Digital Words of Wisdom? Milia (AppleTree), An Online Platform for Digital Storytelling

This paper introduces Milia (AppleTree), an open online platform for social interactive digital storytelling, which has been developed by the Laboratory of New Technologies in Communication, Education and the Mass Media, with the support of the University Research Institute of Applied Communication (URIAC) of the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies of the University of Athens. The Milia platform aims to support the representation, presentation and collaborative creation of any sort of stories in digital format. Applications of the platform can be found in storytelling per se, in education, in publishing and, more generally, in the creation and publication of collaborative digital works. The first part of the paper is focused on a state of the art review for digital storytelling platforms and discussion of some major challenges that these platforms are attempting to face. This review is followed by a second part, which discusses the technical features and functional capabilities of the Milia platform in detail, and a third part, which reports on applications of the platform that have already been realized and digital stories that are already available online. The paper is concluded with a discussion of limitations and directions of future work for the Milia platform.

To be sure, users were to a non-negligible degree familiar with a non-linear context already long before the digital age, either in terms of having avidly read non-linear entertainment, like books at a first stage, or in terms of watching films with non-linear storytelling later on. The in medias res (in the middle of things) technique, where the story is related by way of flashbacks rather than in a chronological order is an example of what the audience has already been prepared for before the advent of digital media. 20th century films have been experimenting with non-linear stories using different techniques like parallel action (director Robert Altman), multiple points of view and no clear ending (cf. Rashomon, by Akira Kurosawa), or even different outcomes within the same movie (cf. Run Lola Run, by Tom Tykwer).
Nevertheless, the evolution of non-linear storytelling techniques has become much easier using an inherently non-linear medium like web 2.0 digital storytelling platforms. Web 2.0 stories are broad. They can represent history, fantasy, a presentation, a puzzle, a message. In this respect, narrativity is no more dependent on fictionality (Ryan, 2002).
Current online tools for digital storytelling use open structures in order to help users create or launch stories. A major issue, in this effort, is how to design a platform that integrates the user's activity into a framework that respects the basic constitutional elements of narrative, namely people facing a challenge, trying to overcome it through a sequence of events and reaching a resolution (Ryan, 2002). Still, even if storytelling in general, under the influence of digital media, is to move towards a non-linear model, such a trend does not imply that this sort of narrative coherence is to be left out of the equation. The core ideas that underlie the conception of this platform are to provide users with the ability for personal creation and social sharing of stories, together with the opportunity for experimenting with the possibilities of the branching structure of the platform in non-linear stories. Integrating creation and reading of stories in a non-linear way, the user of the Milia platform is in a sense meant to be at the same time a reader and a creator, as (s)he imports personal data and also reads the stories of others. One more design objective of the platform is to be flexible and powerful enough so as to support the representation, presentation and collaborative creation of any sort of stories in digital format, with intended applications in storytelling per se, in education, in publishing and, more generally, in the creation and publication of collaborative digital works. The vision behind development of the Milia platform has been that of being able to offer to everyone interested the means to "plant" a story and see it grow up into a fruitful tree, and thus provide an online space where creators can make stories by planting their own trees, in publicly accessible "digital fields" or in their own, private, "digital gardens". In this way the Milia platform is meant to enable the creation of a data bank of interactive stories, which readers will have the capability to extend and enrich with their own ideas and alternative versions, and thus offer itself as a new instrument at the service of free expression, knowledge and creativity.
Milia is at the same time meant to serve as a useful educational tool. Students should be able to use it, for instance, to create their own stories or read and amend the stories of their classmates, thus having the opportunity to practice and develop their language skills (grammar, syntax, vocabulary, expression), to become familiar with the art of story making and storytelling, to learn and appreciate the teamwork that will be necessary for creating and uploading their stories, and at the same time profit from hands-on experience with computers, the internet and interactive multimedia applications.
Last but not least, apart from its educational and creative aspects, Milia is also intended to offer itself as a medium for preserving stories and narratives from the past, thus safeguarding the collective creations and memories of a community. The above challenges, objectives and ambitions that have guided the conception and design of the Milia platform can be considered, in a sense, to comprise a gap in digital storytelling research and applications that this platform is intended to address. Figure 1 presents a representative welcome screen from the Milia online platform. Every apple tree holds a story, and the tree elements represent the story's structure and contents. Figure 2 presents a representative snapshot of Milia tree elements, storing images and other multimedia content. All these elements can be uploaded and edited online through a graphical interface that allows users of the platform to operate as story creators. A sample screen from the Milia GUI is presented in Figure 3.  2. An overview of digital storytelling platforms A digital storytelling platform in general is supposed to fulfil three basic principles: Collect data, edit and export a story. The difference is the level of freedom that such a platform offers to users. The Milia platform, as mentioned above, aims to support the representation, presentation and collaborative creation of any sort of stories in digital format. A story seen in Milia is interweaving different media to support a central idea.
Users are linking and orchestrating different clues to build a meaning for the reader.
Since readers and users co-exist in this digital storytelling platform it is essential for their creations to find their way to the audience in a non-linear yet coherent way. Still, given the current interest in digital storytelling and the proliferation of relevant applications, it is worth noting that there are many more storytelling platforms and tools that the interested reader could explore, and which have not been selected using the criteria above. A Pinterest topic on storytelling platforms, for instance, lists more than 25 such platforms 8 , whereas educational technology sites provide many pointers to tools that can be used for making stories based on user-generated content, and/or mashed-up content available online, and/or predefined primitives and templates 9 .

