Interactive Storytelling

How do you get students who don’t usually self-identify as programmers interested in computer science? Through storytelling! At Acera, our Upper Elementary students have been working with Twine, a free tool for creating interactive fiction. While learning how to use this program, they have made, for example, an interactive game that allows players to explore how people lived in colonial times, and created fantasy stories with many different turns and twists and endings. Instead of selecting features for their character in a game such as Pokemon Go, they have designed character creators; and in the process discussed questions about how we represent identities in such games.