Megan’s Task 5: Twine Task
https://blogs.ubc.ca/mravenhill/2021/10/10/task-5-twine-task/
Megan described this ask as her favourite task because it was “challenging, engaging, and insightful”. I can relate with her because I was also new to Twine and coding, and I also enjoyed the trial and error process. Megan wanted to explore the software functions more than developing the story, and to do so, she learned from watching the YouTube video posted on the module, and also from other YouTube videos and searches on Google. We followed a similar path on looking for a particular code on Google and YouTube, and though we found some of the ones we were looking for, some of our attempts were unsuccessful and we had to opt for a simpler code.
In her post, Megan paid more attention to how punctuation could be used to create suspense and excitement after listening to Helen Zaltzman’s (2019) interview with Gretchen McCulloch. She also wondered if her attempts to create emotional signals were successful. This made me think about my own project where I also wanted to create a suspenseful atmosphere. Instead of giving thought to searching for tips on how to do that, I chose to walk through the game several times and get my husband to walk through the game to come up with what else is missing.
When I read that Megan was considering using Twine in the classroom, I was thinking that it would be so much effort to design and maintain a digital story that could fit into the lesson plan. However, when I researched on Google, I found lots of different teachers’ reviews and tips on how to use Twine, and it was very insightful! For example, in a teacher interview on 10min Teacher Podcast Dr. Matt Farber says that he uses Twine as a tool for students to create a story of their own from the second-person point of view after reading a fiction story. This teaches them empathy, helps them to contextualize the experience, and reviews the book content. To hear more about it, here is the Podcast: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/game-based-learning-twine/