Pearltrees
Pearltrees (http://www.pearltrees.com/) is a visual and collaborative content curation tool that allows users to collect, organize and share URLs. Users can drag and organize 8 webpage https://www.pinterest.com/plotlines/storytelling-platforms/ (last accessed on 05/12/2014) 9 for instance, webpage http://elearningindustry.com/free-digital-storytelling-tools-for-teachersand-students (last accessed on 05/12/2014) link to a web page; yet at the same time it is more than that, operating as an interactive object that users can move around their visual map. Users can share a pearl with others who "pearled" the same content and discuss it. What is especially intriguing is that users can view other users' Pearltrees, which they can expand and explore at will. Pearltrees give meaning to the users' interests and help to structure their web explorations. The tree structure helps by preserving a main theme of interests for each tree, whereas its branches can underline the sense of continuity with other similar themes.

My Heritage
My Heritage (http://www.myheritage.com/) is a family-oriented social network service and genealogy website. It allows logged-in users to digitally create their own family tree websites. In this way, the traditional family tree can turn into an interactive experience where family members share pictures and videos, organise family events, create new family trees and search for their ancestors. The My Heritage platform has become quite popular, reaching some 72 million users, and it is currently one of the largest sites in the social networking and genealogy field. One of its most distinctive features is the capability to search for family history through facial-recognition technology.
The visual experience of the tree scheme on the MyHeritage platform can in a sense be considered to represent a family story, which connects with other family stories. This scheme of presenting a story is used in other platforms as well, along with other types of structures like boxes, cubes as well as pin boards.  : "Narration takes place in the mind of the viewer, as an interpretation of the connections he makes throughout his digital storytelling experience" (Joyce, 1995). Each image contains historical information that can be added as captions.
The movie-making tool includes soundtrack options as well as basic editing facilities.

Folding Story
Creating a digital story with strong interactive elements sometimes necessitates tools that are free (or, from another perspective, void) of scheme, with no specific graphical environment and offer users the freedom to upload the material and to decide on the way that it is going to be displayed. Folding Story (http://foldingstory.com/) is such a platform.
It functions as a group storytelling game where players write one line of a story, fold the paper, and pass it on to the next player. It is a digital version of the classic classroom collaboration story game, in which participants take turns to add the next line to a story until the whole story is complete. However, each player can only see the last couple of lines, and hence can have no idea about how the story has been going before that point. This activity takes place on the Folding Story platform and users can read finished stories (fold stories) or participate in unfinished ones.

