WISE

WISE is a Web system in which children can engage in conversation with interactive storytellers. These storytellers draw children out, listen to their personal stories, and then offer a traditional story in return. Children can also create their own WISE characters online and share them with others around the world.

WISE, like its predecessor SAGE, offers a programming environment for creating conversational rules and entering stories and story keywords. SAGE allowed children to interact with a storyteller embodied in a stuffed animal, who was capable of speaking to the child. WISE, on the other hand, concentrates on giving children around the world the opportunity to create storytellers for one another. This Web implementation is orders of magnitude faster at interacting, and offers richer programming options. The matching algorithm that determines what story is most relevant to the user's talk has also been improved, and offers a way for the user to resolve some polysemy problems with WordNet's sense information.

The system is fast at interacting because all the terms that children WISE programmers list as relevant to their stories are fully expanded into keywords when the WISE character is compiled. Using a Web interface, children can specify what things a story is about. These words can be further specified so that only the correct sense will be considered when the storyteller is compiled. This makes for more relevant matches between the interactor's story and the wise storyteller's response. It also helps children to learn about language and multiple meanings as they construct their characters.

To interact with some completed characters, click here.

WISE Project Team
Kimiko Ryokai Aalok Shah