Overview

About AIM

Overview

Welcome to the Arthur Interactive Media (AIM) Buddy Project! AIM is a cross-age buddy program designed to promote social, emotional, and character development in elementary school students. Instead of traditional story books, AIM uses interactive stories and games, based on PBS’s Arthur series, that allow students to interact with characters, explore multiple perspectives, and consider the impact of actions. Created by the WGBH Educational Foundation and the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts University, AIM is designed to be a supplement to existing social, emotional, and character development curricula with a goal of encouraging important discussions around topics that may be difficult for teachers and students to address in class.* The program includes five interactive stories and games and each one focuses on a specific topic: empathy, honesty, forgiveness, generosity, and learning from others. Exploring these topics with students helps build skills and attitudes that enable them to think more critically and be more accountable for their actions and relations with others, which in turn can help reduce negative behaviors and lead to safer and more caring learning environments. In the AIM Buddy Project, cross-age buddy pairs (ideally, two grades apart: first and fourth or second and fifth) meet to listen to an interactive story or play an online game together. Embedded questions prompt the buddies to talk about and reflect on the characters’ feelings and perspectives and explore how to resolve conflicts. The interactive Arthur stories and games serve as an ideal platform to advance these goals, because they allow children to interact with the characters on the screen. This can help them relate to the story and understand the motivations and choices each character makes. Research supports the idea that children learn from digital technology, and that early experience with research-tested educational media (such as curriculum-based television shows and online games) can help create the path to long-term success (Calvert 2015). (see Appendix, References and Bibliography: Using Media.)