Features and capabilities of the Milia platform
Milia (AppleTree) is an open platform for social interactive digital storytelling. Its implementation is based on the Spiral Model (Boehm, 1986), a software development process combining elements of both design and prototyping in stages. Milia consists of two main subsystems: the Storytelling Viewer ( Figure 11) where internet users may view posted stories (named AppleTree stories) and the Storytelling Editor where authenticated users create AppleTree stories (Figure 12).  The Milia platform uses an apple tree as the space where story elements are placed.
Elements can be of any media type (such as images, videos, sounds), but also text and hyperlinks. For every story element there is a corresponding tree element icon hanging from the apple tree as an apple, leaf or flower. Any combination is possible. For example, an AppleTree story may consist of sound leaves, image apples, text flowers etc. When a user clicks on a tree-element icon, the element expands and reveals the hidden content ( Figure 13). Every element has control buttons in order to be moved, closed, zoomed in and zoomed out.
The free placement of story elements on a tree, in contrast to the common practice of using book pages or storyboards, offers the ability to access the story content in any order, in a non-linear way. Milia also supports linear storytelling, using the tree element description (Figure 14), a metadata text field where a story writer may give a short description for the tree-element, and/or define its sequence in the story. In order to become a storywriter, a user should register in the corresponding webpage of the Milia online platform. From the corresponding welcome screen (Figure 15), a writer may create new AppleTree stories, and also enable (making publicly visible), edit, delete or disable (making hidden from public view) existing ones.  When creating a new story, a writer fills in mandatory fields Title and Description, whose values are stored in The Milia Database and can be altered at any time. These metadata can be used for advanced searching. Loading elements includes picking a spot from 50 predefined spots on the AppleTree structure, choosing an element type from Text, Image, Sound, Video, Hyperlink, and selecting a media type and a media file.
Element types are subject to format, encoding and size limitations. Text files, for instance, need to be uploaded in .txt format, UTF-8 encoding and with a size limited to 100KB. At the same time, there is also a limitation of 50 elements and a total content size of 50MB per AppleTree story.
The "Edit Appletree Story" screen ( Figure 16) displays a detailed view of the uploaded content of a story. From there, a writer may add or change the element description, change element type (from apple to leaf, for example), enable or disable an element from being displayed on the AppleTree, delete the element or preview it.
functions -as a useful educational tool. Schoolchildren can use it, for example, to create their own stories or read and process their classmates' stories. As simple as they may seem, however, such activities can have important learning implications and outcomes: a. A storymaking activity provides a way to practice and develop language skills (grammar and syntax), become familiar with the art of mythmaking and narration, as well as an opportunity to learn and appreciate teamwork, given that students are required to work in teams in order to invent and upload their stories.
b. At the same time, students can profit from hands-on experience with computers, the internet and multimedia applications. the students participating achieved a playful discovery experience, and in fact learnt about the stories and the connection between the three goddesses. In this case, using the Milia platform and digital storytelling led to turning material which was already taught into a departure point for an interactive experience of creativity and learning.

Story #2: Get Into the Museum
One more interactive non-linear story that has been developed by students on the Milia platform is "Get Into the Museum" (Figure 18). This story, developed by students of the Figure 18. Snapshot from the "Get Into The Museum" story.
During the visit to the museum students took handwritten notes, drew sketches of the exhibits and had the opportunity to touch, feel and observe them. In the class, students collected all their materials and evaluated which photos, drawings, texts and voice recordings would be posted on the Milia platform, together with some digital games they selected online (in which case, the corresponding URLs were uploaded on story elements).
As students were not familiar with the use of the story editing tools of the Milia platform, educators undertook the role of facilitating students' work with the platform, leaving to students the initiative to decide upon the placement of their materials onto the tree structure of their apple story.

Story #3: The Magic Apple Tree
One more story that can serve as an example of what can be accomplished within a formal education setting with the Milia platform is "The Magic Apple Tree". This third story is a more traditionally structured fairytale about a magic village of apple trees and a big dragon. The story was written for the 1 st grade pupils of the 2 nd Primary School of the Ano Liossia area, a low socio-economic status suburb region of Athens. The class consisted of 20 pupils with difficulty in Greek language due to their non-Greek (mostly Roma) origin. 12 cf. for instance the definition of a narrative in Wikipedia, based on the corresponding lemma of the Oxford English Dictionary: "A narrative (or story) is any report of connected events, presented in a sequence of written or spoken words, and/or in a sequence of (moving) pictures." (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative, last accessed on 05/12/2014) During this project, students were triggered by a mystery letter from the people of Apple Village, asking the students to help them find the secret recipe of an apple pie that they wanted to cook for the sad dragon of the village. The students played treasure hunt games to find the recipe ingredients, and subsequently cooked and tasted the apple pie.
Through this educational scenario children having poor oral speech competencies were effectively encouraged to participate in organised activities of narration, as well as in informal hands-on activities like preparing an apple pie. The Milia platform was used in this case as a tool for introducing the activity and gaining the interest and enthusiasm of students.
Videos, photos and details from implementation of this project are uploaded as a narration in the Milia platform. It is important to note that, in this case, although students remained readers (rather than creators) of a story, educators managed to use the Milia platform as a means for presenting educational material in a much more attractive and playful way ( Figure 19). Figure 19. Snapshot from the "Magic Apple Tree" story.
The educational projects briefly described above are in line with the conclusion that digital storytelling has emerged over the last few years as a powerful teaching and learning tool, with the potential to engage both teachers and students. The Milia platform aims to capitalise on this potential, supporting the presentation and collaborative creation of any sort of narrative and stories in digital format, in a way that makes it free and accessible for every user to "plant" his/her own story.  The current AppleTree story creation procedure is based on an authentication schema,

