Augmented Vision Lab

Abstract

The expressive movement activities in Japanese elementary education aim to help students express their emotions and thoughts through physical movement. Traditionally, teachers select themes for expressive movements from daily life and guide students, but it is challenging to employ a standardized approach to fostering students’ creativity. Consequently, instructional methods often rely on the teacher’s subjective judgment. This reliance hinders the development of students’ creativity and emotional expression while imposing a significant burden on teachers. We propose MotionTales, an educational tool integrating expressive movement activities with storytelling. This system uses a normal RGB camera and a projector to capture students’ gestures and visualize them on a screen using particle effects, and promotes creative improvisational expression. By employing interactive visualizations of diverse story-based movements, we aim to enhance a variety of physical movements to express emotions and thoughts. A user study in a Japanese elementary school has demonstrated that MotionTales increases student engagement in lessons and improves creative expression skills from both physical and linguistic perspectives. Additionally, it provides teachers with a consistent instructional framework, potentially enhancing educational quality. It integrates physical and intellectual activities, offering a new approach to storytelling and dance education in elementary schools.

Publications