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Here you'll find detailed documentation of Story Squad's many moving parts. For a more concise overview, please take a look at the project docs.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact a team member.
Story Squad is an interactive learning platform for 3rd-6th graders. Gameplay centers around a serialized children's novel by author and educator Graig Peterson, and involves reading the weekly prompt and responding with creative content. Once students submit their own work, they're paired up and entered into a bracketed competition to see whose entries come out on top!
With today's overabundance of digital media, it's hard to pull kids' focus back to literacy and the arts. Teachers and parents are already stretched thin, so it's easy to see why video games and streaming services have such a foothold in this particular demographic. Yet this age - late primary through middle school - is a particularly critical time in a child's literary and artistic development. We here at Story Squad think it's time to recapture some of those hours by working with today's technology, rather than against it.
Story Squad captures the attention of both struggling readers and gifted students by taking elements of their favorite online games and marrying them with literacy and art. Each week, students are presented with the next chapter in an exciting, serialized novel written by Graig Peterson. After reading this week's story, members of the Story Squad are prompted to respond with artistic feedback. The exact type of content students will generate varies from week to week, but includes fan fiction, illustrations, and even comic panels.
This content creation is where Story Squad pulls away from the rest of the pack. Students are encouraged to go offline in order to create their work. This gets kids away from the screen and back into the real world, where they can flex their creativity while strengthening their writing and fine motor skills. Once they finish their entries, they or their parents simply snap a picture of the student's work and submit it through the easy-to-use interface.
Story Squad uses handwriting recognition to translate the child's entries into an easy to read text snippet. Entries are moderated to ensure appropriate content, and then Story Squad's matching algorithm pairs each student up with a teammate based on grade and ability level.
Once kids are matched up, the competition begins! In the first round, each pair of students must allocate points between themselves and their teammate. While students may naturally score their own work higher, the Story Squad system naturally rewards objective self-evaluation; students quickly learn to compare the work fairly in order to maximize their overall score.
Once the first round of voting finishes, each team is pitted against another. Submissions are paired against the competition based on overall point allocation in the first round; the higher-rated of a team's two entries will pair against the higher-rated entry of their rivals, while the lower-rated entries square off.
During this phase of the competition, students are shown random pairs of entries from other matchups and given the opportunity to vote on their favorite. As judges, kids sharpen their critical thinking and communication skills by providing guided, constructive feedback on each entry they see.
When the voting finishes, points are tallied and winners declared. the winner of each matchup is decided by total number of points, leaderboards are updated, and a new week begins. New cohorts of students begin every week, meaning there's no wrong time to join. As students continue to participate, the matching system tracks their progress and adjusts to keep matchups fair and exciting so that competitors want to come back again and again.
To accomplish our goal of engaging children in the learning process, these principles are at the heart of every design decision:
- Kids want to play games. Every part of the site accessible by children should be 'gamified' such that kids don't know they're learning. The primary focus of the program is to get kids excited about reading and writing; more homework isn't what they need or want to do in their free time.
- Kids know when they're being treated "like little kids". The design of Story Squad, while child-directed, must walk a fine line. Children know when they're being infantilized; designs should be crisp, clear, and sharp. Wherever possible, look to the games kids in this age-group are currently playing and the media they're engaging with for inspiration.
- Parents need a program they can trust. Online safety is a primary concern for parents, as are results. Every part of the program needs to be laid out clearly and concisely. Parents also need to know what we're doing to protect their children's privacy while using our program, and what their rights are in relation to Story Squad content. Interfaces should be clean and professional.
- All kids deserve to participate. Story Squad wants every child to love reading and writing, whether they're a struggling student who hates to read or a gifted student bored with what's offered in the classroom. Accessibility is a primary focus, with options tailored to common disabilities. In addition, Story Squad should focus on dynamically pairing students at similar levels and rewarding effort as well as outcome.