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SABIO is an online storytelling environment specifically targeted at Hispanic children in an effort to broaden the scope of narrative technology. SABIO encourages users to experiment with all three roles of a story enthusiast: the storyteller, the story editor and the story listener. The system is a tool for children to create their own storytellers, as well as interact with storytellers created at a different time and space. Some of the questions that the system encourages children to consider when creating a storyteller include:

· How are stories shared?
· What makes someone share a story?
· What is important about a story?
· How do stories relate?
· What are important traits that a storyteller should have?

SABIO was developed during November 2000 by Timothy Bickmore, Ian Gouldstone, and Jean Barnwell. It was developed from Kimiko Ryokai's and Aalok Shah's Spring 1999 project WISE (the Web Interactive Storytelling Environment). WISE itself was a project that stemmed from Marina Umaschi Bers' 1997 thesis on SAGE (Storyteller Agent Generation Environment). The focus of this most recent development to the system was threefold:

· Translation of the system from English to Spanish.
· Creation of a more kid-friendly interface, and
· Development of a hands-free administration

Below you can find some examples of characters created at a workshop in Costa Rica. There are many more examples accessible from the main SABIO site at http://ettin.media.mit.edu Questions and comments can be addressed to sabio@media.mit.edu

If you would like to use the system in your classroom or organization, just let us know.