View my Twine here: The Commute

Reflection

The first step in creating my own twine was deciding what type of story I wanted to create. While exploring the Twine the Temple of No, I noticed that it regularly used underlined links to directly connect to the next thought. That is, the links allowed the reader to anticipate the next thought and where the story was heading. It seemed to be guiding the reader’s thoughts.

I decided to explore the idea of guiding the reader with a simple story. I was inspired by the broader idea of hypertext as linking markers that connect ideas and the concept of footnotes in physical books. Footnotes are akin to hypertext in that they direct the reader to take a break from the main narrative, read something related, and allow the reader to return to the narrative and continue on. I wanted to see if I could create a similar experience using Twine.

My intention with my Twine was to simulate an everyday activity (commuting to work) and use the hypertext elements to separate events and thoughts. When I’m doing activities in my day, I often have random thoughts or asides that draw me away from the activity. I wanted to simulate this experience by having new Twine pages trigger changes in thought or actions in the story. The narrator does an activity, has a thought, and then returns to the main activity – sort of like a footnote. 

Twine is an interesting creative tool, but I think careful consideration is needed as to how it could be used in an educational setting. Any Twine can be enhanced with audio or visual elements, but I’m not sure those would increase educational value. I don’t think Twine would be a great tool to teach a concept or complex idea because it doesn’t allow the reader to jump around – they have to start at the beginning and navigate linearly through the story. So, a learner might not get a lot of value from repeating a Twine but rather creating their own notes for easy access and reference.