John Locke was working with the notion that children might benefit from books written not only to educate them morally, but also to encourage their reading. In his Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), he wrote that they should not "be hindered from being children, nor from playing and doing as children...They love to be busy, change and variety are what they delight in; curiosity is but an appetite for knowledge, the instrument nature has provided to remove ignorance"( qtd. in Demers & Moyles 77). He found a dearth of books for children which encouraged learning and recommended books such as Reynard the Fox and Aesop's Fables.