Limitations and directions
where writers create and post stories and visitors preview them. In a future version visitors could participate more actively in the formation of a story, being allowed capabilities to move a story element to a different place as well as hide/unhide it.
Additionally, visitors, as well as writers, could be enabled to create new branches, add their own elements to a preexisting AppleTree story and save the resulting AppleTree stories locally to their computers. An appropriate stored data encoding of those personalised stories could allow to load them back to the Milia platform and make them visible for public view.  Another useful addition could be the integration into Milia of all the utilities that a writer may need in order to directly produce the content of story elements, such as for example a drawing application, a text editor, or a sound recorder. This could be helpful to writers with limited experience in managing files, such as elderly people or school students, by making it simpler for them to create new content for a story element (rather than being limited to upload already existing media files) and save it directly into the Milia platform.
Another improvement could be the use of a soundtrack per AppleTree story. A song or music track could act as a background companion for an entire story, offering to visitors an enriched experience. Writers could add a soundtrack to their stories through a procedure similar to uploading a sound element, whereas visitors could use a sound control toolbar ( Figure 22) to play, pause, stop, increase/decrease volume or mute the soundtrack.
As the number of posted AppleTree stories grows (as of the time of writing, the Milia platform hosts more than 70 stories) there is the need for categorisation. Different levels of categorization can be envisaged, based on areas of interest (such as education, environment, culture), age range or socio-cultural profile of the audience that a story is addressed to (such as subcategories for Preschool, Primary School, Secondary School and Tertiary Education under a category for education). Writers could set the category of a story from the "New Appletree Story" screen ( Figure 23) and metadata could be automatically generated, allowing visitors to filter available AppleTree stories per categories, using similar drop-down lists.  Moreover, another way to filter the increasing number of AppleTree stories would be to incorporate an advanced search engine into the Milia platform. Visitors would be able to search for a story using keywords. Searching could be based on current stored Milia metadata (story description, story elements description and filenames, etc) as well as on metadata from future extensions (e.g. story categorisation).
One more feature, which would add feedback capabilities to the Milia platform could be the addition of an open forum per AppleTree story, where visitors would post comments On top of that, in light of the current developments in online social media and online social networks, it is clear that the Milia platform lends itself to a number of social extensions which include: (a) extensions with facilities for content-centered social actions, namely facilities to like and comment AppleTree stories, as well as share these stories in social media such as Facebook, Twitter and many others (b) extensions with facilities for user-centered social actions, namely facilities to follow AppleTree story creators as well as subscribe to AppleTree story channels.
These extensions are quite straightforward to propose, as they rely on concepts which have now been established and operationalized in major social media popular nowadays while, at the same time, they also fit nicely with the overall functional logic of the Milia online platform. What is more, the development of such social mechanisms has the potential to boost the social dimensions of the way in which the Milia platform is used, thus pushing forward its design ambitions to operate as a platform for social storytelling.
Implementation of these extensions, on the other side, has a number of subtleties which range from technical issues (integrating the Milia platform with social media APIs) all the way to operational challenges (for instance, up-scaling the Milia server capacity as required for managing large numbers of users and workloads), and will thus require careful technical design decisions and a well-planned development approach.
Still, despite their demands in implementation effort, these and other similar extensions can be expected to help the Milia platform proceed closer to fulfilling its overarching objective, that is, to offer an open, online, social, interactive space where writers can create stories and readers can have the opportunity to extend and enrich alternative versions of these stories using their own ideas.