eCIRCUS develops a new approach in the use of ICT to support social and emotional learning within Personal and Social Education (PSE). For the general background of the eCIRCUS project, please visit the project website

The project delivers Virtual Learning Environment for emotional and social learning. One of our software showcases is FearNot! - focusing on anti-bullying education.

You can now download FearNot! from our project website and install it in your home computer.

In addition to introducing FearNot! to you, the research team from the School of Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire (including Steve and Megan) is very interested in the written narrative (story-telling) produced by children who participate in SNAAP activities.

In order to find out how computer software with intelligent virtual characters can help children with autism in creating stories we developed different software called the Virtual Agent Story Interface (VASI). During the period from November 2008 to January 2009 we will bring this software along when visiting SNAAP. Click here to see the schedule of our visits.

After children use the FearNot! software and observe how bullying stories unfold with virtual characters in a virtual environment, they will use VASI to re-write the stories. VASI allows children to see the contents of a story character's memory which shows the character's goals, actions and feelings at specific moments in the stories previously seen in FearNot. We hope VASI can increase children's understanding of the characters' internal states (e.g. emotions, goals, intentions) which is important to understanding others (theory of mind). Our expections are that VASI may help the children to learn how to create better narratives, in the sense of "meaningful narratives" that are important for social interaction and communication with others.

How to use VASI?
CLICK HERE

Steve