The biggest challenge I found with this Twine task was to come up with a storyline and characters. As a science and math teacher, I don’t usually do much fiction storytelling. By calling this a game, I initially tried to figure out a way that one could win this game. I decided that winning would not be the goal. The goal became working the way through the story to the end. I remember reading “Choose Your Own Adventure” books when I was much younger and followed a similar format for this task, but on a much smaller scale.
As this was not a completely linear story, I used an “old school” method of planning. I used sticky notes on a piece of paper to plan out the story. The sticky notes allowed me to see the connections, or hyperlinks, between the slides. I had to make sure that there was a way to reach the end of the story and that there was no way to get caught in an endless loop of hyperlinks. After the story outline was done, then I started to use Twine to program the slides. I started with the basic text in each slide.
I decided that it was important to not have large amounts of text on each slide, making it easier to read. The spacing of the lines of text was important for readability as well. There are many other features in Twine that make the text more engaging. I tried working with different colour fonts and different effects on the text.
Images were also important on each slide to make them more interesting to look at. It was relatively easy to find free images to use. I used the website http://clipart-library.com to find and download free images to use. Not all of the images were the same size, so some of them needed to be resized to fit the slide. Sound effects also make the slides more interesting and engaging.
Overall, I enjoyed the process and am thinking of ways I can incorporate something similar into my science classes.